Get your monster fix with ‘Godzilla’
What’s new to watch this week on pay-per-view and streaming services:
Pay-per-view
Second time is the charm in “Godzilla,” the 2014 American take on the classic Japanese giant monster franchise. This one substitutes American clichés over Japanese melodrama for the human section of the film but the rest is surprisingly faithful to the classic Godzilla monster mashes of the ’60s and ’70s, with big budget CGI in place of men in rubber suits and a refreshing sense of awe to the creature smackdowns. Aaron Taylor-Johnson gets hero duty, and Elizabeth Olsen, Bryan Cranston, and Juliette Binoche co-star in undercooked roles. Also on Blu-ray, DVD and video-on-demand.
Also new on Cable PPV: the comedies “Think Like a Man Too” with Kevin Hart and Michael Ealy and “The Grand Seduction” with Brendan Gleeson and Taylor Kitsch, and the thriller “Reclaim” with John Cusack and Ryan Phillippe, the latter available same day as theaters.
Netflix
Netflix likes to think of itself as a Web-based cable alternative rather than a virtual video store, but it still competes for major films. This week there’s something new for both romantics and action fans.
The offbeat 2012 romantic comedy “Silver Linings Playbook” stars Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence and Robert DeNiro, and it earned Lawrence an Oscar. Kevin Costner takes the lead in the 2014 action picture “3 Days to Kill” (2014) as a CIA assassin whose assignment to stop a terrorist in Washington, D.C., gets complicated when he gets custody of his moody teenage daughter (Hailee Steinfeld) for a few days.
TV Binge Watch: you can now catch up on previous seasons of these three shows: “Bones: Season Nine,” which trades in psychokiller Christopher Pelant for a conspiracy to frame Booth (Season 10 begins next week); “New Girl: Season Three,” which flirts with a roomie romance (Season Four is already underway); and “About a Boy: Season One” (Season Two starts in October).
Amazon Instant Prime
“Defiance,” a true story from World War II starring Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber as Polish Jews who create a safe haven for more than 1,000 civilians in the forests of Nazi-occupied Belorussia, and “The Duchess,” a costume drama starring Keira Knightly as a notorious 18th century aristocrat and Ralph Fiennes as her philandering husband (it won the 2009 Oscar for costume design) are new to Amazon this week.