What to watch this weekend, September 6, 2024: Film awards contenders

Our top pick this week has already won an Oscar: “The Boy and the Heron”, the 2024 winner for Best Animated Filmis now available on Max, where it joins the rest of the streamer Studio Ghibli Collection, alongside classics such as “Spirited Away” and “Princess Mononoke”.

“The Boy and the Heron” comes from an anime legend Hayao Miyazakiand could be the 83-year-old filmmaker's last film. It is an allegorical autobiographical film about a boy named Mahito Maki (voice: Luca Padovan in the English dubbing). He is mourning the death of his mother when a trickster heron (Robert Pattinsonwith an unrecognizable one, you have to hear it to believe it) tells him that he can reunite with her, triggering an unpredictable journey into a spirit realm. It is a thematically rich and beautifully animated film that moves with Miyazaki's inimitable dream logic. The voice cast also includes Christian Bale, Florence Pugh, Mark HamillAnd Willem Dafoeamong many others.

Here are some other movies you can stream this weekend:

“I used to be funny”: Rachel Sennott is a well-known It Girl in New York and on the Internet today, but tomorrow she could win an award. The author and actress of “Bottoms” plays a depressed stand-up comedian in this dramedy who struggles with complicated emotions after the young girl she used to work for as a nanny disappears. It is the debut of the writer and director Ally Pankiw (“Black Mirror: Joan Is Awful”) and establishes Pankiw and Sennott as lanky talents to keep an eye on. The film, which was a hit at SXSW in 2023, will stream on Netflix.

“Rebel Ridge”: This action thriller by screenwriter and director Jeremy Saulnier (“Green Room”) is finally on Netflix. Aaron Pierre (“The Underground Railroad”) as a black Marine veteran who is robbed by corrupt white small-town cops while on his way to get his cousin out of prison. With the law having failed him, he takes the law into his own hands and goes to war with the department, played by a police chief who Don Johnson in “Watchmen” mode. Saulnier is one of the most exciting thriller filmmakers of our time, and it has been too long since he released a film (this one had a problematic production that kept him busy for years).

“Snack Shack”: Next time you hear someone complaining that there are no more R-rated comedies, show them this raunchy coming-of-age comedy on Prime Video, in which two entrepreneurial, darts-playing 14-year-olds brew beer to sell at parties. When they get in trouble for it, they take over the snack bar at the local swimming pool, where they get up to all sorts of mischief in the summer of 1991. One of the boys is played by “The Fabelmans” star Gabriel LaBellealso known as the young Sammy Fabelman, shows a much less healthy side.