We’re all ready for a vacation.
This weekend, before the fun and hectic energy of the holiday season, you may want to relax with a good movie on streaming. For that, Netflix has plenty to offer. Between a Rob Reiner classic, one of the year’s most anticipated movies and a fantastic Coen Brothers picture, the streamer has it all.
Here are the three best movies to watch on Netflix this weekend.
“Stand by Me” (1986)
It’s been nearly a week since the tragic deaths of Rob and Michele Reiner, and many have used this time to look back on their titanic legacies. Reiner directed a lot of classics, films that feel inimitable to this day. One such movie was “Stand by Me,” his third feature and first Stephen King adaptation.
Reiner had an eight-year run to start his career that saw him direct “This Is Spinal Tap,” “The Sure Thing,” “Stand by Me,” “The Princess Bride,” “When Harry Met Sally…,” “Misery” and “A Few Good Men” all in succession. It’s a streak that could stand up against the finest stretches of any filmmaker’s career, containing a series of cross-genre home runs.
In “Stand by Me,” audiences will find one of the all-time classics of the coming-of-age genre, a nostalgic and intelligent film about a group on boys on the hunt for a dead body. It’s one of the great friendship movies, one that has a knockout ending. This film, like many of Reiner’s, stands the test of time, and will continue to do so.
“True Grit” (2010)
Jeff Bridges delivered two performances in Coen Brothers films that have defined phases of his career. The first was in “The Big Lebowski,” one of the Coens’ funniest films and an ultimate hangout movie. The second was in “True Grit,” a modern Western masterpiece that balances humor with a deep well of emotion.
There’s a lot to love in “True Grit,” including stellar performances from Bridges, Matt Damon, and a young, Oscar-nominated Hailee Steinfeld. Adapted from Charles Portis’ novel of the same name, the film is one of the Coens’ most verbose, with a delightfully wordy screenplay that stands among their best. While a “Best of the Coens” lineup could include much of their careers, “True Grit” belongs near the top.
“Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery”
Rian Johnson is very good at making these movies.
In “Wake Up Dead Man,” Johnson uses the “Knives Out” framework to tell a more introspective story than his previous two features. Some critics have pointed to the film’s thinly drawn characters surrounding Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc and Josh O’Connor’s fighter-turned-priest Jud Duplenticy as a flaw, but this trait feels more like a feature than a bug. Rather than building out a vivid murder mystery ensemble, Johnson uses the genre’s trappings as window dressing for a debate about faith in an often cruel world, laser-focused on his primary characters.
While Craig continues to shine as his central detective, O’Connor is a breath of fresh air in an already fresh franchise, delivering perhaps the series’ best character (at least, outside Benoit Blanc) to date. Johnson’s razor sharp screenplay and Steve Yedlin’s stunning cinematography are highlights of the film alongside Craig and O’Connor. Weeks after seeing it for the first time, I find myself thinking about a scene involving a phone call between Jud and a character played by Bridget Everett nearly every day. If every “Knives Out” film could maintain the quality of these three, I’d watch 100 more.
