Weekly Digest
Watch List Digest 6/5/25
A Tom Cruise doxology, some thoughts on Pee-wee/Paul Reubens and Wes Anderson's new tinkertoy, plus reviews and recommendations.
Ty Burr
New Movies
New Reviews: "Ballerina," "Straw" 🔒
From this week's WaPo reviews: A "John Wick" spinoff and the latest Tyler Perry melodrama
Good Movies 📽
I Know He Is But What Are You?
Matt Wolf's documentary peeks behind the surface of a pop-culture icon in search of the lost boy beneath. Plus, some thoughts about the new Wes Anderson design showroom - sorry, movie - the two faces of Dubrovnik and on demand recommendations.
Good Movies 📽
Tom Cruise Will Never Die
And other thoughts about "Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning." Also: "I'm Still Here" and a new "Four Seasons" come to Netflix
One Good Film
One Good Film: "Land Ho!" (2014)
A hot spring of a movie: It fizzes a lot, and you come out feeling better than you went in.
Guilty Pleasures 🤦♂️
Pan Sauce
On the art of the negative movie review and an anniversary celebration of one of the best bad reviews ever written.
New Movies
New Reviews: "Fight or Flight," "Juliet & Romeo," Henry Johnson" 🔒
One hellacious B-movie action-comedy, one parboiled Shakespeare revamp for tweenie-boppers and a late-career curio from a great American playwright.
Good Movies 📽
10 Good Movies on Netflix (again)
Plus: A heads-up for the latest Movie Club screening and a Watch List bargain.
New Movies
New Reviews: "Another Simple Favor," "The Surfer," "Words of War" 🔒
This week's reviews from the Washington Post, including one of the year's worst movies and a bio-drama of a hero.
Good Movies 📽
"Sinners" and the Curse of Amnesia
Some belated thoughts on the year's most ambitious movie and what it asks of audiences.
Film Festivals
Best Bets for Boston's Best Film Festival
(plus: New WaPo reviews of "On Swift Horses" and "The Legend of Ochi") I’ve been running around so much this week that I forgot to tell my local readers about this year’s edition – the 22nd – of the best little film fest in town, The
Remembrances ⭐️
Rerun: Walter Matthau's Barbaric Yawp
It's been a busy week with all sorts of irons in the fire, movie- and life-related, so I thought I'd dust off one of the very first Watch List postings from 2021 because it was fun to write and because this guy is fun to read about.