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

Paramount+’s movie library is rich 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.

Forget channel surfing and fill your watchlist this week, February 16-22, by paying tribute to the late, great James Van Der Beek with one of his best, or jumping into Tarantino’s Frontier Payback saga, or playing hooky in Chicago with a perfectly planned day out.

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College Blues

Look College Blues is definitely bittersweet since the death of James Van Der Beek last week, after his long battle with cancer. THE Dawson Creek The star was simply perfect as troubled West Canaan High quarterback Jonathon “Mox” Moxon in this much-loved 1999 sports comedy-drama. In the fictional small Texas town, football is life, even if, as Mox shouts to his father, it’s not the life you want. And this is the center of the drama in College Blues.

As the backup QB for the West Canaan High Coyotes, Mox was content to read Vonnegut on the bench — his future heading to Brown University on a full college scholarship. All that changes when star quarterback Lance Harbor (the late Paul Walker) is devastated by a serious knee injury and Mox is brought into the game. It turns out that the underestimated Mox has a cannon for an arm and wins the game, making him the town hero. But Mox has a different way of playing the game, and it goes against brutal Coach Kilmer (Jon Voight), causing tension and so many confrontations that reveal Kilmer’s irresponsible win-at-all-costs mentality. Mox is also at odds with his father, who projects his own failed football career onto Mox. This all comes to a head in dramatic fashion, creating a memorable climax for the film.

Don’t mind the low Rotten Tomatoes score; College Blues is a classic late 90s football drama for all ages. Rest in peace, JVDB.

College Blues

Release date

January 15, 1999

Runtime

106 minutes

Director

Brian Robbins

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Django unleashed

At Quentin Tarantino Inglourious Basterdsthe prolific filmmaker has taken some wildly entertaining liberties in writing his own fantastical version of the fall of Hitler and the Third Reich. In the years 2012 Django unleashedhis film which immediately follows Bastardshe does it again, filtering one of history’s ugliest realities through the prism of a spaghetti western and a satisfying revenge fantasy. Once again, the film was dark and extremely entertaining, being nominated for five Academy Awards and winning two.

Set just before the Civil War, the story follows Django (Jamie Fox), a slave bought from a chain gang by the charismatic and mysterious Dr. King Schultz (Bastard(the 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 his help, Schultz gives Django his freedom and agrees to help save his wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), from the monstrous slaver Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his servant Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson).

Like Tarantino, 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 upon its Christmas Day release and became Tarantino’s highest-grossing film. It currently has an 87% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which seems way too low to me.

Django unleashed

Release date

December 25, 2012

Runtime

165 minutes

Director

Quentin Tarantino

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Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Are you planning to play hooky this week? Why not use this much-loved John Hughes classic as a template for an epic day of cruising around in a sports car, carving your way through a fancy restaurant and entertaining hundreds of people with a song or two atop a float? For what? Because life moves pretty quickly. And if you don’t stop and look around every once in a while, you might miss it.

Who said these inspiring words, you ask? Ferris Bueller, that’s who. In case you managed to get this far in life without seeing Ferris Bueller’s Day Offit’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 Shermer High and spend time with his girlfriend, Sloane (Mia Sara), and his best friend, Cameron (Alan Ruck). Ferris tricks his gullible parents into thinking he’s sick, and after convincing a sickly Cameron to “borrow” his father’s priceless Ferrari and kicking 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 so does his jealous older sister Jeanie (Jennifer Grey), who clashes in a hilarious coincidence. This is one of Hughes’ greatest triumphs that you should definitely see if you haven’t and rewatch if you have.

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