If you’re a Paramount+ subscriber swiping through its library of movies for something good to watch this week, then you’re in luck. Every week, I do a bunch of that scrolling for you to try and pull some of the best films from its roster of critical darlings, blockbusters, and hidden gems.
This week’s trio of movies includes one of the most beloved SNL-character-based movie spinoffs ever, a gritty and dusty Western classic for those seeking old Hollywood charm, and an epic Trek flick.
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Wayne’s World
Exsqueeze me? Baking powder? Excellent.
To this day, I can’t listen to Bohemian Rhapsody in a car without banging my head at that epic climax part—don’t pretend you don’t know it. And because of Wayne’s World, “Exsqueeze me? Baking powder?” is still a part of my regular vocabulary. Born out of Mike Myers’ and Dana Carvey’s wildly popular recurring sketch on Saturday Night Live in the ’90s, Wayne’s World, the movie, was a box office juggernaut and remains one of the best SNL-to-big-screen adaptations ever.
Wayne Campbell (Myers) and Garth Algar (Carvey) are just two metalhead slackers from Aurora, Illinois, who broadcast a weekly cable-access show from their basement, where they crack jokes, play guitar, and are generally stupid. When sleazy TV executive Benjamin Oliver (Rob Lowe) commercializes the show and brings it to big-time TV, Wayne and Garth rail against the sell-out corporate gloss the studio puts on it, and take it back.
Wayne’s World is beautifully nostalgic time well spent, and is full of endlessly quotable one-liners, signature fourth-wall breaks, a hilarious triple-ending (the Scooby-Doo ending is my favorite), and Tia Carrere. Need I say more?
Wayne’s World
Release Date
February 14, 1992
Runtime
94 minutes
Director
Penelope Spheeris
Writers
Mike Myers, Bonnie Turner, Terry Turner
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The Sons of Katie Elder
A classic Western revenge epic starring the legendary John Wayne
If you’re looking for a dusty classic, then 1965’s The Sons of Katie Elder still holds up as one of the best gritty, Western revenge stories ever, and stars the epitome of the genre, John Wayne, who made his big comeback with this film after losing a lung to cancer. It’s a beacon of old-school Hollywood filmmaking that still holds up today.
The premise is beautiful in its simplicity: The good-for-nothing Elder brothers—John, an infamous gunslinger (Wayne), Tom, a washed-up gambler (Rat Pack member Dean Martin), hardware merchant Matt (Earl Holliman), and youngest son Bud (Michael Anderson, Jr.)—return after years to their hometown of Clearwater, Texas, to attend their mother’s funeral. But the boys find that the town has turned hostile, and the family ranch has been swindled in a dodgy card game by ambitious entrepreneur Morgan Hastings (James Gregory), after which their father was suspiciously murdered.
The Elder boys are out for vengeance, setting the stage for some classic six-shooter payback. The Sons of Katie Elder is widely considered one of the genre-defining movies of the genre, with some of the best on-screen chemistry (between Wayne and Martin) you’ll ever see. It’s no wonder the classic has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
The Sons of Katie Elder
Release Date
July 14, 1965
Runtime
122 Minutes
Director
Henry Hathaway
Writers
William H. Wright, Allan Weiss, Harry Essex, Talbot Jennings
Resistance is futile
We’re big fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation at How-To Geek. The epic, 18-time Emmy-winning series following the adventures of Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and the crew of the USS Enterprise ran for seven seasons and redefined Gene Roddenberry’s franchise forever.
When the series ended in 1994, it made the transition to the big screen with 1994’s Star Trek Generations, which was a bit of a flop critically. Luckily, things took a turn for the better two years later with Star Trek: First Contact, a movie that picked up on one of the darkest and most compelling of TNG‘s storylines, “The Best of Both Worlds,” in which Picard was assimilated by the hive-minded cyborg Borg collective. First Contact picks up years after those events, as Picard still struggles psychologically with the ordeal. The Borg returns and has traveled back in time to Earth to stop humanity from making their pivotal first contact with alien life, which leaps us forward to the stars. Picard and crew must follow them back to stop them. Resistance is futile.
It’s one of those perfect Trek time-travel premises that the show and past motion pictures did so well, and features an all-star cast of TNG‘s regulars. Directed by Jonathan Frakes, First Contact has a 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Star Trek: First Contact
Release Date
November 22, 1996
Director
Jonathan Frakes
Writers
Gene Roddenberry, Rick Berman, Brannon Braga, Ronald D. Moore
Franchise(s)
Star Trek
Paramount+ is the home of a ton of great TV series and movies from Paramount, CBS, Showtime, and more, including all things Star Trek—from Discovery to Strange New Worlds to the original series and all the movies—as well as Taylor Sheridan’s impressive roster of shows like Yellowstone and the newcomers like The Madison and Marshalls.
Subscription with ads
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.
