Skooby's picks: three movies to stream this weekend

By Jacob Skubish

There are thousands of movies available to stream all the time. This is good, but it’s also overwhelming: when you have that many options, how can you choose just one? Every Friday, I’m presenting you with just three movies available to stream that you should watch to avoid that stress. I’ll hand out different movie recommendations every week.

Heathers

Available on: Netflix

Mean Girls is one of the definitive movies of the century: it revitalized the teen-com, created a new word, and helped teach a generation math. But far fewer people have seen Heathers, a 1989 teen-com which Mean Girls heavily borrows from.

Like Mean Girls, Heathers finds a plucky, friendless outsider trying to join the cool girls’ group at school. But Heathers goes to stranger, more violent places, and it becomes one of the most unique high schools movies of all time in the process. Think Mean Girls with a dash of Donnie Darko. Christian Slater delivers a sneering, campy performance, and Winona Ryder is incredible.

Support the Girls

Available on: Hulu

In Support the Girls, Lisa (Regina Hall) is having one of those days where nothing is going right. Lisa is the manager at Double Whammies, a local Hooters-like sports bar in Texas, and her personal and professional life is coming unraveled all on this single day. The question of the film is how she will handle it.

The answer, it turns out, is with an admirable level of understated resolve. Hall deftly avoids the frazzled-career-woman-who’s-too-busy-working-for-a-personal-life trope. Lisa genuinely loves her employees but always remains in charge, and they love her right back for it. She hides her pain in moments of solitude, but remains upbeat enough to plaster heart stickers all over the restaurant. Lisa is a lot of things: selfish, determined, and just plain tired, but above all else she was one of my favorite characters on screen last year because in the face of bullshit, she finds comfort in spreading the love.

The Graduate

Available on: Netflix

Alongside Annie Hall and When Harry Met Sally…, The Graduate is one of the foundational films of the rom-com genre. The affairs that a recent college graduate (Dustin Hoffman) enters into with both an older woman (Anne Bancroft) and her daughter (Katharine Ross) are bizarre, endearing, and heartbreaking. Two notable reasons to check out this movie: an all-time original soundtrack by Simon & Garfunkel featuring “Mrs. Robinson,” and an all-time ending shot.