Buena Vista Pictures
The Weekend Watch is an open thread where you can share what you’ve recently watched, offer suggestions on movies and TV shows we should check out (or warnings about stuff to avoid) and discover queue-filling goodies from other FSR readers.
The comments section awaits. I’ll get the ball rolling with the movies/TV my eyeballs took in this weekend.
I’m not much of a Spike Lee fan – a fact probably made evident by Inside Man being my favorite of his films – but to be fair I’ve seen far less than half of his output. This week’s release of two double feature Blu-rays from Lee has upped that percentage, but while three of the four films do little for me my first-time watch of 25th Hour was a revelation. Smartly scripted (by David Benioff from his own novel), wonderfully cast and beautifully shot, the film captures the importance of “now” with its portrait of a post-9/11 NYC. Edward Norton is fantastic, Terence Blanchard’s score is a haunting and moody affair and the film features at least two immensely unforgettable scenes (the mirror and the imagined future montage). Needless to say, Inside Man is no longer my favorite.
When most people think of scary Asian movies they probably picture ghostly tales with long-haired female specters crawling across the floor or out of a television set, but the new Korean thriller Hide and Seek manages to be extremely creepy without a single supernatural threat. The story touches on class warfare, the fear of undesirables and the power of guilt, and it does it all with some exciting suspense scenes and moments of pure dread. Incredibly, it’s also loaded with plot holes and issues that are easily ignored thanks to sharp direction and editing that keeps things truly thrilling.
A documentary about an inventor and a long-dead painter has no call being as engaging and emotionally satisfying as Tim’s Vermeer, and yet, here we are. I knew nothing of Johannes Vermeer going in and even less of art history in general, but in under eighty minutes the film delivers a brief education and an appreciation of the sweet spot between art, technology and personal drive.
What did you watch this weekend?