The 10 Best Movies and TV Shows to Watch This Weekend
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to spend your Memorial Day weekend clicking through our watch guide. There’s plenty to dig into, from more Stitch and Tom Cruise’s high-flying action, to Paul Rudd and Tim Robinson having a bromance for the ages, to Nicole Kidman tossing on another bob for fun. You won’t regret it, but if you do, this message will self-destruct in five seconds anyway.
Featured Presentations
Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning
It’s been a bumpy road for the Mission: Impossible franchise (from varying quality to a brief Jeremy Renner detour), but one thing remains constant: Tom Cruise will risk his life for cinema. The Final Reckoning is being presented as … the final in the franchise. And the serious finality of Christopher McQuarrie’s latest entry may or may not be get in the way of what should be the wall-to-wall thrills of Ethan Hunt’s shenanigans here, but at least our critic Bilge Ebiri calls it a “fun mess.”
In theaters now
➽ Now where does this “final” Mission: Impossible film land in our ranking?
Lilo & Stitch
One of Disney’s last hand-drawn animated movies is up next on the studio’s conveyor belt of live-action remakes. It’s not hard to tell why: The film, and more notably Stitch himself, has only become more beloved since its 2002 release. Now Dean Fleischer Camp (the Marcel the Shell filmmaker) is taking over the directing reins — with original co-director Chris Sanders back as the voice of Stitch — as they retell the story of the destructive alien and his new ‘ohana, sisters Lilo (Maia Kealoha, a brilliant find) and Nani (Sydney Agudong).
In theaters now
Friendship
“Friendship often plays like a low-stakes platonic variation on an erotic thriller, or like an update to The Cable Guy in which the Jim Carrey character is the protagonist. Even so, it’s the little comedic cul-de-sacs that make the movie work as well as it does, sustaining it as much as the growing tension between [Tim Robinson’s] Craig and [Paul Rudd’s] Austin.”
(In theaters now; read the rest of Willmore’s review here; click here if you’re pro-smoking.)
Sirens
You may have seen some version of this show before. There’s a powerful lady who’s maybe a cult leader or just a wealthy weirdo, and she’s in a beautiful beach house where creepy stuff is going on. What Sirens asks is this: Would that show be better if the lead actors were Julianne Moore, Meghann Fahy, and Milly Alcock? The answer is, actually, yes. — Kathryn VanArendonk
Streaming on Netflix
Nine Perfect Strangers
Nicole Kidman and her lob against the world. The most booked woman in Hollywood managed to squeeze in a sequel season to Hulu’s adaptation of Liane Moriarty’s novel of the same name. Kidman returns as wellness guru Masha, who has relocated her retreat to the Austrian Alps to “heal” a whole new crop of guests, which includes Murray Bartlett, Henry Golding, Dolly de Leon, and Annie Murphy.
Streaming on Hulu
Pee-wee As Himself
A childhood icon for Gen-Xers, millennials, and anyone with taste, Paul Reubens’s Pee-wee Herman was a beautifully odd fixture of American television who collapsed the line between person and performance. This two-episode docuseries uses interviews with Reubens (who died in 2023) and with his various creative collaborators, along with archival footage and photographs, to understand the man’s impish singularity. — Roxana Hadadi
Streaming on Max
Fear Street: Prom Queen
Halloween’s coming months early with Prom Queen. The Fear Street trilogy in 2021 was a hit for Netflix, so naturally, it’s building out the R.L. Stine franchise even further. In a classic horror premise (a school dance in the ’80s, no less), a killer is picking off Shadyside High’s prom-queen candidates one by one.
Streaming on Netflix
Motorheads
What if Dawson’s Creek had cars? That’s the vibe of this ensemble series in which a group of teenagers in a once-thriving Rust Belt town get really into racing and romance. It’s from writer and showrunner John A. Norris (formerly a producer on One Tree Hill, so you know he’s got the adolescent-melodrama goods) and led by Ryan Phillippe. — R.H.
Streaming on Prime Video
Grand Finales
The Last of Us
Despite a few potentially eyebrow-raising shifts in how the game’s timeline gets reshuffled for TV, season two of The Last of Us has much to recommend it. There are issues around the margins: texture about the surrounding world that doesn’t get enough detail, for instance, and the introduction of Abby, who does not yet have time to become as rounded and complex as Ellie or Joel. This leads to questions about how this season sets up what’s likely to come in the future, when presumably Abby and the Seraphites and the world beyond Ellie’s individual decisions become more critical. But at its core, the show is full of the magic and horror of parenthood and how hard it is to let your children become their own people.
Yes, this show is a grueling watch with the mushroom zombies and daddy issues, and yet we still choose to watch because we sickos find that entertaining. Our critic Kathryn VanArendonk has a much more eloquent read on the execution of this season.
➽ For much lighter evenings, try the finales of The Studio and Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal. Both are stressful in their own ways, but compared to the emotional devastation of The Last of Us, they’re palate cleansers.
Finally Streaming
Mickey 17
Besides Mickey 17 being a Bong Joon Ho film, multiple Robert Pattinsons should be an automatic sell. Pattinson plays the titular Mickey as he signs up to be cloned indefinitely while he and a crew, headed up by a goofy Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette, fly to colonize a new planet. It’s silly and entertaining — and even romantic as hell.
Streaming on Max
➽ Plus, The Wild Robot is now on Netflix, ready to make you cry.
Want more? Read our recommendations from the weekend of May 16.
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