What to watch this weekend April 14, 2023: Movie awards contenders

Matthew Jacobs
Updated ·3 min read
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Two very different bears — one going berserk on drugs and another a mere superstition — hit streaming this week. It’s a slow month for digital premieres, but the best of this week’s offerings span a variety of moods and genres. You’ll also find a pair of documentaries about beloved cultural figures worth watching. 

The contender to watch this week: “Cocaine Bear“

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Elizabeth Banks paraded her movie’s eponymous terrorizer onto this year’s Oscar stage, so who’s to say she couldn’t do it again in 2024? Maybe “Cocaine Bear” can ride its box-office success to a Best Visual Effects nomination. It worked for “The Revenant,” but that had Leo and a huge awards-friendly pedigree. Either way, you can watch the likes of Keri Russell and Alden Ehrenreich stave off this hopped-up villain on Peacock.

Other contenders:

  • “No Bears”: New Yorker critic Richard Brody and Los Angeles Times critic Justin Chang called this the best movie of 2022, and it probably would have snagged a Best International Feature Film nomination had Iran submitted it instead of the little-seen “World War III.” But “No Bears” — a philosophically thorny movie about making movies — is critical of the Iranian government, so that was never going to happen. Rent it on VOD now or stream it on The Criterion Channel starting April 18. No cocaine involved. 

  • “Life Itself”: It always does the soul good to spend time in Roger Ebert‘s company, and this lovely Oscar-shortlisted documentary from 2014 dives deep into the life of the most recognizable film critic who’s ever lived. It’s worth two thumbs up, and it’s now streaming on Prime Video.

  • “Personality Crisis: One Night Only”: There aren’t any Oscars in the cards for Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi‘s documentary about New York Dolls frontman David Johansen, who also performed under the pseudonym Buster Poindexter and played the Ghost of Christmas Past in 1988’s “Scrooged.” The film premieres on Showtime, but c’mon: It’s Martin Scorsese.

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