If you’re trying to squeeze a few more movies into the weird in-between stretch of the month/year we find ourselves in right now, you’ve come to the right place. I regularly dig through the huge library of movies on Paramount+, and as we wait for the new swath of titles for January 2026 to arrive, below are three excellent movies to watch this week.
For the week of December 29 to January 4, I’m recommending a stark and touching documentary about one of heavy metal’s pioneering icons, a fantastic true story of a young criminal on the run, and one of Quentin Tarantino’s best.
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Ozzy: No Escape From Now
When you think of Ozzy Osbourne, you likely picture the Prince of Darkness biting the heads of bats while on stage with his legendary band Black Sabbath. Or you think of the utterly insane life of fame, fortune, drug abuse, reality TV shows, and excess he lived over his 76 years on Earth. In Tania Alexander’s documentary, Ozzy: No Escape from Now on Paramount+, however, we see Ozzy like we never have before—a living legend battling against time and the toll that his extraordinary life (and some unfortunate medical mishaps) has taken on his health.
“The things about getting older: I used to take pills for fun, now I take them to stay alive,” Ozzy shares in the doc, in which we are granted all-access and intimate interviews with Ozzy, his wife Sharon, and their children Kelly, Jack, and Aimee. No Escape From Now follows the ups and downs of Ozzy’s life after his well-publicized fall in 2019, and his Parkinson’s diagnosis, which derailed his ability to do many things, most importantly, tour. It’s a rollercoaster ride as we witness a man reckoning with his own mortality and identity, but one with an overwhelming thread shining through—his passion, love, and need to make art, perform, and not let his fans down.
Ozzy features interviews with some of the music industry’s biggest stars—from Sabbath bandmate Tony Iommi and The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ drummer Chad Smith to Billy Idol, Jack Black, Tom Morello, and more—who worship Ozzy for the influence he’s had on their careers. Many of them also played a huge part in helping Ozzy get on stage for performances such as his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, right up to Black Sabbath’s huge “Back to the Beginning” final show in Birmingham in July 2025, where he performed from an enormous bat-adorned throne. The music icon died 17 days later.
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Catch Me if You Can
“Do you concur?” It’s the scene in Steven Spielberg’s 2002 true-crime drama, Catch Me If You Can, that’s stuck with me to this day. In it, the movie’s protagonist, 17-year-old con artist Frank Abagnale Jr., is posing as a doctor in a hospital when he’s brought before a young boy with a mangled, bloody leg and asked to actually do, you know, doctor things. Abagnale, played to perfection by a then 27-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio, managed to talk his way out of the situation, as he does many times throughout this adventure docudrama.
Based on the stunning real-life memoir of the same name by Abagnale, Catch Me If You Can follows the troubled young man as he launches into a life as a master check forger in the 1960s. His spree of excess and high life spans the globe, as he poses as a Pan-Am airline pilot, a lawyer, and, yes, a doctor, under various aliases. Hot on his trail, though, is determined FBI agent Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks), who’s always one step behind. While on the hunt, Carl develops a fatherly bond with Frank, who longs for the approval of his own dad, superbly played by Christopher Walken, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance.
Catch Me If You Can is one of Spielberg’s best, and features standout performances from a long list of actors earlier in their careers, including Amy Adams, Elizabeth Banks, and Jennifer Garner. It’s period drama costume design and accurate sets really draw you into the time, making for an immersive film worthy of its 96% freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Catch Me If You Can
- Release Date
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December 25, 2002
- Runtime
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141 Minutes
- Director
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Steven Spielberg
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Inglourious Basterds
Call me obsessive compulsive, but the holiday/New Year’s season isn’t complete unless I watch two movies (well, four in total): the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy (currently streaming on HBO Max), and Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. I know, it’s weird (especially the latter), but Tarantino’s sixth feature is so full of excellent performances from some of my favorite actors, juicy characters, brutal violence, and a delicious revisionist twist on history that I started coming back to it every year. It’s like a warm blanket at this point.
If you haven’t seen it, this is the year. Inglourious Basterds is an R-rated and darkly comedic WWII drama about a vicious band of eight Jewish Americans, known as The Basterds, who are deployed behind enemy lines in German-occupied France “to do one thang and one thang only: killing Nazis,” says Basterds southern leader, Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt, in my favorite performance of his). As the Basterds work their magic across France, several other storylines are set to converge. In Paris, cinema owner Shoshana Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) plots her revenge against terrifying SS “Jew Hunter” Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz in his Oscar-winning role), while also planning a gala movie premiere at her theater in which every major player in the Nazi’s leadership regime will be attending. Sounds like the perfect venue for The Basterds to do their thing, no?
With additional memorable performances from Diane Kruger, Michael Fassbender, Eli Roth, B.J. Novak, Daniel Brühl, and Mike Myers, Inglourious Basterds is infinitely watchable, with Tarantino-level dialogue you won’t soon forget, and a supremely satisfying climax.
If you’re looking for a good movie to get into this week to bridge the gaps during these weird in-between days at the end of the year, don’t count Paramount+ out.
- Subscription with ads
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Yes, $8/month
- Simultaneous streams
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If you enjoy CBS offerings, you’ll want to subscribe to Paramount+. You get access to hit shows like Star Trek and Yellowstone, as well as a variety of SHOWTIME content.
