Weekend Watchlist, 8/7: Today, Tomorrow, Yesterday

Happy Friday, PV Guide readers! I hope you have a great weekend ahead of you.

If you missed it earlier in the week, my Back in Action series continued with a look back at the action movies and trends of July 1991 and 2026.

Here are this week’s picks.

A Kiyoshi Kurosawa movie

One of my most anticipated new movies of the year, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s period mystery The Samurai and the Prisoner, is now out. I’ve heard people describe it as Kurosawa’s “Columbo meets Shakespeare” which is more than enough for me to be all the one in. Kurosawa is one of my favorite living filmmakers, and it’s a great time to catch up with his work. He’s well known for his work in the horror genre (Cure, Pulse, Creepy, and Chime are all fantastic), but if you want something more in the thriller variety, check out Cloud, one of my favorite movies of 2025.

The Don Hertzfeldt Collection

Where to watch: Dropout

Dropout recently announced its latest licensing deal: the acquisition of the works of Don Hertzfeldt, one of the great American animators and independent filmmakers of his generation. There’s a lot to be excited about just from a preservation and access standpoint, including that Dropout will eventually have Hertzfeldt’s newest movie, Paper Trail, which became the first American film to win the Grand Prize at the Annecy International Animation Festival in over 20 years. 

"After seeing the films scattered across different streaming platforms for so many years, it's amazing to finally bring them together under the same roof, for the very first time,” Hertzfeldt said in the press release. “I don't know what Dropout is, but I hear it's all game shows, and who doesn't love a good game show?"

I was introduced to his work through the World of Tomorrow series, which is truly a masterpiece. I’d suggest starting there, but go to what draws you!

A rom-com with a gimmick

The gimmicky rom-com One Night Only – with its Purge-style premise where single people can only have sex one night a year (???) – came out this weekend. Reviews have been pretty resoundingly negative, so let’s find a different gimmicky rom-com actually worth watching.

I’ve got three options for you: the classic Hollywood rom-coms A Matter of Life and Death (free on YouTube) and I Married a Witch (HBO Max and the Criterion Channel), or the newer rom-com/slasher movie hybrid Heart Eyes (Netflix).

A Matter of Life and Death is about a British pilot (David Niven) who starts to fall in love with an American girl (Kim Hunter) right before he was supposed to die – but his guide to the afterlife missed him in the English fog, and he miraculously lived. Now, the pilot has to argue his case for living in front of a court for the afterlife, in a glorious, charming, and surreal war-time rom-com. I Married a Witch is a screwball rom-com about a 17th-century witch (Veronica Lake) who comes back in the 20th century intent on revenge, but instead finds love. And Heart Eyes is about a killer who exclusively hunts couples, and the two co-workers (Olivia Holt and Mason Gooding) mistaken by that killer as a couple who now have to fight to survive and figure out why exactly everyone thinks they should be dating anyway.