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 choosing which streaming platform to use or of discovering a new cinematic odyssey.
This week, in preparation for the one-weekend-only screenings of The Fellowship of the Ring hitting cinemas nationwide, we’ve revisited both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies. What’s more, with the Academy having finally announced its list of nominees, we’re turning our attention to Oscar contenders like Sinners, One Battle After Another, It Was Just an Accident, and more.
‘The Lord of the Rings’ Trilogy
One of, if not the, best fantasy epics brought to life on the silver screen
In an Empire interview reflecting on the 25-year legacy of The Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson barely believed he’d pulled off making the trilogy to begin with. “What the hell were we thinking?” Jackson said. “I would hesitate to even think that we could do anything like that now. It’s almost overwhelming to think back on. I was younger, we were all younger, enthusiastic, and naive.”
But thank God he’d done it anyway, because Jackson ended up dedicating six years of his life to creating the sprawling Middle-earth that J.R.R. Tolkien conjured up in his books so many years ago. There is nothing quite like seeing the rolling hills of the Shire for the first time, or the ethereal towers of Rivendell, or the dark, cavernous halls of Moria. And we haven’t even mentioned Mordor, with its foreboding mountain peaks and the ever-watching eye of Sauron.
But beyond me gushing over the worlds that Jackson and Tolkien built, The Lord of the Rings has stood the test of time for the stories of good versus evil that it weaves. There is a clear battle for the soul of Middle-earth, and our gaggle of surprising, but nevertheless intrepid, heroes are doing everything in their power to destroy the One Ring before it’s too late. It’s a trilogy where good triumphs in the end, and in these dark, messy times, we could sure use the reminder once again. —Mel Wang
‘The Hobbit’ trilogy (Extended Edition)
A sprawling exercise in extending one book into three films can be both rewarding and exhausting
It’s not easy to watch The Hobbit trilogy. Thorin isn’t exactly the hero that we’d like to root for; he’s gruff, headstrong, and in the final stretch of the dragon sickness in The Battle of Five Armies (2014) makes him insufferable (I mean, yes, that’s the point). An Unexpected Journey (2012) tries to give everyone in the company of dwarves a little time in the spotlight, but only a few stand out after the film ends. The Kili and Tauriel romance we can do without, because maybe Tauriel can just be herself? As one of the non-canonical things in the trilogy, the addition of a female character in a male-dominated film could have been an improvement, but then she gets involved in a semi-love triangle for the sake of what exactly? Corny entertainment?
Nevertheless, we persisted. Spending over eight hours in Middle-earth is still breathtaking. While An Unexpected Journey almost follows The Fellowship of the Ring beat-by-beat, it is still wonderful revisiting all these places we first fell in love with 25 years ago, and encountering new places and characters. Dol Guldur was as menacing as I thought it would be. The barrel run sequence in The Desolation of Smaug (2013) is still one of the best action scenes in the franchise. Seeing Gandalf as one of the most well-written characters across all the films remains a delight.
I would have loved to have seen Guillermo Del Toro’s version of The Hobbit, but Peter Jackson really is the overlord of this realm. The way he briefed the production design in the first trilogy (that they should design Middle-earth as if it’s a historical place and not a fantastical place of imagination) makes him the only person I’d trust to conjure up Tolkien’s world time and again. —Don Jaucian
‘It Was Just an Accident’
Its light and nimble exterior does not hide the horrors within
It Was Just an Accident, Jafar Panahi’s latest rebuke against tyrrany, is part farce, part cautionary tale, but full-on searing indictment of the Iranian regime, perhaps his most blunt criticism of their atrocities yet. The film follows Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), who suspects that one of the customers in their shop is his torturer during his time in prison. His proof? The sound of the man’s peg leg is similar to his state tormentor. Vahid follows his instincts and kidnaps “Eghbal.” In the middle of burying him in the desert, certain things don’t add up, and Vahid is forced to think: Is this really the man whom I think he is? From then on, he enlists characters who were “personally victimized” by this “Eghbal” in prison to check if this really is the Peg Leg that tortured them (while “Eghbal” is tied and gagged in the back of his van): Photographer Shiva (Mariam Afshari), couple Goli and Ali (Hadis Pakbaten and Majid Panahi, respectively), and firecracker Hamid (Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr), who just wants to murder Eghbal right then and there.
Panahi crafts a revolving-door film, shunting us from one situation to another, with each turn offering a surprise in this tale of corruption, memory, and acceptance. If this “Eghbal” is really their torturer, do they have it in them to take his life?
Watch it next week at the Film Development Council of the Philippines’ World Cinema program, along with Sentimental Value, Sound of Falling, and Resurrection. —Don Jaucian
‘Sinners’
A bloody breath of fresh air to the vampire horror genre
We’ve seen Hollywood do vampires every which way (some of them sparkle, some of them brood, some of them hunt down other vampires), but we’ve never seen them as carnal and blues-loving as in Ryan Coogler’s Southern Gothic horror, Sinners. However, the vampires don’t even take center stage until halfway through the movie; instead, we focus on twins Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan) as they try to set up a juke joint in their hometown. The troubles are already there, with the brothers having to deal with racist landlords and the ever-present feeling that they’re not meant to be making space for their community in Mississippi. You can ponder the allegories of racism and colonization as much as you want, but even without those deeper themes, Sinners is just a deliciously bloody vampire movie, and it’s a thrill seeing who’ll make it out of the juke joint alive. —Mel Wang
‘One Battle After Another’
High-stakes revolutionary hijinks, and Paul Thomas Anderson at his funniest
Part action epic, part father-daughter drama, but cleverly disguised screwball comedy, One Battle After Another is the type of movie that demands two, three, or maybe even four watches before you’ve got all the moving parts down pat. This isn’t to say that it’s a deep or difficult movie to watch: Leonardo DiCaprio shines as an ultra-stoner dad who can’t remember important passwords for the life of him, Benicio del Toro does a wonderful little dance that involves some good hip-wiggling, and there’s something so funny about Sean Penn as the absurdly rigid and sexually repressed Colonel Lockjaw. —Mel Wang
‘Bugonia’
A paranoia-fuelled kidnapping drama, with maybe some aliens in the mix
Bugonia isn’t for everyone. It certainly wasn’t for me, but that was mainly because I much preferred watching Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons verbally spar with each other in a dingy basement, rather than the hijinks they got up to in the movie’s final act. But for those who love just how weird Yorgos Lanthimos can get with his films (especially when Stone’s involved), Bugonia is a perfect example of the director’s brand of absurdist comedy mixed with themes of late-stage capitalism and unavoidable apocalypses. There may or may not be aliens involved, but who’s to say? —Mel Wang
‘Zootopia 2’
A surprisingly thoughtful look at systemic oppression for an animated movie
Zootopia was already a thinly veiled allegory for societal hierarchies (the tension between predators and herbivores, no one taking Judy Hopps seriously as a bunny cop, etc.), but its sequel doubles down on its smart writing and surprisingly deep messages hidden within a Disney animated movie. Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Wilde (Jason Bateman) are back at it again, saving their anthropomorphic city one more time, but the movie does a great job of hiding its real villains. Oh, and Shakira’s “Zoo” is worth staying for the end-credit scene. —Mel Wang
