What we’re watching this week DRAFT
Each Monday we crack our diaries open to plan the week’s viewing – here’s what to look out for.
TOPIC/GENRE subheaders for skimmability
Each Monday we crack our diaries open to plan the week’s viewing – here’s what to look out for.
A big week is coming up with new eps of hit shows, while those of you not still queuing up to see Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning may be lured into cinemas by Disney’s new live-action remake.
Monday May 19
The Last of Us is really moving at a clip again this season, but the end of last week’s ep had a surprise in store—with the fleeting return of Pedro Pascal. And the return of some audience tears. The show looks set to heartbreakingly dip back into the past further this week with ep 6 ‘The Price’. As the official synopsis teases: Joel surprises Ellie for her birthday. Years later, Ellie prepares to confront Joel about her past.
Ryan Phillippe is the big name leading new Prime Video series Motorheads, which premieres tonight, with all episodes available to binge. However, as the show’s billed as a coming-of-age drama, the now-50-year-old Phillippe has some younger castmates along for the ride too. Official synopsis: Motorheads is about first love, first heartbreak, and turning the key in your first car. Set in a once-thriving rust-belt town that’s now searching for a glimmer of hope, the series is an adrenaline-filled story of a group of outsiders who form an unlikely friendship over a mutual love of street racing, while navigating the hierarchy and rules
Ratcheting up the intensely awkward and absurd ‘comedy’ of The Rehearsal, Nathan Fielder takes his campaign to improve aviation safety to Washington this week. So far, this season has taken the show’s original concept (wouldn’t life be easier if you could rehearse difficult moments in advance—with an HBO budget and flair for the bizarre) and… elevated it substantially. With the gotta-see-it-to-believe-it season finale coming next week, keep up with this one.
“The aviation-related hypothesis is a sly way to frontload some central themes around problems in communication and difficulties people have in expressing themselves,” says Luke Buckmaster: “The question of whether Fielder himself is being glib, or something approaching earnest, hangs over everything.”
Tuesday May 20
Wednesday May 21
We’re settling into some back catalogue viewing tonight. The not-easily-scandalised among us are thrilled to see two of the breakout films by cult queer cinema provocateur Gregg Araki freshly available to rent in the form of The Doom Generation and Nowhere. The former stars Rose McGowan (in her indie breakout role) opposite James Duval, the pair playing a teenage couple who pick up a drifter (Jonathan Schaech) and embark on a crazed road trip of sex and violence. Duval also stars in Nowhere, a black comedy described by Araki as “Beverly Hills, 90210 on LSD” and with a cast including the likes of Ryan Phillippe, Mena Suvari, Kathleen Robertson, and Denise Richards.
““To be part of Gregg’s world, he saved my life. He gave me purpose, he gave me direction” Duval told Cat Woods in an interview about The Doom Generation‘s uncensored return to Sundance in 2023.
Marcel the Shell With Shoes On
OK, Gregg Araki films are not for everyone, which is why, elsewhere in the Flicks team, we’re revisiting (for reasons that will become obvious below) 2002’s Lilo & Stitch and partially animated mockumentary Marcel the Shell With Shoes On.
Thursday May 22
Disney’s latest live-action animated remake hits cinemas today, revisiting the 2002 original in the perfectly suited hands of Dean Fleischer-Camp, director of Marcel the Shell With Shoes On. Sydney Elizebeth Agudong plays a lonely human girl named Lilo who adopts a dog-like alien named Stitch, unaware that Stitch is genetically engineered to be a force of destruction, and is being pursued by both aliens and social workers. The 2025 cast also includes the likes of Billy Magnussen, Hannah Waddingham, Chris Sanders, Courtney B. Vance and Zach Galifianakis.
All eps of this new Netflix show will be available to binge as it premieres, which may prove irresistible given how more-ish it sounds… The dark comedy limited series about cult deprogramming set over the course of one weekend stars Oscar-winner Julianne Moore and The White Lotus’s Meghann Fahy – watch the trailer and get ready to join this cult yourself.
Friday May 23
Poker Face ep 5 Hometown Hero (Thurs for Aus)
Saturday May 24
A sport opportunity? eg Auckland FC v Melbourne Victory
Sunday May 25
Sometimes a solid Sunday horror is called for, and with the impending release of Danny and Michael Philippou’s Bring Her Back (hitting cinemas next week), we’re revisiting their outstandingly creepy 2023 debut Talk To Me. The story of a young woman dragged into a nightmare by an embalmed hand and occult ritual, it’s one of the horror highlights of the decade so far. In a chat at the time of release, the Philippous chatted with Steve Newall about their film, and everything from horror to nangs, SWIDT and Street Fighter.
