3 great Paramount+ movies you’ll want to watch this week (February 9

Looking for a good movie or three to watch this week? I’ve learned to underestimate Paramount+ when it comes to its library of movies, with the massive studio having so many in its catalog. Combine that with the ones it licenses, and you get quite the dilemma—what to watch.

For the week of February 9 to 15, I’ve wrangled a good mix of genres, from a modern horror and a classic sci-fi crime epic, to an “old-school” frat comedy with early Will Ferrell.

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Us

I knew things weren’t going to go well for the Wilson family the moment the creepy silhouette of those four things showed up at their house. “There’s a family in our driveway.” Jordan Peele may have been known for being hilarious on the sketch comedy show Key & Peele, but since breaking ground with his Oscar-winning social horror film Get Out in 2017, he’s now mastered scaring the hell out of people, too.

His second horror, Us, turns a family vacation into an evil nightmare. It stars the excellent Lupita Nyong’o as Adelaide “Addy” Wilson, who’s on vacation in Santa Cruz with her family—her husband Gabe (Winston Duke) and their kids Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex). After a day at the beach, where some weird stuff happens, that night, four strangers appear, just standing in the dark at the end of the driveway. They’ll soon get up close and personal with the Wilsons, who’ll discover that the family is them—or more precisely, a horrific doppelgänger version of them known as “The Tethered,” who are tied to the Wilsons in the underworld. The only way to free themselves is to kill their tethered selves.

Peele is a master of dark humor, eerie set pieces, and strange sci-fi/psychological horror, and Us further solidified his legacy in the genre, making some of the most unique horror films of the time. Nyongo is utterly terrifying in the dual role of Addy and the hollow-voiced Red, the head of the tethered family. Her performance alone is worth the price of admission. Us has a 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Us

Release Date

March 22, 2019

Cast

Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Anna Diop, Cali Sheldon, Noelle Sheldon, Madison Curry, Ashley McKoy, Napiera Groves, Lon Gowan, Duke Nicholson, Dustin Ybarra, Nathan Harrington, Kara Hayward, Jordan Peele, Darrel Cherney, James Cobb, Alessandro Garcia, David M Sandoval Jr., John Higgins

Runtime

116 minutes

Director

Jordan Peele

Writers

Jordan Peele

Producers

Jason Blum, Sean McKittrick

Main Genre

Horror

Budget

$20 million

Studio(s)

Universal Pictures

Distributor(s)

Universal Pictures

Executive Producer(s)

Beatriz Sequeira, Daniel Lupi

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Face/Off

The ’90s produced some of the most over-the-top and ridiculous (in a good way) action movies of all time—think Speed, True Lies, Con Air, and Demolition Man, to name a few. But the cream of the crop might just be Face/Off, John Woo’s (Hard Boiled), a big-swing action thriller that’s as off the wall as it is supremely entertaining. John Travolta plays FBI agent Sean Archer, whose career has been tortured by the elusiveness of psychopathic terrorist-for-hire Castor Troy (Nicolas Cage), who was also responsible for the death of Archer’s son.

The plot thickens when Castor is captured, but is injured and falls into a coma. The bad news is, Castor’s set up a ticking biological bomb to go off in Los Angeles, and the only one who knows where it is is Castor’s incarcerated brother, and he ain’t talking. In a turn of sci-fi brilliance, Archer goes under the knife and literally gets Castor’s face transplanted onto his, taking over Castor’s life to get his brother squealing. But in a sinister switcheroo twist, Castor wakes up and forces the doctors to put Archer’s face on him, and he’s free in the outside world, wreaking havoc on Archer’s life, and threatening his wife, Eve (Joan Allen).

Woo goes to town with the premise, layering on slow-motion duels, loads of explosions, and great one-liners from Travolta and Cage, who chew up the screen playing each other. Face/Off is a 93%-rated movie on Rotten Tomatoes, and the 1998 film was even nominated for an Oscar for best effects and sound effects editing.

Face/Off

Release Date

June 27, 1997

Cast

John Travolta, Nicolas Cage, Joan Allen, Alessandro Nivola, Gina Gershon, Dominique Swain, Nick Cassavetes, Harve Presnell, Colm Feore, John Carroll Lynch, CCH Pounder, Robert Wisdom, Margaret Cho, James Denton, Matt Ross, Chris Bauer, Myles Jeffrey, David McCurley, Thomas Jane, Tommy Flanagan, Dana Smith, Romy Walthall, Paul Hipp, Kirk Baltz, Lauren Sinclair

Runtime

139 minutes

Director

John Woo

Writers

Michael Colleary, Mike Werb

Producers

Barrie M. Osborne, Christopher Godsick, David Permut

Main Genre

Action

Budget

$80 million

Studio(s)

Paramount Pictures

Distributor(s)

Paramount Pictures, Disney

Executive Producer(s)

Jonathan D. Krane, Michael Douglas, Steven Reuther

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Old School

Todd Phillips, the writer/director behind The Hangover movies and the darkly demented Joker, first struck comedy gold with 2003’s Old School. As far as frat house comedies go, it’s one of my favorites as it harkens back to bygone classics like Rodney Dangerfield’s Back to School, Animal House, and Revenge of the Nerds that I grew up on. It’s stuffed with quotable one-liners, physical comedy moments, and has a stacked cast of some comedy greats.

The story centers around nice-guy lawyer Mitch (the perfectly-cast Luke Wilson), whose marriage falls apart after he walks in on his wife (Juliette Lewis) having a threesome, and he goes into full downward spiral, moving into a house near a college campus. That’s when his besties, the slick-talking manchild Beanie (Vince Vaughn) and newly-married pushover Frank “The Tank” (Will Ferrell) decide to turn the house into party central to get Mitch back on the horse, and also let them relive their college days. When a-hole college dean Gordon Pritchard (Jeremy Piven) rezones the place for campus housing, the only way they can stay is to exploit a university loophole and start a frat.

With the dean determined to shut them down, the boys must recruit members, stay out of trouble, and compete against other frats in a series of challenges to prove their legitimacy. All this manifests itself in some gleefully ridiculous physical comedy, including Frank “streaking through the quad,” and elderly pledge Joseph “You’re my boy, Blue,” Pulaski (Patrick Cranshaw) mud wrestling.

Old School

Release Date

February 21, 2003

Cast

Vince Vaughn, Jeremy Piven, Will Ferrell, Ellen Pompeo, Luke Wilson

Runtime

88 minutes

Director

Todd Phillips

Writers

Todd Phillips, Scot Armstrong

Budget

$24 million

Studio(s)

Paramount Pictures

Distributor(s)

Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks Distribution, Columbia Pictures

That’s my three Paramount+ movies for the week—one for laughs, one for adrenaline, and one for when you want something a little darker. Pick your mood and press play.

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Simultaneous streams

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