What's new or newish for home viewing? Let's see... It's been two release weeks for Oscar contenders. Several of them now available for rentals and sales hot off their Oscar wins.
• Creed. See why we all fussed about it and why so many were rooting for Sly (who lost in one of many surprises Sunday night) despite an unspectacular career. That's the German cover to the left. I include it because it's intereting to note that overseas they have to mention Rocky in the title somehow "Rocky's Legacy," not trusting that just Creed would do it.
• The Danish Girl. See why Vikander won the Oscar. (Hint: Huge leading role and she's playing a Long Suffering Wife, in short Oscar's two favorite things in the Supporting Actress category)
• Fargo Year Two - I hear it's good. Why am I still resisting?
• The Good Dinosaur - Tim was relatively kind in his review. I was not impressed -- could not relate to the weird juxtaposition of photoreal backgrounds and bright green rubber dinosaurs -- but I did love "Spot"... such a cutie
• Legend Tom Hardy x 2
• Miss You Already Toni Collette + Drew Barrymore. It was easy to miss them in theaters. Gone already? Love both of them though so let's catch up.
• My All American Finn Wittrock headlines. But it's straight to DVD
• Room See Brie Larson's Oscar winning work and Jacob Tremblay's and the Production Designer's shoulda been nominated work - hey, at least we honored them!
• Secret in their Eyes The remake of the Oscar winning Argentinian film. I'm getting so far behind on the Kidman pictures. Must catch up, regardless of the quality but she makes a lot of movies so it's easy to fall behind.
• Spotlight See why this won Best Picture despite the odds. Hint: it's a) really good and b) hard to dislike and thus scored well on the Academy's Preferential Ballot against a field of decidedly more divisive competitors.
• Youth So curious how y'all will like it who haven't yet seen it. It's quite divisive but it is not uninteresting. Jane Fonda bears her teeth. Harvey Keitel mopes. Rachel Weisz gets a mud bath. Paul Dano wears... no, that's a spoiler. And there's a really big opera number that should've made a great Oscar moment ("Nah... we can't have a famous Asian woman singing on stage in a year where we're dinged for being too white!" - Some Academy producers somewhere.)
READERS CHOICE
I hinted that we might try a series wherein you choose the latest instant watch title for Nathaniel to write up. A Reader's Choice Date... perhaps biweekly? So here are your first options. All new to Netflix or Amazon Prime beginning on March 1st (or thereabouts). Make your case in the comments or simply vote. I'll revisit the title you pick and wrote about it on March 10th. American Psycho (2000) is also new to Amazon Prime -- just in time for the new Broadway musical starring Benjamin Walker -- but we've talked about that modern classic a lot in the past so we'll skip it this time. (A is for Amazon; N for Netflix)