Welcome to What to Watch Right Now, our weekly rundown of the best things to watch right now. The constant stream of shows, videos, and films to watch online can become a sludge to wade through, so here are a few things you can watch courtesy of the Rolling Stone Philippines team. Whether it’s a new film, a video essay, or even a home video release you should own (physical media is now available!), we hope it can ease the burden of selecting which streaming platform to use or discover a new cinematic odyssey.
This week, the second season of James Gunn’s HBO Max series Peacemaker had us yearning for R-rated superheroes. Clown in a Cornfield terrified us with meta jokes and violent, clown-specific executions. Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life offered us a calm meditation on memory, while comedian Zarna Garg’s interview on Good Hang with Amy Poehler had us reflecting about what it means to be caught in the Asian diaspora. A double bill with A Very Good Girl gave us a campy diva-off between Kathryn Bernardo and Dolly de Leon, while Wicked Little Letters makes for a quieter, but equally potty-mouthed diva-off.
Peacemaker Season 2 (2025)
Is the grass really greener on the other side? The latest season of the John Cena-headlined R-rated superhero show explores alternate realities and sliding-door situations. Following the remarkable success of James Gunn’s Superman, Peacemaker presents a follow-up that may not be what average viewers expect. And Peacemaker is all the better for it. — Jonty Cruz
After Life (1998)
Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life (known in Japan as Wonderful Life) explores the imagery of memory: what you remember, how you remember it, and what will remain once you choose to recall it. The staff of this waystation to the actual afterlife will ask you for that one memory, and they will recreate it — in a cute, Michel Gondry-like way — for you to watch at the end of the week, then you will move on. The film is an interrogation of what kind of memory you will choose to keep: Will it be a happy memory? Will it be a memory of a certain person? Or will it be a specific moment of your life?
The fragility of the rule means that you can only keep a select few, those who will remain in that one memory, and that amounts to choosing the people in your life. But if there’s a universal cheat that we can choose one memory with all the people that’s precious to you (a birthday with all your loved ones, perhaps?), then you will leave this earth with such a great memory to repeat for eternity.
However, Kore-eda is also interested in cinema as a form of memory. After Life hews closest to cinema in its construction of scenes that comprise our memories. Some are faulty, some are triggered by sounds (one man is taken back to his childhood with the sounds of traffic recorded on a cassette tape), and some are contained within a single scene. These scenes create a life, and what is a life lived if not a stream of images and sound that we keep inside ourselves, to hold and to remind us, to give tangible proof that once on this earth, our lives mattered. — Don Jaucian
Clown in a Cornfield (2025)
This slasher, directed by Eli Craig (Zombieland, Tucker and Dale vs Evil), follows an almost by-the-book approach with this old-school slasher, which almost amounts to a Gen Z vs. Boomers narrative.
The moment Quinn (Katie Douglas) arrives in Kettle Springs with her dad (Aaron Abrams), the quaint-seeming town quickly unravels its hidden histories, bloody secrets, and right-wing conspiracies. In the middle of all of this is the titular clown, Frendo, the once glorious mascot of the town’s syrup factory, acting as a stand-in for an America that’s already a thing of the past and an icon that the new generation detests (“The world’s going to change whether you like it or not, and I know that scares the shit out of you… because if you can’t have things the way that you want ‘em, you’d rather burn it all to the fucking ground!”).
Meta gags abound in this head-empty fun that delivers unadulterated thrills, full of practical effects, satisfactory deaths, chilling executions (the bench press kill is particularly memorable), and comedic set-ups. — Don Jaucian
Wicked Little Letters (2023)
I truly enjoyed watching Olivia Colman scream the following phrases: “Fuck off you, pasty old shrivelled old piss bastard,” “you suck 10 cocks a week,” and “foxy-ass piss-country old whore.” Wicked Little Letters is a quaint dark comedy from 2023 that follows Edith Swan (Colman), an obnoxiously pious and soft-spoken British woman who has become the target of a series of perverse, potty-mouthed letters. Edith suspects that the writer of these letters is her rowdy, Irish migrant next-door neighbor Rose Gooding (Jessie Buckley), and promptly has her arrested.
Directed by Thea Sharrock (Me Before You), Wicked Little Letters is a light-hearted hour and forty minutes that promises a simple storyline, an easy ending, and an amusing repartee between its two leads, both of whom are so extraordinarily talented that they took what could have been an average script and turned it into an emotional look at domestic abuse and women empowerment. Plus, a boatload of creative swear words (What is “foxy-ass”?). — Mel Wang
A Very Good Girl (2023)
Now that Petersen Vargas’ Some Nights I Feel Like Walking is enjoying a theatrical run, I think it’s about time we look back at Vargas’ A Very Good Girl. While the film may not be the best out of Vargas’ arsenal (There’s 2 Cool 2 Be 4gotten, Un/Happy for You, etc.), this black comedy is campy, over-the-top, and a great two hours of Kathryn Bernardo and Dolly de Leon locked in a silly diva-off. Bernardo plays Philo, a not so very good girl who enacts a complicated revenge plan against Molly Suzara (de Leon), the tyrannical retail mogul who ruined her life.
I love a revenge plot, and in A Very Good Girl, Vargas amps up the tropes that come with the beloved genre. From Philo setting up an altar for her nemesis (complete with X-ed out eyes and torn-up photos), to both femme fatales screaming at each other in equal amounts, to an unusual climax scene that involves the insertion of an anito statue somewhere sacred, A Very Good Girl is best enjoyed not taken too seriously.
— Mel Wang
Zarna Garg on ‘Good Hang with Amy Poehler’ (2025)
Most, if not all, of the interviews on Amy Poehler’s new podcast are worth the watch (Honorable mentions include Aubrey Plaza processing her grief, Adam Scott saying it’s okay to drive barefoot, and Dakota Johnson bringing her chaotic dog onset).
But Poehler’s latest chat with comedian, actress, and certified “Funny Brown Mom” Zarna Garg hits home, especially for Asian audiences who have found themselves, at least to some extent, experiencing the weight of Asian generational trauma and the distance that comes with loved ones emigrating to the West for a better life.
In the episode, Garg is quick to crack jokes about bullying prospective suitors to see their tax returns (Garg does not do casual), nagging co-star Jonathan Groff to get a “real” job while working on the set of A Nice Indian Boy, and lamenting over her daughter’s choice to study computer science and the classics at Stanford. But the interview takes a somber turn when Garg opens up about how she ran away from home after learning that her father was planning an arranged marriage for her and how her eventual escape to the United States tore her away from her beloved home country of India. “Not every non-resident Indian didn’t just see the money and escape,” said Garg. “Some of us were just trying to survive. I remember weeping through the entire flight to Ohio.” — Mel Wang
