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Weekend Watch is here for you. Every Friday we’re going to recommend the best of what’s new to rent on VOD or stream for free. It’s your weekend; allow us to make it better.
What to Stream This Weekend
Movie: Strange Weather
Director: Katherine Dieckmann
Starring: Holly Hunter, Carrie Coon
Available on: Amazon Video and iTunes
Holly Hunter is an actress of uncommon talent, one who can sell a character who is both strong and unhinged at once, and in Strange Weather, she plays just that kind of character. Darcy Baylor is a Georgia woman who’s only a few years removed from the suicide death of her twentysomething son, Walker. When Darcy has a chance encounter with an old friend of her son’s, followed by the stray mention of a restaurant chain that sounds suspiciously like a business idea he had once had, Darcy finds something she can obsess on. And so begins a single-minded odyssey down a rabbit hole of grief and retribution and regret and anger, and Hunter is the actress you want on your roster when it comes to a part like this.
Darcy gets it into her head that the answers to all the questions she has about her son’t death can be found it she tracks down Mark, the college friend of Walker’s who’s made millions off of a hot dog restaurant chain that sounds exactly like Walker’s old business plan. Darcy’s anger is unhinged, as hard as she tries to make herself sound perfectly rational, and so when she asks her best friend Byrd (Carrie Coon) to accompany her, Byrd obliges as much out of a sense of obligation to keep everybody safe as anything else. And so what we end up with, at least for a time, is a road trip movie starring Holly Hunter and Carrie Coon, and if you’re telling me that prospect doesn’t put at least a little thrill in your heart, well, I’m just going to have to question whether you have a heart to begin with.
The best parts of Strange Weather by far are when Hunter and Coon are together, sort of warily circling each other. They’re best friends, but on this particular subject — Darcy’s maniacal zeal to avenge Walker’s death — they don’t trust each other. Byrd wants to prevent Darcy from doing anything violent; Darcy resents that Byrd isn’t onboard with her on her mission. But the truth is, Darcy doesn’t even seem to know what she wants out of this confrontation with Mark. She says she’s not out to hurt anyone, but she’s brought a loaded gun with her. She says she’s not after money, but she’s determined to prove that Mark stole Walker’s business idea. There’s a nagging undercurrent here where Darcy thinks she’s going to be able to unlock some kind of explanation for Walker’s suicide. Some kind of combination lock that can be solved and opened. Hunter’s performance keeps that hope alive in her eyes. And indeed, there are revelations to be had along the way to New Orleans; there’s probably more plot than the film needs, considering it’s at its best when it’s just two women in a car or a hotel room forcing each other to come to terms with some things.
Carrie Coon proves once again that she’s a phenomenal talent who is currently being severely under-utilized in the Hollywood ecosystem. She proved it Gone Girl and more than a few times on The Leftovers. Her performance as Byrd is absent a lot of the steeliness of those other two roles, but her relative vulnerability snap-fits to Hunter’s more desperate strength like a pair of puzzle pieces. Strange Weather suffers some when it moves away from those puzzle pieces and into a more overt mystery. But if you’re looking for a film that gives Holly Hunter the space she needs to create a full and complicated character, and for Carrie Coon to complement her at every turn, give this one a look.
