3 Prime Video documentaries you’ll actually watch this weekend (January 2

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3 Prime Video documentaries you’ll actually watch this weekend (January 2

Documentaries don’t always have to be big, behind-the-scenes collages or dark tales of true crime. This weekend’s lineup of documentaries on Prime Video will hopefully inspire and delight you with their in-depth profiles on some of the world’s most fascinating and life-changing people, and a peek inside the quiet decline and resurgence of the rare book world.

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Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

I was lucky enough to be born at a time when Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood was regular viewing for my adolescent eyeballs. Fred Rogers was like a gentle uncle, or ever father figure, to so many kids, and this award-winning 2018 documentary by Oscar-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville is a misty-eyed profile of the beloved children’s entertainer.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor? is a joyous and nostalgic film built using rare and incredible archival footage and behind-the-scenes moments of both the man and the creation of his long-running TV show. It’s a delightful, and sometimes eye-opening, reminder that outside of his “Neighborhood” world, the man himself truly practiced everything he preached. Featuring interviews with friends, colleagues, and collaborators such as François Clemmons (Officer Clemmons), David Newell (deliveryman Mr. McFeely), Joe Negri (Handyman Negri), cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and even Rogers’ widow, Joanne, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? chronicles how Rogers used love and kindness to relate to kids on their level, never talking down to them. And he never shied away from tough, often controversial topics like divorce, racism, fear, anger, and death.

The definitive documentary film about Fred Rogers, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? will choke you up, but it’s a worthwhile ride, and its 94-minute runtime makes it an easy weekend watch.

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Phil Tippet: Mad Dreams and Monsters

It’s likely that you have no idea who Phil Tippett is, but I’d be willing to bet that you’ve had the crap scared out of you or were dazzled by some of his iconic creations. The legendary visual effects artist, animator, and director is responsible for countless monsters, creatures, robots, and beings, with just a few notables such as, oh, I dunno: Star Wars’ tauntauns, AT-ATs, the Rancor, and Jabba the Hutt himself, as well as Jurassic Park‘s dinosaurs, RoboCop, and Starship Troopers’ bugs.

Phil Tippett: Mad Dreams and Monsters is a fascinating “how the monsters get made” documentary that examines Tippett’s career, with deep access to his famous Tippett Studio. From his days as a stop-motion pioneer at Industrial Light & Magic and through the transition from practical effects to the digital realm, this is a thrilling, fly-on-the-wall look that effects nerds will salivate over—it’s like being bench side or in the studio with Tippett and his team, offering a fantastic look at the models, painstaking details put into them, and the arduous process involved in animating the creations one shot at a time.

If you like behind-the-scenes docs like Disney+’s Light & Magic, this loving look at one of the best practical effects artists ever will be a worthy watch.

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The Booksellers

Vinyl records, CDs, and DVDs aren’t the only physical media formats that have succumbed to the digital revolution and the internet. Books, too, have seen a big decline in popularity, with small independent booksellers taking on the head, and closing shop in droves. Taking an even bigger hit, the more niche market for rare books collapsed as the internet’s ability to just search for something and find it made their value dive.

This is at the crux of D.W. Young’s documentary, The Booksellers, which takes viewers on a dusty tour of New York’s diminished, yet still vibrant, antiquarian book world, and the colorful players who keep it alive. Narrated by White Lotus actress Parker Posey (who’s also an executive producer), the documentary is more suspenseful and exciting than you might imagine. With interviews with some of the city’s main players and enthusiasts, such as Fran Lebowitz, the Argosy Book Store sisters, Strand Bookstore owner Nancy Bass Wyden, and others, The Booksellers lets us peek in at the high-stakes auctions, appraisals, fierce bidding wars, and obsessiveness of the culture.

But The Booksellers is not a total doom-and-gloom story. It also tells the story of how, like vinyl and other once-dead physical media formats, there’s been a resurgence of the printed word among young people as they crave ownership, experience, and see the tangible value of books. The trend has invigorated the industry and has inspired a new generation of small booksellers who see how the paper and binary worlds can coexist. The Booksellers has a 90% freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

While it is cool to take a trip out of reality with a blockbuster sci-fi or superhero movie, sometimes you want a little more out of your entertainment—you might want to actually learn something cool or interesting. Documentaries and docuseries are time well spent, and often deliver stories with the unbeatable value of being true.