Watch at Home: 1985, Roma, A Simple Favor

What's newly available for home viewing this week? Herewith a very quick survey of new releases and/or great deals

DVD/Blu-Ray
• All About Nina -Festival critics loved it (and Mary Elizabeth Winstead's performance) but it was lost in theaters. Can it find a second life now? 
• Fahrenheit 11/9 -Michael Moore didn't make the doc finalist list this year but his new doc is now on DVD
• A Simple Favor -Paul Feig and two terrific actresses, perfectly cast, delivered one of the year's best comic surprises
• Venom - The Spider-Man spinoff that was so successful we're sure to get loads of other villain spinoffs of superhero movies. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to threaten you.

New iTunes 99¢ Deals
I do not know what possessed them but they have a TON of great films for 99¢ this week (there's usually just a couple of must-sees). That's a price point we can get behind for streaming especially since otherwise you're at the whim of Netflix and Prime's extremely limited movie menus. You might want to check out 1985, Austin based filmmaker Yen Tan's latest LGBT drama. This one is in black and white and about a young man (Cory Michael Smith) who returns home to his parents in Texas (Michael Chiklis and an excellent Virginia Madsen) to say goodbye during the AIDS epidemic.

SO MANY FAMOUS FILMS FOR 99¢ THIS WEEK: Airplane, Annie Hall, Beetlejuice, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, The Birdcage, Black Hawk Down, The Black Stallion, Blue Velvet, Boyhood, Capote, A Clockwork Orange, Eat Drink Man Woman, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Gravity, Gremlins, Hairspray, Hannah and Her Sisters, The Heat, Kung Fu Hustle, Inherent Vice, Leave No Trace, Leaving Las Vegas, Lenny, The Madness of King George, The Magnificent Seven, Manhattan, Marty, Memento, Midnight Cowboy, Moonstruck, Moulin Rouge!, My Cousin Vinny, Mystic Pizza, Point Break, Raging Bull, Rainman, Spy, Sweeney Todd, Terminator 2, and Under the Skin.

This feels like my village. It's drier there but it feels like it.

Brand New Streaming
• Roma - Netflix's Best Picture hopeful is now streaming. Turn off your phone and all the lights. Then turn the sound way up. In other words treat it like a true cinematic experience if you're watching it at home. After Children of Men, Y Tu Mama Tambien, and Gravity (among others) we think it's safe to say that Alfonso Cuarón has earned the world's full attention. 

iTunes' 99¢ Deals This Week

No, we are not conspiring with iTunes. It's pure accident that their 99¢ deal this week is I, Tonya moments after Jason asked us to vote on it in the Beauty vs Beast column. I don't like that movie but if you do or if you haven't seen it 99¢ can't really be beat.

I find myself turning more and more to iTunes and hoping for 99¢ rental deals for films I don't own because Netflix / Prime / Filmstruck whoever have such limited and shifting selections each month. iTunes changes their dollar deals quickly but right at the moment there are a ton of great films as well as some interesting little ones... 

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V/H/S, or The Concept of a Woman

Hi, loves! Beau here, having just caught the new horror compilation V/H/S on VOD, and spent the night ruminating on a few different elements that the film(s) brought to light for me.

V/H/S is a horror film that for me, is a game changer. And not in a good way. Were you to pull a gun to my head and ask me what genre captures my heart and my imagination more than any other, I’d say horror. It’s my Achilles heel, bloody and severed. The pulse quickens and the imagination runs rampant. You’re not limited to set tonal shifts but atypical ones. You can go anywhere in horror. And what V/H/S left me with is the sense that if we’re willing to venture into this stylized vein of storytelling, why aren’t we taking more risks inside of it? Pandora’s box is a large one, loves. She likes it that way. A girl needs a big purse.

I’ll sum it up briefly

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