The Weekend Watchlist, 5/30: Mixing it up
This week: A big Bollywood hit and some top-tier competition
Happy Friday, PV Guide readers! I hope you have a great weekend ahead of you.
Every Friday, I’m recommending a few great things to watch that the algorithm might not be pushing at you right now, with a focus on variety, so every reader can find something they’re interested in. The Weekend Watchlist will always be 100% free.
I’m back from vacation, where I did in fact watch Guy Ritchie’s new Fountain of Youth movie (a significant step back from his recent output, although that feels largely attributable to the script and his miscast lead actor). We’ve also been watching the Seattle International Film Festival’s virtual offerings (shout out to my brother and my sister-in-law for the great holiday gift). Some highlights for you to keep an eye on when they come out: the Korean coming-of-age drama Summer’s Camera, the Manipuri family drama Boong, and the French Canadian fish-out-of-water drama Shepherds.
What I’m watching this weekend: More from SIFF, the NBA playoffs, the Giro d’Italia, a Mission: Impossible II rewatch
This week’s recs
Jawan
If you like: Globe-trotting action thrillers, Bollywood maximalism, anti-corruption action movies
Watch at: Netflix
Watch trailer here
Shah Rukh Khan stars as the jailer of a woman’s prison who recruits inmates as vigilantes to go on secret agents to expose corruption in India. It’s part Robin Hood, part Charlie’s Angels, and 100% a great time.
Khan, one of the biggest movie stars in the world, returned to the industry after a brief hiatus with 2023’s spy thriller Pathaan (streaming on Prime). I was initially tempted to recommend that one this week, since it’s a very sensible pairing with a new Mission: Impossible movie out … but Jawan is a much better movie, with Khan’s incomparable movie star charisma paired with explosive action scenes and a strong emotional and political core. When we spoke earlier this month, Last Bullet director Guillaume Pierret recommended Jawan, and I’m here to resoundingly second that.
GeoGuessr Americas Grand Finals
If you like: Geography, ungodly feats of mental skill, niche competition
Watch at: The embedded video right above
I like playing GeoGuessr, but I love watching pro GeoGuessr. The combination of detailed geographic knowledge, absurd meta trivia like the different types of cars Google uses in different areas of the world, and cunning strategy required makes for an approachable and engaging watch where it’s easy for even outsiders to appreciate the skill involved (unlike many other esports). And this past weekend’s Americas Grand Finals at DreamHack Dallas was a banger.
A brief explanation of competitive GeoGuessr: two players duel, given the same starting place and asked to guess where in the world they are. The closer you guess, the more points you get (with a maximum of 5000). Each guess, the points difference between them is subtracted from the loser’s health pool (so a bad guess is very punishing), and each round ends when a player hits zero health. This all takes place over a best-of-five series, with rounds alternating between Move (where the players can move around the map to find more clues) or No Move (where they can’t). If it goes to a fifth and final round, that’s NMPZ (No Move, Pan, or Zoom).
Last week’s Americas Grand Finals saw two of the top players in the region – Radu C and MK – each vying for their first major championship. I first saw MK play in the 2024 World Championship Grand Finals, where he made an immediate impression with his bold style of play – MK favors making a shockingly quick, safe guess to immediately put pressure on his opponent rather than laboriously finding the perfect spot. Meanwhile, Radu C seems almost divinely gifted at making perfect guesses under pressure. It was an incredible showdown between two skilled players with very different approaches.
The last week of Giro d’Italia
If you like: The beautiful italian countryside, ungodly feats of physical skill, long-form sports storytelling
Watch at: Max
I’ve gotten quite into professional cycling over the past few years thanks to the Pro Cycling Manager video games and some very exciting Tour de France showdowns between generational stars Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogacar. But the TdF is only one of three Grand Tours in cycling, along with the Giro d’Italia and La Vuelta a España. Each Grand Tour is three weeks long, made up of 20+ individual stages that can each take as long as five or six hours, making for a very different pacing for a major sporting event (and plenty of drama).
Because of the grueling nature of these races, which take place in fairly close succession, the major TdF contenders often don’t race in the Giro – neither Vingegaard nor Pogacar are competing this year. Since those guys have been so dominant in recent years, that leaves a tantalizing opportunity for someone else to come through with a big Grand Tour win.
Coming into the Giro, the two favorites looked to be Slovenian veteran Primož Roglič, who won the Giro in 2023 and has won La Vuelta four times, and UAE Team Emirates’ hotshot prospect Juan Ayuso, looking for his first career Grand Tour win. But it hasn’t worked out that way – both have dropped out due to injury, and even before Ayuso called his Giro done, his 21-year-old teammate Isaac Del Toro had surprised everyone by taking the lead (and the pink jersey that goes with it).
During a big climb Wednesday on Stage 16, Del Toro looked absolutely finished, just barely holding onto the lead after losing a significant amount of time to Simon Yates and Richard Carapaz on the ascent. But Del Toro bounced back with a huge Stage 17, winning his first career Grand Tour stage to protect and extend his lead to 41 seconds (a tiny margin considering we’re more than 60 hours into the race). After an uneventful Stage 18, there are three stages left to finish the Giro, including two of the most challenging mountain stages – 19 and 20. Stage 19 is on Friday (and might be close to concluding as you read this), while Stage 20 is Saturday, and if you miss it live, it’s easy to watch the replays on Max. Will Del Toro hold on for a historic victory? I’ll be watching, and so should you.