Weekend Watch: Only Murders in the Building & The Guilty

What do you feel like watching this weekend? A funny ten-episode New York mystery series? Or a gritty and claustrophobic cop thriller that will be over in 90 minutes? Either way, I’ve got you covered.

Only Murders in the Building: This show stars Martin Short, Steve Martin, and Selena Gomez as three residents of a swanky apartment building on the Upper West Side. When a resident named Tim Kono is found shot in his apartment, our three leads band together as an unlikely trio to investigate. And they also start making a true crime podcast to broadcast their investigation to the world in real-time, which means that as the series progresses, they start accumulating a fan base, and further complications ensue.

This show is my jam for three reasons: I love mysteries, I love satire, and I love New York. And this show hits all those elements and knocks them out of the park. Created by Steve Martin and John Hoffman, the show is well-written and hilarious, mining every possible situation for comedy gold as well as satirizing all the tropes of true-crime podcasts. The mystery of “who killed Tim Kono?” is truly engaging and over the course of ten episodes, you will encounter numerous red herrings (I won’t spoil, but a famous musician makes a cameo at the end of Episode 3 and it made me LOL), and many twists and turns. And the show is filled with New York banter (the opening credits look like they were pulled straight off a New Yorker cover) and a lot of jokes about how terrible Long Island is.

This is exactly the kind of light and breezy yet still compelling show that makes for a perfect weekend binge. It was great for weekly viewing, with my friends and I trading theories about what we thought would happen next, but now you can treat yourself to all of it in one fell swoop. The actors are wonderful, and while we all know that Short and Martin have great rapport after years of working with each other, it was fun to see how well Gomez fit in as the young millennial who still got along well with these two weird older men. So settle in on the couch and get started. I promise you won't regret it.

The Guilty: First off, if you are mad at the police and the status of policing in America in general, this may not be the movie for you. But if you want to watch Jake Gyllenhaal on the phone for 90 minutes acting his heart out, this might be your jam. Directed by Antoine Fuqua and adapted from the original Danish screenplay by Nic Pizzolatto (both men who are associated with movies and TV shows about problematic cops), the movie follows one day in the life of LAPD officer, Joe Baylor (Gyllenhaal). He is a cop who has been relegated to working as a 911 operator, for reasons that will slowly be revealed over the course of the movie. We see him deal with various 911 calls at the beginning, some of which are benign, others a bit more serious, and he either handles them quickly and flippantly, or gets annoyed and judgy. There’s a lot of “you put yourself in this dangerous situation by taking drugs, how dumb are you” energy, and overall, he does not seem like the kind of guy I would want to be relying on in a crisis.

However, he then gets a call from a frightened woman, and after initially thinking it’s a wrong number, he realizes this woman has dialed 911 because she has been kidnapped and needs him to save her. What follows is a tense thriller where Joe calls in every favor he can from his colleagues, engages in some questionable policing, and tries to coach this woman to safety. There’s a third act twist that is particularly amazing, though I kind of anticipated it from the jump, so I’m curious if other people did too. Let me know in the comments if you end up watching it!

This is a good movie if you want to watch a good actor put on an acting showcase. It was filmed during the pandemic, so there’s a particularly claustrophobic feel to the film as it is mostly centered on Gyllenhaal sitting in a room yelling on the phone. The character is complex and mostly impossible to root for, but the story is propulsive and compelling and has a satisfying resolution (I would argue almost too satisfying, as though it’s trying to make up for just how dark it is all the way through). Also, the voice cast is a who’s who of talent, but I was so swept up in the story that I didn’t even try to puzzle out who was doing all the talking until I got to the closing credits. So give it a try. It might be a lot to take in, but it might also surprise you. 

Bonus recommendation: The Guilty reminded me a great deal of the movie Locke, starring Tom Hardy, so if you are turned off by the idea of watching a cop movie, might I suggest you watch that instead? Hardy is great, and there's a lot of drama but with a soothing Welsh accent, so you may enjoy it a lot more!