What to watch July 28, 2023: Movie awards contenders

Matthew Jacobs
·3 min read
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Now that everyone’s Barbenheimer hangovers are wearing off, can we interest you in a movie that’s about a popular toy and a hubristic inventor? The centerpiece of this week’s streaming debuts doesn’t reach the heights of “Barbie” or “Oppenheimer,” but it does offer a juicy look at one of the 1990s’ biggest cultural crazes. 

The contender to watch this week: “The Beanie Bubble“

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Beanie Babies weren’t just another toy fad. They were an economic flashpoint and a cultural phenomenon with far more backstage melodrama than the casual collector might realize. “The Beanie Bubble,” an adaptation of Zac Bissonnette‘s 2015 book of the same name that stars Zach Galifianakis, Elizabeth Banks, Sarah Snook, and Geraldine Viswanathan, unpeels the layers behind the famous stuffed animals and the mercurial man who conceptualized them. Following a small theatrical bow, the movie is now streaming on Apple TV+. 

Other contenders:

  • “War Pony”: Riley Keough co-directed this drama with her friend Gina Gammell, building the story alongside two extras she befriended while making 2016’s “American Honey.” What resulted is the tender story of two young Lakota men (Jojo Bapteise Whiting and LaDainian Crazy Thunder) coming of age on a South Dakota reservation. After premiering at Cannes last year, “War Pony” is getting a simultaneous theatrical and VOD release. 

  • “Knock at the Cabin“: Audiences and critics were split on “Cabin,” as they tend to be with any M. Night Shyamalan flick. Here, he adapted Paul Tremblay‘s novel “The Cabin at the End of the World,” in which a vacationing couple (Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge) are held captive as four ostensible prophets show up insisting the apocalypse is nigh. The movie has been added to Prime Video’s library. 

  • “Close to Vermeer”: The enigmatic Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, best known for “Girl with a Pearl Earring.” gets an overdue documentary thanks to director Suzanne Raes (“Two Men”). Rent it on VOD. 

  • “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts“: Somehow this franchise is still going. The first three “Transformers” installments nabbed Oscar nominations for their sound and visual effects, so maybe there’s hope for “Rise of the Beasts” despite its lukewarm grosses. Stream it on Paramount+ and decide for yourself. 

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