You Need to Check Out ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ and More This Weekend

Looking for some stuff to catch up on this weekend? Whether it’s TV, movies, books, or anything in between—VICE has you covered. Read on for our staff recommendations on what to take in during your downtime:

Thor: Ragnarok

Thor: Ragnarok is funny. Yes, there’s tons of world-smashing and mass destruction and rumination on what it means to be a hero, as can be expected from any modern superhero movie—but, also, it’s funny. You know what wasn’t a funny movie? Wonder Woman. Am I saying Thor: Ragnarok is better than Wonder Woman? I don’t know—I definitely liked it more. It’s up to you to decide. But if you’ve been skeptical toward Marvel movies, Thor movies, or Chris Hemsworth (all understandable things to be skeptical of), Thor: Ragnarok just might change your opinions on all of them. Also, it has Jeff Goldblum playing a weird, murderous rich guy who projects himself as a gigantic hologram amid the city he looms over. Pretty good! —Larry Fitzmaurice, Senior Culture Editor, Digital

Yayoi Kusama’s Festival of Life

One of the most celebrated artists in the world opens a show in New York City today, and it is going to be packed. Literally, the header image for the “Plan Your Visit” section of Kusama’s Festival of Life is a picture of people waiting in a big-ass line. Her shows at the Seattle Art Museum and the Broad in Los Angeles have relied on advance reservations to mitigate the massive crowds she draws, but visitors to David Zwirner Gallery in Chelsea will get no such luxuries. A sub-60-second stint in one of Kusama’s famed Infinity Mirror Rooms will cost an up-to-four-hour-long wait outdoors. The nearest bathrooms are in Chelsea Market and upstairs on the High Line. But hey, it’s free—and gold for Instagram. Get more information about Festival of Life here. —Beckett Mufson

Alias Grace

Following the success of Hulu’s Handmaid’s Tale, Netflix is getting into the Margaret Atwood game with its adaptation of her lesser-known novel Alias Grace. Based on a true story, Alias Grace tells the tale of Grace Marks, a 19th-century Canadian housemaid imprisoned, perhaps wrongly, for murder. The only problem is that Grace has no memory of her crime—or so she says. A kindly, quite handsome psychiatrist enters the scene to investigate whether she should be pardoned due to insanity. Early reviews are pretty positive, and this one seems likely to be a hit with true-crime and historical-drama fans alike. —Kara Weisenstein

Lady Bird

More than anything, Lady Bird is honest: a portrait of high school just as crushing, hilarious, and complex as the real thing. Whether you want to revisit those days or not, Greta Gerwig’s first solo feature film will take you there—immerse you so fully in prom, hair dye, ditching theater kids for the in-crowd, and what it is to be 17 that you’ll forget, for an impeccably wrought hour and a half, that you ever grew up. Each character is so fleshed out they deserve their own movie. Watching Saoirse Ronan as Lady Bird, alongside co-stars Laurie Metcalf, Timothée Chalamet, and Tracy Letts, bicker, bond, dance, and scream, it’s difficult to believe there’s a difference between the characters these actors play and who they really are. —Drew Schwartz, Junior Staff Writer

Gilbert

Deep dives into what make comedians tick are a dime a dozen these days, but even amid this crowded field, Gilbert shines. An ultra-close look at the personal life of stand-up comedian Gilbert Gottfried, Neil Berkeley’s touching document goes beyond the blue humor and focuses on Gottfried’s little-discussed personal life: from his adorable interactions with his wife and kids to his astoundingly cheap travel habits and heartbreakingly real family ties, little is spared and the documentary is all the better for it. At one point, Gottfried worries aloud that such a close look at the man behind the jokes might make people like him less—but instead, Gilbert further endears its audiences to one of the funniest comics around. —LF

Princess Cyd

Stephen Cone’s Princess Cyd is a movie that I can’t stop thinking about. It’s a funny, smart, and occasionally intimate coming-of-age story that follows 16-year-old Cyd (Jessie Pinnick) as she visits her novelist Aunt Miranda (Rebecca Spence) in Chicago and ends up falling for a barista named Katie (Malic White). It’s a wonderful film about queer sexuality that paints Cyd and Katie’s feelings as very matter-of-fact (when asked what she’s into, Cyd simply responds “everything”), but what also struck me was the warmth between Miranda and her niece. The two are certainly different—Miranda is a famous novelist while Cyd doesn’t really read—but the mutual respect and genuine interest the two have for each other makes for a fascinating, and satisfying, watch. If you’re in NYC, the Museum of the Moving Image will be hosting special screenings this weekend. —Pilot Viruet, Associate Culture Editor

Last Flag Flying

Critics seem to be divided over Richard Linklater’s latest, an adaptation of the 2005 novel of the same name that’s also an unofficial sequel of sorts to the 1973 Hal Ashby film The Last Detail, itself an adaptation of a novel from 1970. (Got all that?) But this tale, concerning a trio of Vietnam vets who reunite to bury one of their own sons who was killed in Iraq, is universal in its evocation of the sorrow and regret that comes with getting older, as well as how crushing and utterly pointless loss can feel. (Given our recent political environment, a film that advocates challenging your country’s actions while still loving the fact that you live in it seems timely as well.) Come for Bryan Cranston, who’s reliable as always—and stay for Steve Carell, who shakes off the Michael Scott stink that’s followed him through film roles over the past few years (The Big Short excepted) and turns in a moving and subtle performance that counts as one of the year’s best. —LF

Colin Furze

I highly recommend this video of British inventor Colin Furze destroying a washing machine with fireworks, homemade explosives, and a brick, all while blasting dirty punk and cackling like a 14-year-old. For those not among the tens of millions who have watched his tutorials of homemade X-Men powers and juiced-up motor toilets, Furze is YouTube star who has built an audience of 5.4 million subscribers by manufacturing mayhem in a tiny shed outside of a UK suburb. His projects range from small joys—shooting his own socks off with a homemade bazooka—to large-scale architectural undertakings like building an apocalypse-proof underground bunker. Trust me when I say the five minutes required to watch him destroy and rebuild an old washing machine until it disintegrates is worth your time. —BM

“2:30am at a 7-11 near Disney World – 1987”

A camcorder was still a conversation starter in 1987, before kids were causing chaos for the Vine. People were eager to participate in the act of recording, and managers would just lean against counters and smoke, rather than kick you out. That’s obviously not the case today, which is why watching old camcorder footage of people hanging out at a Florida 7-11 at 2:30 AM is so intoxicating. The nine-minute video was uploaded to YouTube in 2007—the year the first iPhone came out—and the world we live in now is just as foreign to the first people who commented on it as 1990 seemed back then. Nothing eventful happens, but it’s nice to take a break from the current nightmare we inhabit and visit a simpler world, where people still made contact with one another and Big Gulps cost 69 cents. —Allie Conti, Senior Staff Writer