Weekend Watchlist 8/22: Crime thrillers galore
Here's what to watch this weekend
Happy Friday, PV Guide readers! I hope you have a great weekend ahead of you.
Every Friday, I’m recommending a few great things to watch that the algorithm might not be pushing at you right now, with a focus on variety, so every reader can find something they’re interested in. The Weekend Watchlist will always be 100% free. (But I have just opened up PV Guide’s Premium Tier, for those interested in supporting this work!)
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New titles streaming this week include the VOD arrivals of two summer blockbusters (Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning and F1) and two kids’ movies (The Bad Guys 2 and Elio). In terms of arrivals on streaming services, it’s pretty light: The action movie Tornado, which I’m looking forward to, lands on AMC Plus, while the Samara Weaving getaway driver thriller Eenie Meanie debuts on Hulu.
This past week, I watched the new Kamal Haasan movie Thug Life, High and Low, 28 Weeks Later, The Limey, and Slap Shot. I also rewatched (and wrote about) Undisputed II: Last Man Standing, and rewatched Warrior and Space Jam. We also finished our rewatch of Slow Horses ahead of season 5, and caught up on some new Dropout releases.
Emily the Criminal
If you like: Aubrey Plaza, tight thrillers, movies about how fucked the gig economy is
Watch at: Netflix, or for digital rental at VOD vendors
Watch trailer here
Life and writing partners Joel Coen and Tricia Cooke return this week with Honey, Don’t, the second movie in their “lesbian B-movie trilogy” after last year’s Drive-Away Dolls. It stars Margaret Qualley as a private investigator looking into a religious cult and a woman’s death, and Aubrey Plaza as a police officer that I assume Qualley’s character has a romantic and/or sexual relationship with.
A new Aubrey Plaza movie requires me to recommend Emily the Criminal, one of the best movies of the past decade that almost no one has seen. Incisively sharp about the gig economy and our modern struggles with money, Emily the Criminal follows a woman saddled with enormous debt (Plaza) who gets pulled into the world of crime to pay off her student loans.
Plaza is always funny, including in Emily the Criminal, but the movie’s more serious elements let her flex her dramatic chops in new and exciting ways. She’s fantastic in the movie, and everything around her matches that performance: Emily the Criminal is relentlessly paced, constantly tense, and will only continue to be more relevant as the problems it shines a light on continue to be exacerbated.
If you’re reading this recommendation and are thinking “but what if I want to watch a lesbian crime thriller instead?” then you should watch the Wachowski Sisters’ scintillating Bound. Watching Bound is always a good choice, and it’s streaming for free with a library card on Kanopy.
High and Low (or Full Circle)
If you like: Mysteries, Toshiro Mifune, movies that feel like the most intricately staged theatrical production you’ve ever seen
Watch at: HBO Max, Criterion Channel
Watch High and Low trailer here
Watch Full Circle trailer here
I haven’t yet been able to catch Spike Lee’s latest collaboration with Denzel Washington, Highest 2 Lowest. But it did inspire me to finally watch High and Low, the Akira Kurosawa classic Lee is adapting.
High and Low was one of my biggest Kurosawa gaps, and I’m so happy I filled it – it is truly remarkable. It’s tense, filled with great performances, and has some of the most breathtaking blocking you’ll ever see, adding depth and feeling to every single image. It’s also a very fun mystery thriller that moves at an appealing pace – like most Kurosawa projects, it effortlessly combines “fun times at the movies” with “some of the most jaw-dropping cinematic style you’ll ever seen”.
There’s a good chance you’ve already seen High and Low, or decided (like me) to finally check it out now that Highest 2 Lowest is out. If that’s the case, I have a backup recommendation: the six episode miniseries Full Circle. See, Steven Soderbergh also directed an adaptation of High and Low recently, but as an HBO TV show. It stars Timothy Olyphant (currently in Alien: Earth), Claire Danes, and a lot of other great people, and adds an extra dimension to the story through its depiction of the criminal elements of the story and their background. It was one of my favorite shows of 2023, and more people should watch it.
The Limey
If you like: Genre movies with arthouse flourish, neo-noirs, LA movies
Watch at: Prime Video, free with a library card on Kanopy and Hoopla, free with ads on Tubi and Fandango at Home
Watch trailer here
The great Terrence Stamp died this week, and a lot of the obituaries published in the aftermath focused on his (terrific) performance as General Zod in the first two Superman movies. I saw a few people talking about his role in The Limey instead, and my curiosity was piqued.
I’m glad I watched it, because it’s a structurally interesting movie led by great performances from Stamp and Luis Guzmán. It’s about a Cockney thief (Stamp) who just got out of prison and heads to LA to investigate the mysterious nature of his daughter’s recent death, and the sleazy record executive (Peter Fonda) she was involved with.
It’s an early Soderbergh movie, made between Out of Sight (an all-time favorite of mine) and Erin Brockovich, and watching it in the context of his broader filmography is fascinating. Soderbergh has always been interested in combining genre narratives with arthouse and experimental filmmaking techniques. In The Limey, this comes through in the unusual editing approach, where the audio and video are often disconnected. The movie frequently cuts between scenes that take place at different times as conversations or sounds carry through them, resulting in a disjointed viewing experience that evokes a different relationship to time.
The Limey is in many ways a testing ground for Soderbergh’s continued experiments in genre, and in particular the more experimental editing touches he added to the Ocean’s movies. It’s easy to forget how bold those movies are formally because of how popular they became and how ubiquitous some of those approaches became in the wake of that popularity. Watching The Limey is a great reminder of that, and of Stamp’s unique presence as a leading man.
