Four Films to Watch With Your Friends This Weekend
Enjoy the company of those that matter to you on Friendship Day
Friendship Day is celebrated on July 30 to remember the power of friendship around the world. So, get your besties together to celebrate this holiday with a favorite film about what it means to be a friend.
The official trailer for Champions
Kevin Iannucci, Kaitlin Olson, James Day Keith, Cheech Marin, and Woody Harrelson in Champions
Champions
In Bobby Farrelly’s Champions, Woody Harrelson plays Marcus, a minor league basketball coach whose overzealous tactics get him court-mandated to work with The Friends, a local team for people with disabilities. Marcus learns from them how to reclaim his love of the game and the people who play it. The power of friendship also inspired the cast. Farrelly explained in an exclusive Focus Features interview how the actors with disabilities who played The Friends formed a team: “When they came together for the first time, it was like they had known each other all their lives. That was just magic.” For Screen Rant, “Everyone is clearly having a great time, and it shows in every scene.”
The official trailer for Book Club: The Next Chapter
Mary Steenburgen, Candice Bergen, Diane Keaton, and Jane Fonda in Book Club: The Next Chapter
Book Club: The Next Chapter
In Book Club: The Next Chapter, filmmaker Bill Holderman celebrates the power of friendship with four legendary actresses. Having survived the isolation of the pandemic, Diane (Diane Keaton), Sharon (Candice Bergen), and Carol (Mary Steenburgen) plan a wild bachelorette party for Vivian (Jane Fonda) in Italy. During production, the leading ladies’ friendship on and off screen melded into one. “The scenes seemed very real,” Fonda told the Peterborough Examiner, “It was like the movie didn’t end and there’s real life that blended together while we were there.” The movie’s fun-loving embrace of friendship might, as Collider suggests, “leave audiences ready to grab their gal pals and set off on an adventure to Italy.”
The official trailer for Brian and Charles
David Earl and Chris Hayward in Brian and Charles
Brian and Charles
In Jim Archer’s comedy Brian and Charles, Brian (David Earl) is an inventor living in Wales, and Charles (Chris Hayward) is the seven-foot-tall robot with a washing machine tummy that Brian accidentally creates. As man and robot feast on cabbage and play swords in the backyard, a close friendship develops. Archer tells The Guardian that the film is “primarily about loneliness and the power of friendship and companionship.” For The Wrap, the film finds “a great deal of humor in the mundane and regular, that a friend can come from anywhere or anything, even an old washing machine.”
The official trailer for Armageddon Time
Jaylin Webb and Banks Repeta in Armageddon Time
Armageddon Time
At the heart of James Gray’s Armageddon Time is a friendship between two boys—Paul (Banks Repeta) and Johnny (Jaylin Webb)—a camaraderie that is slowly twisted apart by the world they live in. Set in 1980 in Queens, New York, the story details the ways Paul’s parents (Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong) and his grandfather (Anthony Hopkins) provide him a network of support when things go bad, a privilege unavailable to his friend, who's Black. For the Los Angeles Times, “It’s the focus on Paul and Johnny’s friendship that provides the movie with both its greatest emotional force and its trickiest dramatic maneuvers.” Explaining to Indiewire that “when you’re 11 or 12, you do not have the moral or ethical foundation to grapple with a world that is unendingly complex,” Gray highlights the tough reality that makes his drama so poignant and unforgettable.