What to watch this weekend November 8, 2024: Movie awards contenders
Next week we’ll start getting serious awards contenders on streaming when “Emilia Perez” debuts on Netflix. This week, though, it’s a light week. Which is not to say our top pick, coming-of-age comedy “My Old Ass,” isn’t worth watching on Prime Video, because it is — and the film’s young star Maisy Stella received a breakthrough award nomination from the Gotham Awards earlier this month.
Stella stars as Elliott, an 18-year-old who, during a mushroom trip, meets her 39-year-old self, played by Aubrey Plaza. (“I don’t have a gap in my teeth,” young Elliott says. “Wear your retainer,” quips old Elliott, a great way to hand-wave away the fact that Stella and Plaza don’t look alike.) Armed with her older self’s advice — and her phone number, so she can text her follow-up questions — Elliott navigates the excitement and heartbreak of the summer before college. It’s the kind of quirky indie comedy Sundance used to produce in droves. It’s now streaming on Prime Video.
More from GoldDerby
Here are some other movies to stream this weekend:
“Black Cab”: Affable comic actor Nick Frost (“Shaun of the Dead”) takes a sinister turn in this horror movie now streaming on AMC+ and Shudder. He plays a cab driver who picks up a young couple (Synn?ve Karlson and Luke Norris) and won’t let them out of his car. As if that weren’t scary enough, he knows her secret. This looks like one of those movies that starts with a simple horror premise and then keeps building on top of it to end up somewhere even crazier.
“Meet Me Next Christmas”: Holiday movie season on Netflix kicks off with this romantic comedy. Christina Milian stars as a woman who, due to a plot contrivance, needs a ticket to a sold-out Pentatonix Christmas concert so she can reunite with the man (Kofi Siribo) she thinks is the one. But the personal concierge (Kalen Allen) she hires to help her get that elusive ticket is a pretty special guy himself. Which man will she end up with? It obviously won’t win any awards, but Milian is a very likable lead in this type of easy-to-watch movie.
“A Different Man”: Sebastian Stan stars in this A24 psychological thriller/black comedy as a man with neurofibromatosis who undergoes a surgery to reconstruct his face. Then he meets Oswald (Adam Pearson), a confident man with neurofibromatosis who’s everything he’s not, and his mental state deteriorates. Stan won best actor at the Berlin Film Festival for his performance, and this would be our top pick of the week if it were on a subscription streaming service instead of VOD.
Best of GoldDerby
Sign up for Gold Derby's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.