Catch up with ‘Games’ before next installment
What’s new to watch this week on pay-per-view and streaming services:
“The Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” the second film in the hit series with Jennifer Lawrence as a young warrior who becomes the reluctant face of a rebellion against a tyrannical dictator, is now available to Netflix and Amazon Prime subscribers, more than a month before the third installment is released in theaters.
The Halloween countdown continues with two horrors in a lighter vein. The self-aware “Cabin in the Woods” very cleverly plays with all the clichés of teen horror. It is R-rated for brief nudity and slasher movie gore, but there’s nothing mean-spirited in the violence.
The over-the-top horror movie spectacle is played as gallows humor in the surprisingly funny “Tucker and Dale vs. Evil,” a backwoods horror of mistaken identity with sweetly stupid heroes and buckets of blood. Both are available on Netflix and Amazon Instant Prime.
Pay-per-view
“Listen Up Philip,” a witty and somewhat discomforting portrait of an abrasive young New York novelist (Jason Schwartzman) who gets lessons in entitled arrogance from a Philip Roth-like literary legend, is an indie comic drama with literary flourish. It opened on New York and Los Angeles theaters last week and is now available everywhere on cable pay-per-view and Web-based video-on-demand.
Timed for the run-up to Halloween, the horror thriller “The Purge: Anarchy,” set in a future where all violence is permitted for one night a year, arrives on pay-per-view the same week as disc. And arriving before it hits theaters is another horror sequel: the anthology film “V/H/S: Viral,” with short films from six indie horror directors.
For kids, there is the space-age family adventure “Earth to Echo,” and for grown-ups is the comedy “Sex Tape” with Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel.
Netflix
On Saturday, Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained,” which earned Oscars for best original screenplay and for supporting actor Christoph Waltz, debuts on the streaming service. His spin on the spaghetti Western is the most audacious confrontation of slavery in pre-Civil war America yet made, and behind Tarantino’s extreme violence, operatic drama and genre-mixing wit is a swooning love story and a powerful friendship. It’s bloody good!
“The 100: Season 1,” the WB’s post-apocalyptic “Lord of the Flies” adventure series, is now available to stream in its entirety. Available on Saturday is “Sons of Anarchy: Season 6.” The new seasons of both shows are currently underway on TV.