Weekend Watchlist, 8/1: Romance, comedy, bank robbery

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 recently opened up PV Guide’s Premium Tier, for those interested in supporting this work!

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New to streaming and of note this week: 28 Years Later and The Life of Chuck, two very different movies that came out this June to good reviews, make their VOD debuts, while Final Destination: Bloodlines lands on Max, joining the rest of the franchise. I will most certainly be watching Bloodlines, after watching (and enjoying) the rest of the series earlier this summer.

This past week, I was out of town, which actually meant I watched more stuff than normal. Highlights: 28 Days Later (thought I had seen it, was wrong!), A Nice Indian Boy, The Legend of Fong Sai-Yuk 2, starting a rewatch of Slow Horses ahead of the new season, and the ridiculous “Josh Hartnett on an assassin plane” movie Fight or Flight. I also watched the French action movie K.O. starring former UFC heavyweight champion Cyril Gane, the unreleased 1994 Fantastic Four (here’s the Thing), and Happy Gilmore.

A Nice Indian Boy

If you like: Rom-coms, sweet stories, Jonathan Groff
Watch at: Hulu
Watch trailer here

A sweet, charming rom-com with some minor structural issues, A Nice Indian Boy is a great pick for a date night watch and recently made its streaming debut on Hulu. It follows reserved Indian-American doctor Naveen (Karan Soni), who brings his new, white fiancé Jay Kurundkar (Jonathan Groff) home to meet his skeptical parents. Naveen mentions nothing but Jay’s name to his parents before introducing them, and Jonathan Groff is not exactly what they’re expecting, leading to some classic rom-com hijinks and ultimately some meaningful connections.

Director Roshan Sethi, a former radiation oncologist who still practices medicine part-time, is married in real life to lead Karan Soni, who has talked about basing his character’s arc on their own courtship. It’s a joy to see Naveen come out of his shell, and A Nice Indian Boy is carried by its strong central performances and even stronger heart.

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping

If you like: Goofy comedy, meta jokes about the entertainment industry, Andy Samberg
Watch at: Netflix (leaving August 16)
Watch trailer here

Lonely Island’s Akiva Schaffer is behind the new Naked Gun, which is enough to make me look forward to it. I’m glad he made it out of Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers and can get back to making laugh-out-loud, goofy as hell comedies for grown-ups. He did it in 2007 with Hot Rod, and he did it again in 2016 with Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, one of the funniest movies of the last decade.

The purest “Lonely Island movie” because of the concept and the role all three play in it, Popstar is a mockumentary about pop music icon Conner “Conner4Real” Friel(Andy Samberg), formerly of the boy band/pop rap group The Style Boyz (joined by Samberg’s fellow Lonely Island members Schaffer and Jorma Taccone, who co-directed the movie and co-wrote it with Samberg). Conner is the only former Style Boy to make big as a solo artist, which Samberg is able to play up with maximum Justin Timberlake overconfidence/bluster. It has many, many quotable one-liners and surprisingly incisive jokes about the entertainment industry, and never fails to make me laugh.

Watching the opening will give you a great idea of whether this movie is on your wave length – “I’m So Humble” sends me reeling every time.

The Channel

If you like: Gritty bank heist movies, incredible shootout scenes, DTV action
Watch at: Hulu
Watch trailer here

William Kaufman is one of the most skilled DTV action directors working today, with an impeccable eye for detail, a strong sense of space, and a commitment to intense gun battles. His new movie Osiris is now out, a sci-fi actioner starring Max Martini and Linda Hamilton, and is a great excuse to revisit The Channel, the best of the three movies Kaufman released in 2023.

A bank heist movie about a job gone wrong and the eventual escape attempt out of New Orleans, The Channel is intense, cuts to the chase, and puts many blockbuster gun battle scenes to shame with its opening shootout. It’s one of my favorite DTV action movies of the past few years, and features a typically strong performance from Martini, a great performer who has never really gotten his due.

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