It’s the final weekend of March, and you’re faced with an existential question: What are you going to do with yourself? You can watch Road House, the new Amazon Prime Video remake starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Conor McGregor. Dune: Part Two is still in theaters, as is Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.
Streaming is also an option. Hulu has some of the best films around, and the following three movies are worth a watch this weekend. One is a classic 1980s comedy, another is a B-movie hybrid of genres, and the final recommended movie is a heartwarming biopic about a beloved entertainer.
Street Kings (2008)
Long before the comic book adaptation Suicide Squad and the WWII movie Fury, David Ayer made a serviceable action thriller that’s based on a story by famed crime novelist James Ellroy. Keanu Reeves stars as Detective Tom Ludlow, an alcoholic, corrupt member of an elite squad designed to take down Los Angeles gangs. When he’s falsely implicated in the death of a fellow offer, Tom must clean up his act fast to clear his name and somehow redeem his past transgression.
There are better crime movies than Street Kings, but you don’t see movies like this made anymore, at least not with a stacked cast like this: Reeves, Hugh Laurie, Chris Evans, Forest Whitaker, and Naomie Harris. That’s a lot of testosterone and acting right there, and I haven’t even mentioned that Terry Crews and Cedric the Entertainer pop up, too. Yes, it’s that kind of movie, but it’s also involving and, at times, really intense, and it’s always nice to see Reeves in a non-John Wick role once and a while.
Underwater (2020)
COVID-19 messed up pretty much everything, but some people may not know that movies were still being released when everything was shut down. Among the few was William Eubank’s film Underwater, a nice little B-movie that shamelessly rips off The Abyss, Aliens, and The Thing. Hey, if you’re going to steal, you might as well steal from the best.
Love Lies Bleeding‘s Kristen Stewart stars Norah, a mechanical engineer on a deep sea drilling station who becomes prey to mysterious creatures after a powerful wave destroys the walls of their facility. As both the creatures and the sea close in, can Norah escape with her sanity and life intact? With an ensemble cast including Vincent Cassel, Jessica Henwick, and John Gallagher Jr., Underwater is a classic mix of sci-fi and horror that delivers the scares you’d expect from both genres.
The Worst Person in the World (2021)
One of the best rom-coms in some time was released a few years ago, and while it garnered plenty of acclaim, more people still need to watch it. In Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World, Renate Reinsve stars as Julie, an Oslo-based medical student who navigates the complicated period of life in your mid to late 20s.
The film focuses on two of Julie’s romances: the first to older comic book artist Aksel and barista Eivind. Through broken hearts and rekindled romances, Julie experiences most of what’s good, and some of the bad, about being old enough not to make a lot of dumb mistakes but not mature enough to really avoid making a few of them.
