Best awards contender movies to stream this weekend Jan. 10, 2025
We have some suggestions if you’re looking for a movie to watch on streaming this weekend. Our list includes a top pick that’s a current awards contender available for home viewing this week; two other new releases that may or may not be awards contenders; a recommendation for a similar film that would make a nice double feature with the top pick; and a past Academy Award winner worth rewatching at the moment—got all that? Let’s go!
Top pick: Flow
After winning the Golden Globe for Best Animated Film, Flow has gone from a likely Academy Award nominee to a potential Best Animated Feature category winner. And if it also manages to snag a Best International Feature nomination, it would become the first Latvian film to earn an Academy Award bid.
Flow is a dialogue-free adventure about an adorable cat that gets swept away by a tsunami and links up with other animals (a dog, a bird, a lemur, a capybara) on a sailboat to try and return home. It’s sad, funny, and wonderfully imaginative, and made all the more impressive because it was made using the free, open-source graphics software Blender. It announces director-writer-producer-editor-composer Gints Zilbalodis as an animation talent to watch. It’s now available for renting or buying on VOD at platforms like Amazon.
Other picks
Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat
This sprawling historical documentary made entirely of archival footage weaves together the political activities of leading jazz musicians in the 1960s, Nikita Khrushchev’s shoe-banging incident at the UN General Assembly, and the assassination of Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba into a dazzling visual and musical essay on jazz and decolonization during the Cold War. The doc from Johan Grimonprez won many festival awards, including a Special Jury Prize at Sundance, where it premiered. It was nominated for Gotham, Independent Spirit, and DGA awards, the latter of which are still pending. Now it’s in Oscar contention, one of the select documentary films this year that made the Oscars shortlist in the category. It’s available to rent or buy on VOD at Apple and other platforms.
Black Box Diaries
Another Best Documentary Feature shortlist contender, but not as strong of one as Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, this searing doc follows Shiori Itō, an investigative journalist whose own report accusing the head of the Tokyo Broadcasting System of sexually assaulting her incited the Me Too movement in Japan. It was named one of the five best documentaries of 2024 by the National Board of Review, and it’s now streaming on Paramount+.
After you watch Flow: Robot Dreams
If you enjoyed this year’s dialogue-free international indie Best Animated Feature contender, Flow, you could follow it up with last year’s Robot Dreams, which is streaming on Hulu. The Oscar-nominated film, made in Spain, is a whimsical but sad dramedy about a dog living in a fantastical version of 1980s New York who buys a robot to be his friend. It’s a story about love, loss, and letting go that packs a surprising emotional punch and would make a great double feature with Flow.
Rewatch this: The Hurt Locker
The 2010 Best Picture winner was added to Prime Video this week. The intense Iraq War thriller about a bomb disposal team won six Oscars and helped launch the careers of Jeremy Renner and Anthony Mackie. Kathryn Bigelow made history as the first woman to win Best Director. If you haven’t seen it since it came out, now is a pretty good time to watch it again because it features supporting performances from two of this year’s top Oscar contenders, Ralph Fiennes and Guy Pearce.