Weekend Watch List: A Foot Race, Lesbians In Space, and Ruffalo Is On The Case

Every week, we take a look at what’s hitting cinemas and streaming to bring you our top picks.

Our number one pick this week is The Long Walk, and by a pretty clear margin, too – read our review here, and check out our interview with star Mark Hamill here. But, of course, relentlessly bleak dystopian dramas aren’t for everyone, so scroll on for some fun counter-programming too.

In Cinemas

The Long Walk

Francis Lawrence fiiiiinally brings Stephen King‘s grim Vietnam War allegory to the screen, as Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, and more compete in a last-man-standing endurance march where the price of failure is a bullet to the head. The story dates from King’s angry young man period, so if you’re in the mood for something unrelentingly bleak this weekend (and we frequently are), look no further.

Lesbian Space Princess

Having won over festival audiences for the past year, this winning Australian animated feature from Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese is getting a wide release this week. Socially anxious pace princess Saira heads off on a galaxy-spanning quest to save her bounty hunter ex-girlfriend Kiki, a bounty hunter, from Straight White Maliens, joined by runaway gay-pop idol, Willow. Charming, funny, and queer as hell. How can you not love a film where Richard Roxburgh voices a character named Problematic Ship?

Splitsville

After his wife Ashley (Adria Arjona) asks for a divorce, schlubby everydude Carey (co-writer Kyle Marvin) is shocked to discover that the secret to their friends’ (Dakota Johnson and director and co-writer Michael Angelo Covino) successful marriage is sleeping with other people. What follows is an amiable “modern” rom-com that winds up in a far more conservative place than its subject suggests. Still, it’s getting rave reviews from critics who I have to assume don’t know any actual poly people.

Streaming

The Paper

Spin-off from The Office that applies the same documentary style to yet another mundane business, dying small town newspaper, The Toledo Truth-Teller. The Paper takes a few episodes to find its feet and relies on a few too many familiar beats, but the strong cast (Domhnall Gleeson and Chelsea Frei in particular) make it work. On Binge.

Eenie Meanie

Samara Weaving is a former getaway driver who has to take on the fabled One Last Job to save her dirtbag ex-boyfriend from the quite understandable wrath of Andy Garcia’s organised crime boss. Eenie Meanie vibes like a late ’90s post-Tarantino crime caper, but writer and director Shawn Simmons digs deeper to talk about generational trauma and co-dependency, which puts this a cut above the usual fare. On Disney+.

Task

Mark Ruffalo heads up an FBI task force trying to put a stop to a string of violent home invasions in this new crime miniseries from Brad Inglesby, who also gave us Mare Of Easttown. Like that series, this one is also set in blue collar Pennsylvania, so expect plenty of class issues along with your gritty procedural drama. On HBO Max.