Weekend Watchlist 9/5: Laugh it up
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 opened up PV Guide’s Premium Tier, for those interested in supporting this work!)
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In terms of what’s new on streaming this week, the Naked Gun remake and Nobody 2 arrive on VOD, while 28 Years Later and Ballerina are now reduced price rentals. Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest lands on Apple TV Plus, the Tim Robinson/Paul Rudd comedy Friendship premieres on Max, the Lilo and Stitch live-action remake arrives on Disney Plus, and the Jason Statham movie A Working Man moves to Prime. And one more: Hard Truths, one of my favorite movies of the year (and one I recommended in a May Weekend Watchlist), is now available to watch for free with a library card on Kanopy.
Two brief notes in terms of what I've been up to outside of PV Guide: A group of my former Polygon colleagues started a new site, Rogue, and I wrote about wanting different things from the games I play. I also joined Dan Grima on his podcast Blind Spots to talk The 36th Chamber of Shaolin.
Now, for this weekend’s recs!
Police Story
If you like: Jackie Chan, outrageous stunts, great movies you can watch for free
Watch at: The YouTube embed above
Watch trailer here
Jackie Chan’s Police Story is one of the high marks of Hong Kong cinema’s excellent run of hits in the 1980s, and now you can watch it at home for free. Shout Factory put Police Story up on their YouTube channel – with subtitles and at a pretty high quality – making it easy for you to watch one of the best action comedies ever. It’s got fantastic fights, unbelievable stunts, and so much more – you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better time at the movies than Police Story.
Rocky and Bullwinkle
If you like: Old cartoons, funny gags, talking animals
Watch at: For free with ads on Roku TV
Another standout addition to a free streaming service this week is the first two seasons of Rocky and Bullwinkle, a genuinely hilarious show that continues to delight to this day. It’s been remarkably hard to find on streaming recently, and is now available to watch on a streaming platform for the first time in years.
Rocky and Bullwinkle was a staple of my childhood, and the first season includes my favorite bit ever from the show: the “Bullwinkle’s Corner” edition of Little Miss Muffet. Enjoy:
Hit Man
If you like: Dark rom-coms, attractive and charming people being charming and attractive, stories about The Self
Watch at: Netflix
Watch trailer here
We’re light on big new releases in theaters, but out this week is Splitsville, a romantic comedy starring Dakota Johnson and Adria Arjona. Arjona’s had a busy few years – hopefully you saw her earlier this year in Andor – but I still most closely associate her with her role in Richard Linklater’s rom-com/crime movie Hit Man.
In Hit Man, Glen Powell plays Gary, a college professor who also works for the police, pretending to be a variety of bizarre hitmen in a series of sting operations to arrest people trying to hire killers. But when he starts to fall for one of his potential “clients” (Arjona), Gary’s priorities quickly change, as he likes the person he’s pretending to be around her.
Hit Man was one of a group of great 2024 movies about deciding to be the person you want to be, and it’s one of my favorite unconventional rom-coms in years. Arjona and Powell have terrific chemistry, and Linklater doesn’t forget about the “comedy” part of “romantic comedy.”
