The Dog Stars holds a 6.9 rating from 7 votes, and that second number is the one to notice: seven people is not a verdict, it is the sound of a film that has barely reached an audience yet. What the 6.9 does not tell you is whether this post pandemic survival story works, so the useful figure is the runtime instead. At 119 minutes, it is a single sitting commitment, and everything below is a comparison against the other titles competing for that same evening.
The premise is spare: after a pandemic has ravaged the world's population, a man lives alone in a Colorado airplane hangar with his dog and a dour gunman he has befriended, until a mysterious transmission comes through the radio while he is flying his old Cessna and sets off a hunt for the source of the sound. It is filed as science fiction, adventure and thriller, directed by Ridley Scott from a screenplay by Mark L. Smith, with Jacob Elordi as Hig, Margaret Qualley as Cima, Josh Brolin as Bangley and Guy Pearce as Pops. Choose it if you want quiet, wide open dread rather than incident.
If you want the sure thing instead
House of the Dragon is the strongest reputation in this group by a distance, at 8.4 from 7,047 votes across 3 seasons. That combination is the opposite of the hero title's problem: a large enough sample that the score means something, and enough episodes that a good night can turn into a month. The Targaryen dynasty sits at the apex of its power with more than 15 dragons under its yoke, and the slow fall begins when King Viserys breaks a century of tradition by naming his daughter Rhaenyra his heir. Matt Smith plays Prince Daemon Targaryen, Emma D'Arcy plays Rhaenyra and Olivia Cooke plays Queen Alicent Hightower. Pick it when you want succession politics with scale, and accept that you are starting a long relationship.
The Simpsons is the other established option, an 8 from 10,962 votes over 38 seasons. Almost nobody watches it in order, which is the point: the Springfield family sitcom is built for the night you want twenty two minutes and no plot obligations, and its satirical take on politics, media and American life still gives the comedy something to push against. Voice work from Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright and Yeardley Smith carries most of the town.
