The 3 Best Paramount+ Movies to Watch This Week, September 28–October 4
Paramount+ offers a sharply varied movie lineup this week, from a ruthless oil epic and a dark con-artist drama to a gloriously painful Jackass farewell.
Paramount+ has a particularly eclectic group of movies to explore this week. The three standouts move from the grand, punishing ambition of an American oil baron to the uneasy family dynamics of professional con artists, before ending with a film built around bruises, bad decisions, and the enduring appeal of watching grown adults hurt themselves for entertainment.
That variety is the real strength of this week’s selection. These are not three interchangeable action films or a collection built around one narrow genre. Instead, they offer three very different kinds of movie-night energy: a serious historical drama for viewers who want something demanding, a stylish crime story for those who prefer morally slippery characters, and a gleefully chaotic comedy for anyone looking to switch off their critical faculties and laugh at spectacularly ill-advised stunts.
The first recommendation is There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson’s imposing drama about power, greed, and the creation of an oil empire. Daniel Day-Lewis plays Daniel Plainview, a prospector whose business instincts and relentless will carry him from modest beginnings toward extraordinary wealth. The film is often described as an oil story, but that label only captures its setting. At its core, it is a portrait of a man who treats every human relationship as another transaction.
Plainview is one of modern cinema’s most unforgettable figures because the character is not simply presented as a conventional villain. He is intelligent, disciplined, persuasive, and capable of recognizing opportunities that others miss. Those qualities help him succeed, but they also become increasingly inseparable from his cruelty. Every victory seems to make him more isolated, and every new rival gives him another reason to turn business competition into a personal war.
Day-Lewis’s performance gives the movie its center of gravity. Plainview’s booming confidence can fill a room, yet the character is just as revealing when he falls silent. His suspicion, resentment, and hunger for control often surface in pauses and glances before they become open threats. The result is a performance that feels both theatrical and unsettlingly intimate. Plainview does not merely want money; he wants to dominate the people and institutions around him.
Anderson’s direction makes the story feel larger than its individual confrontations. The film’s landscapes are vast, but they do not suggest freedom for long. The dry terrain, drilling equipment, and growing industrial settlements form a world being reshaped by ambition. Wealth brings movement and expansion, yet the atmosphere remains harsh and claustrophobic. The more Plainview acquires, the less the surrounding world feels like a place he can comfortably inhabit.
Religion and business also collide throughout the film, particularly through Plainview’s relationship with Eli Sunday, played by Paul Dano. Their rivalry gives the story one of its most memorable tensions. Both men understand the value of performance, public confidence, and influence. Their methods are different, but each wants authority over the community and each resents the other’s ability to command attention. Their encounters are charged because neither side is willing to accept a subordinate position.
There Will Be Blood is not a casual background movie. Its length, deliberate pacing, and severe mood ask viewers to pay attention. The reward is a film that grows more powerful as its patterns become clear. It examines how ambition can become a substitute for identity and how success, once treated as proof of moral superiority, can leave a person with nothing except the need to win again.
Viewers looking for something less monumental but equally interested in deception can turn to The Grifters. Stephen Frears’s crime drama follows people who make their living by manipulating strangers, but its most compelling subject is not the mechanics of a scam. It is the poisonous bond between a family whose members understand one another too well and trust one another far too little.
The film centers on Roy Dillon, a small-time con artist whose schemes are modest compared with the dangerous plans surrounding him. His mother, Lilly, is an experienced grifter with a history of survival through deception. Roy’s girlfriend, Myra, is also deeply involved in the criminal world. When these three lives intersect, affection and suspicion become impossible to separate. Each person knows how easily a gesture can be staged, a promise can be broken, or a relationship can be used as leverage.
That family connection makes the movie more unsettling than a standard caper. In many crime stories, the central question is whether a scheme will succeed. The Grifters is more interested in whether anyone in this world is capable of an honest emotional exchange. Roy, Lilly, and Myra are all experts at reading weakness, but their familiarity with manipulation leaves them vulnerable to one another. The people closest to them are also the people best positioned to cause lasting damage.
The movie’s tone is stylish without becoming glamorous. Its characters may move through hotels, bars, apartments, and polished public spaces, but the atmosphere is never comfortable. Every room seems to contain a hidden calculation. A conversation can change direction in an instant, and a seemingly ordinary decision can reveal that someone has been planning several moves ahead. The tension comes not only from danger but from the knowledge that trust is almost impossible in a world built on performance.
Roy provides the audience’s closest connection to the story, though he is hardly an innocent. He knows how to deceive people and has built his life around small victories. At the same time, he appears less emotionally armored than Lilly or Myra. That difference creates the film’s central vulnerability. Roy may understand the rules of a con, but he is less prepared for the consequences of becoming the object of someone else’s calculation.
The performances give the film its sharp edge. The characters are not reduced to simple criminals who deserve whatever happens to them. Their choices are destructive, but their history and emotional dependence make them recognizable. The family dynamic is especially compelling because love and exploitation coexist in nearly every interaction. A warning can sound like a threat, a gift can function as a bribe, and concern can conceal an attempt to gain control.
The Grifters is a strong choice for viewers who enjoy crime movies that leave room for discomfort. It does not offer the reassuring structure of a clean heist or a straightforward battle between good and evil. Instead, it asks what happens when deception becomes a person’s primary language. By the time the stakes rise, the movie has made clear that the most dangerous con may be the belief that family ties automatically create loyalty.
For a dramatically different experience, the third selection is Jackass Forever, a reunion with the performers who turned reckless stunts, elaborate pranks, and physical punishment into a distinctive form of pop-culture comedy. The movie functions as another round of the familiar Jackass formula, but it also carries the feeling of a farewell celebration. The performers know exactly what audiences came to see, and they deliver it with the mixture of enthusiasm and disbelief that has always defined the series.
The appeal of Jackass has never depended on complicated plotting. The basic premise is remarkably direct: a group of friends and collaborators invent increasingly dangerous, embarrassing, or painful ways to entertain one another and the audience. What makes the results work is the chemistry among the performers. Their laughter, fear, arguments, and immediate regret are as important as the stunts themselves. The audience is not watching polished superheroes; it is watching recognizable people make catastrophically poor decisions.
Jackass Forever embraces that spirit while introducing new participants to the group. Their presence helps refresh the format without changing its identity. The veterans bring years of experience and a willingness to escalate, while the newer faces provide a different kind of unpredictability. Some of the funniest moments come from seeing how quickly confidence disappears once a stunt becomes real.
The film also understands that the humor depends on timing and camaraderie rather than pain alone. A stunt may look outrageous, but the surrounding reactions often provide the punchline. Someone’s nervous preparation, another performer’s attempt to offer encouragement, or the sudden realization that a plan has gone badly wrong can turn a simple gag into a full comic scene. The physical danger is part of the spectacle, but the group’s shared personality is what makes the movie watchable.
There is a nostalgic quality to the film as well. The performers are older, and that reality becomes part of the comedy rather than something the movie tries to hide. Their bodies do not recover as easily, their caution sometimes arrives a moment too late, and the consequences of each stunt can feel more immediate. That gives the movie a slightly bittersweet edge beneath the noise. It remains committed to absurdity while acknowledging that this particular kind of chaos cannot continue forever.
For anyone unfamiliar with the series, the movie is best approached as an ensemble stunt comedy rather than a conventional narrative feature. There is no traditional adventure to follow and no carefully constructed character arc leading to a neat conclusion. The pleasure comes from the rhythm: an outrageous setup, a moment of hesitation, a burst of action, and the inevitable aftermath. It is episodic, loud, and intentionally excessive.
These three movies make a useful mini-marathon because each offers a completely different definition of entertainment. There Will Be Blood is severe and absorbing, built around one of cinema’s great portraits of ambition turned malignant. The Grifters is tense and morally tangled, using a criminal family to explore the impossibility of trust. Jackass Forever is a deliberately foolish celebration of friendship, risk, and the comic value of immediate regret.
If you want a serious film that can dominate the rest of your evening, start with Anderson’s oil epic. If you prefer a compact crime story filled with suspicion and emotional traps, choose The Grifters. And if the week calls for something far less solemn, Jackass Forever offers a loud, painful, and surprisingly affectionate final burst of mayhem. Together, they show off the range of Paramount+’s movie offering this week without requiring viewers to settle into the same mood three nights in a row.