Watch at Home: Eighth Grade, Bad Times at the El Royale

What's newly available for home viewing? Herewith a very quick survey of new releases and/or great deals. Links go to reviews.

DVD/Blu-Ray
• Bad Reputation a doc for Joan Jett fans
• Bad Times at the El Royale seven strangers, each with "a secret to bury" meet at a hotel. So like Clue + 1 only noirish?

Also new: AXL, Love Gilda, Night School, and White Boy Rick

iTunes 99¢ Deals of Note This Week
• Eighth Grade -Bo Burnham's inspired you-are-there comedy about everyone's favourite existential horror: middle school
• 12 Angry Men - the legendary courtroom drama was nominated for 3 Oscars including Best Picture of 1957 (pssst. it's also available right now on Prime)
• The Apartment -1960's big Oscar winner starring Jack Lemmon & Shirley Maclaine and an over-extended bachelor pad.
• Fargo -This freezing cold comic noir is still the best Coen brothers movie, right? Best Actress winner 1996 Frances McDormand.
• Platoon - Oliver Stone's bracing 1986 Vietnam war drama and Best Picture winner

Streaming
ICYMI What's new on Netflix & Amazon Prime

Blueprints: FYC Original Screenplays

Following the first major award nominations of the season, Jorge takes a chance to remind any Academy votes to keep in mind some of the best screenplays of the year… 

Historically, Best Original Screenplay has been the category in which the Academy takes some of its biggest risks. Or maybe where it likes to think it does. This is the place where more daring, inventive, or “non-traditional” movies tend to get a shout-out, perhaps as a recognition of the overall novelty of the film without going as far as honoring those edgier achievements with a Best Picture nod or win...

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What did you see over the weekend?

by Nathaniel R

Venom and A Star is Born remained strong for a second weekend leaving much less to go around for First Man, Goosebumps 2,  and Bad Times at the El Royale though it's still a stronger October at the box office than the past two years have been...

Weekend Box Office (October 12-14)
W I D E 800+ screens	PLATFORM / LIMITED excluding prev. wide
1. 🔺 Venom $35 (cum. $142.1)	1. 🔺 The Hate U Give $1.7 on 248 screens (cum. $2.4)

2. A Star is Born $28.4 (cum. $94.6) Review, Posterized	2. 🔺Gosnell: The Trial of... $1.1  *NEW * on 673 screens

3. 🔺 First Man  $16 NEW  Capsule Review	3. 🔺 Colette $999k on 593 screens  (cum. $2.5) Capsule

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Review: "Bad Times at the El Royale"

by Chris Feil

Drew Goddard has become a Hollywood go-to screenwriters for charging genres with new life, molding The Martian with equal parts brainy science and dopiness and both upholding and subverting the monster movie with Cloverfield. Bad Times at the El Royale is his first return to the director’s chair since the horror spoof-but-also-not-a-spoof The Cabin in The Woods, and again he has perhaps bitten off more than he can narratively chew.

This time Goddard is taking on pulpy pop noir, setting for a showdown at a highway hotel bisected by the California-Nevada border. Checking in are Cynthia Erivo’s quiet lounge singer Darlene, Jon Hamm’s chatterbox vacuum salesman Laramie Sullivan, Dakota Johnson as a mysterious woman named Emily, and Jeff Bridges giving the most Bridges as a suspicious priest named Father Flynn. The writer/director has Tarantino on the brain as Agatha Christie, chaptering the film by the various rooms hosting each guest and slowing revealing the night’s dirty deeds from each of their perspectives. Think of it like a heterosexual Clue mixed with a bisexual Reservoir Dogs, but not as fun.

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