Weekend Watch: ‘Everybody Wants Some’ Is Better Than Any Baseball Game This Weekend

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Everybody Wants Some

Weekend Watch is here for you. Every Friday we’re going to recommend the best of what’s new to rent on VOD or stream for free. It’s your weekend; allow us to make it better.

Best New Movie to Rent This Weekend

Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some is probably the shaggiest, least vital movie he’s made in quite some time. It’s also maybe the most purely enjoyable thing he’s made since … School of Rock? Sold as a “spiritual sequel” to Linklater’s 1993 film Dazed and Confused, it follows a team of college baseball players over the course of move-in weekend, making for some nice symmetry with the last-day-of-school teens in Dazed. There are definitely more reasons to watch than simply to ogle a baseball team full of hot college-aged guys in stretchy baseball pants and cutoff shirts who then occasionally go out to disco and country bars at night. It’s a relaxed movie full of amiable bullshittery and charming bits of ‘mance, both of the “ro” and “bro” variety. But also … you can ogle a baseball team full of hot college-aged guys in stretchy baseball pants and cutoff shirts! This is a win-win for all involved.

[You can rent Everybody Wants Some on Amazon Video and iTunes.]

Best New Movie to Stream This Weekend

Mountains May Depart comes from Chinese director Jia Zhangke and is easily one of the most sneakily, subtly beautiful movies you’re going to see this year. It takes place at three intervals from New Years Eve 1999 to 2014 to the near future in 2025, and it’s incredibly smart about how the passage of time affects its characters, most specifically the central love triangle, which begins as one thing in 1999 (a more or less traditional love story about a woman torn between her coal-miner love and his more moneyed rival) and becomes something totally different by the time we’re in 2025. The film’s vision of the future isn’t some kind of radical dystopia, but the world has changed quite a bit, and discovering how and why is a big part of the pleasure that the film offers. Plus it offers what is honestly the best cinematic use of Pet Shop Boys of all time.

[You can stream Mountains May Depart on Netflix.]

Best Old Movie Newly Added to Streaming

Okay, your definition of “best” may vary, but Dances with Wolves is newly available to rent on iTunes, and it’s a Best Picture winner, and it’s what James Cameron’s Avatar would look like if you removed the color blue. There are problems galore with director/star Kevin Costner’s decision to tell the story of Native American tribes’ mistreatment by the growing American republic in the post-Civil War times purely through the eyes of a white soldier. But dismissing the movie out of hand means missing out on some honestly moving sequences, and one of the best film scores of the 1990s. Should it have bested Goodfellas at the Oscars that year? Surely not. But it’s a piece of film history well worth experiencing.