What to Watch on TV this Weekend: Chloe's Guide

Aug. 12-14, 2016

Here are a few suggestions for what to watch this upcoming weekend.

Revolutionary Road (2008)

Friday, Aug. 12 -Showtime - 4:55 p.m.

More than a decade after first costarring in James Cameron's Titanic in 1997, Kate Winslet and Leonard DiCaprio join forces for the second time in Sam Mendes's Revolutionary Road. Sam Mendes is, perhaps, best known for his Academy Award-winning American Beauty (1999) and the James Bond films, Skyfall (2012) and Spectre (2015). Revolutionary Road, a romantic drama, is based on the 1961 Richard Yates novel of the same name. The film follows a young couple (DiCaprio, Winslet) from Connecticut, navigating through mid-1950s suburbia in the midst of personal struggles. The first time I heard about Revolutionary Road, the film came highly recommended. Whether one is a fan of Sam Mendes's work or of the convincing, on-screen intimacy of a Winslet-DiCaprio collaboration, the journey through Revolutionary Road is one worth taking.

Mulholland Drive (2001)

Saturday, Aug. 13 - Cinemax - 2:10 p.m.

Mulholland Drive, much like other David Lynch works (1977's Eraserhead, 1984's Dune as well as Twin Peaks, which aired from 1990 to 1991), is an acquired taste, brimming with mystifying surrealism and violent elements quintessential of a Lynch production. Mullholland Drive stars Naomi Watts (The Ring, King Kong, Birdman) and Laura Harring (The Punisher) as apparent strangers thrust into each other's lives. Harring's character, Rita, stumbles away from a car accident, sneaking into the apartment in which another woman, Betty (Watts), is staying. It is then that the the plot twists and turns through dizzying narrative and neo-noir aesthetics, stories seemingly unrelated interweaving for an ultimate reveal. Characters' accounts, at first glance, sometimes appear independent of each other, but viewers can feel the itching indication of something hidden just beneath the surface of the plot as it is explored. The general meaning of Mullholland Drive is open to interpretation, with Lynch having declined to offer an explanation as to his intentions behind the story, but this detail only serves as the cherry on top of a deliciously uncanny sundae.

Now You See Me (2013)

Sunday, Aug. 14 - TBS - 10:30 p.m.

What if magic was real?

This is the thought behind Now You See Me, directed by Louis Leterrier (Transporter I and II) — but it's much more than that. The film employs an all-star cast of Mark Ruffalo, Morgan Freeman, Woody Harrelson, Michael Kane and Jesse Eisenberg as well as Mélanie Laurent (Inglourious Basterds), Isla Fisher (The Great Gatsby) and Dave Franco (21 Jump Street, Neighbors), whose characters explore notions of illusion versus reality. Harrelson, Eisenberg, Fisher and Franco play a troupe of illusionists being tracked by the FBI (Ruffalo) and Interpol (Laurent) after pulling off a bank heist during one of their performances. The group's grand displays elude former magician Thaddeus Bradley (Freeman) time and time again despite a dedicated endeavor to debunk the tricks behind other magic acts. The premise seems simple enough, but there is more to the film than meets the eye. Nevertheless, as Eisenberg's dramatis persona does attest, the closer one looks, the less one sees.

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