Reservation Dogs and Tsai Ming-liang's latest are on the agenda for the weekend
Monday's coming, so watch Reservation Dogs and the return of Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang before it's too late
“Everybody’s working for the weekend,” the song goes. But what are we supposed to do when the weekend comes and your cycle hums, as the other song says? Well, those days are all happy and free (those happy days).
Aside from clearly running out of songs about the weekend so that we have to mash two together, we at The A.V. Club are working to make sure there are enough pop-cultural goodies for you to enjoy this weekend. Your time-off is precious, or if you’re working this weekend, as some of us at the site are, that time is even more so.
Unfortunately for you, and us, August is one of the slowest months of the year for the good stuff. Typically, speaking this is when studios really load that dump truck of blockbusters, horror shlock, and stuff that probably wasn’t good enough for award season and drop it off in front of movie theaters across these beautiful United States. And that’s even true a year and a half into the pandemic. The biggest studio offerings this week, Free Guy, Don’t Breathe 2, and Respect feels like movies from another time, a time called 2018. That was actually the last time the second week in August had a legit smash-hit: Crazy Rich Asians.
But don’t let the lack of compelling blockbusters scare you. There’s a world of entertainment out there. In addition to movies made outside of Hollywood, there’s plenty of new television to check out. Oh, TV, you’re always there for us, aren’t you? Enough with the preamble, let’s get to those recs, baby!
The movie to see: Days
By law, we cannot recommend Free Guy in good conscience. As the kids say, “We don’t make the rules.” Should we find out who does? Sure, but it’s not happening right now. So instead of tuning into the summer’s second Hollywood attempt at processing our I.P.-heavy entertainment nightmarescape (after [Gulp.] Space Jam: A New Legacy), we’re recommending the near-silent film Days. Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang is one of the world’s most renowned filmmakers, and this is his first film since 2013’s Stray Dogs.
What our review says: “Days may be Tsai [Ming-Liang]’s most narrative film in nearly a decade, but that remains a relative distinction. The impression is of a filmmaker shaving away everything subordinate to his interest in stasis. There was no conventional screenplay for the movie; Tsai constructed his nominal story around the mundane action he filmed, not the other way around. And he’s finally done away entirely with dialogue, declining to even subtitle what few lines are spoken aloud. In truth, that choice may be more blessing than curse for a viewer unacclimated to the languid rhythms of his films: Is it easier to orient oneself to a movie of this much quiet and stillness—to accept its demands on your attention—without any words to distract from the often glorious imagery?” [A.A. Dowd]
The “Days is only playing in a handful of theaters” movie to watch: Swan Song
Few careers are as varied and interesting as the always varied and interesting character actor Udo Kier. His latest, Swan Song, is no exception. Kier plays Mr. Pat, a retired hairdresser who will get $25,000 if he does the hair of a former client for their funeral. Never mind that the deceased was a “demanding Republican monster” Pat had a falling out with some years earlier. If that doesn’t sell you on the thing, consider this: Jennifer Coolidge co-stars. Swan Song is now available on VOD.