3 great Paramount+ movies you’ll want to watch this week (February 16 – 22)

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Paramount+‘s movie library is deep enough that it’s easy to spend more time browsing than watching. If you’re wondering what to watch on Paramount+ this week, here are three can’t-miss picks to add to your queue.

Forgo the channel surfing and fill your watch list this week, February 16 to 22, by paying tribute to the late-great James Van Der Beek with one of his best, or saddling up for Tarantino’s frontier payback saga, or play hooky in Chicago with a perfectly planned day.

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Varsity Blues

Watching Varsity Blues is definitely bittersweet since the passing of James Van Der Beek last week, after his long battle with cancer. The Dawson’s Creek star was just perfect as troubled West Canaan High quarterback Jonathon “Mox” Moxon in this much-loved sports comedy-drama from 1999. In the fictional Texas small town, football is life, even if, as Mox famously screams at his dad, it isn’t the life you want. And that’s the center of the drama in Varsity Blues.

As a backup QB for the West Canaan High Coyotes, Mox was content reading Vonnegut on the bench—his future heading towards Brown University on a full academic scholarship. All that changes when star quarterback Lance Harbor (the late Paul Walker) is devastated by a serious knee injury, and Mox is put in the game. As it turns out, the underestimated Mox has a cannon for an arm and wins the game, turning him into the town hero. But Mox has a different way of playing the game, and it flies in the face of brutal coach Kilmer (Jon Voight), causing tension and so many clashes that expose Kilmer’s irresponsible win-at-all-cost mentality. Mox is also at odds with his dad, who’s projecting his own failed football career onto Mox. It all dramatically comes to a head, making for a memorable climax to the movie.

Pay no attention to the weak Rotten Tomatoes score; Varsity Blues is a classic late-nineties football drama for the ages. Rest in peace, JVDB.

2

Django Unchained

In Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, the prolific filmmaker took wildly entertaining liberties, writing his own fantastical version of the fall of Hitler and the Third Reich. In 2012’s Django Unchained, his film immediately following Basterds, he does it again, filtering one of history’s ugliest realities through the lens of a spaghetti western and satisfying revenge fantasy. Again, the film was darkly funny, and supremely entertaining, being nominated for five Oscars and winning two.

Taking place just before the Civil War, the story follows Django (Jamie Fox), an enslaved man who is bought off a chain gang by the charismatic and mysterious Dr. King Schultz (Basterd‘s brilliant Christoph Waltz). As luck would have it, Schultz is a bounty hunter who abhors slavery and needs Django to identify a trio of wanted men. In exchange for helping him, Schultz gives Django his freedom and agrees to help rescue his wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), from the monstrous slaver Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his servant Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson).

In true Tarantino fashion, Django Unchained is brutally violent and brutally funny, but it’s also full of the filmmaker’s signature intelligent and poetic dialogue. The epic period drama had a $30 million opening weekend when it came out on Christmas Day, and went on to become Tarantino’s highest-grossing film. It currently enjoys an 87% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which I think is way too low.

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Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Thinking of playing hooky this week? Why not use this much-loved John Hughes classic as your template for an epic day of joyriding in a sports car, weaseling your way into a swanky restaurant, and entertaining hundreds with a song or two from atop a parade float? Why? Because life moves pretty fast. And if you don’t stop and look around every once in a while, you could miss it.

Who said those inspiring words, you ask? Ferris Bueller, that’s who. In case you’ve somehow managed to get this far in life without seeing Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, it’s now on Paramount+. In a career-defining role, Matthew Broderick plays the titular high school senior, who just wants to take a day off from the grind of Shermer High and hang out with his girlfriend, Sloane (Mia Sara), and best friend, Cameron (Alan Ruck). Ferris dupes his gullible parents into thinking he’s sick, and after talking the sickly Cameron into “borrowing” his dad’s priceless Ferrari and busting Sloane out of class, the trio heads to downtown Chicago for a day to remember.

But obsessive principal Ed Roony (Jeffrey Jones) will stop at nothing to catch Ferris in the act, and the same goes for his older, jealous sister Jeanie (Jennifer Grey), who clash in a hilarious happenstance. It’s one of Hughes’ greatest triumphs that you should totally see if you haven’t and rewatch if you have.

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