What to watch this weekend Aug. 2, 2024: Movie awards contenders
We’ll be arguing about whether “Challengers” is an Academy Awards contender up until the nominations are announced in January. Is Zendaya a lock for a Best Actress nomination? If Josh O’Connor and/or Mike Faist get nominated, will they be in lead or supporting? Is this even an Oscars movie? The most likely nominee is Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for Best Original Score. They’ve won two times before (for “The Social Network” and “Soul”), and their pounding, attention-grabbing electronic score is one of the film’s most distinctive elements.
Luca Guadagnino’s sexy, memeworthy tennis drama was one of the most talked-about movies of the spring. It’s about the romantic complications of tennis pros Tashi (Zendaya), Art (Faist), and Patrick (O’Connor), who are all in love with each other and all kind of hate each other. It’s the most fun adult drama of the year. It’s available to stream on MGM+, a service you probably don’t have. But you can sign up for a free trial through your Amazon Prime Video account, which you probably do have. It will also be on Prime Video eventually.
Here are some other movies to stream this weekend:
“The Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhaka Sherpa”: People are amazing. The woman working at Whole Foods might be the world’s greatest female mountain climber. That’s the true story told in this documentary, which tells the extraordinary true story of Lhaka Sherpa, a Nepali woman who has climbed Mount Everest ten times, more than any other woman, and has overcome poverty, domestic violence, and a lack of support from the mountaineering industry to do it, all while working blue-collar day jobs to support her family. The film, from Academy Award-nominated director Lucy Walker, is now streaming on Netflix.
“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes”: The latest chapter in the consistently Visual Effects-nominated “Apes” reboot series follows a chimpanzee (Owen Teague) and a human (Freya Allen) on a journey to save their respective communities that forces them to work together and learn that apes and humans aren’t so different after all. The hit sci-fi drama, which is one of the highest-grossing movies of the year so far, is now available on Hulu.
“Janet Planet”: “Mare of Easttown” Emmy winner Julianne Nicholson stars in this intimate indie drama from A24 as Janet, a hippie who moves back to her small Massachusetts hometown with her anxious 11-year-old daughter Lacy (Zoe Ziegeler) in the hopes that they can both find some peace of mind. “Janet Planet” won’t be a major awards contender — though Nicholson and Ziegler both earned rave reviews for their performances — but it marks the arrival of a potential future contender in writer-director Annie Baker, a Pulitzer-winning playwright making her feature debut. It’s available for rent or purchase on VOD.
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