Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Weekend Watch is here for you. Every Friday we’re going to recommend the best of what’s new to rent on VOD or stream for free. It’s your weekend; allow us to make it better.
What to Rent on VOD This Weekend
The hot-button mainstream movie of summer 2016 was Ghostbusters, and for all the wrong reasons. Whether it was the nostalgia police out in force making sure that nobody’s childhood heroes were being desecrated (or, conversely, that nobody was being too reverential about their childhood heroes), or hey another 12 tired rounds on the subject of women’s place in comedy, to the truly abhorrent harrassment of one of the film’s cast members, there was no way that Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters, starring Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones, was going to get to exist as merely a movie. I suppose that’s the chance that you take when you agree to embark on a rebooting of a property like Ghostbusters, but it meant that far fewer people engaged with Ghostbusters (2016) than engaged with the idea of Ghostbusters (2016).
Maybe that can change now that we’re free to rent Ghostbusters in the privacy of our own home. It’s not a perfect movie. It’s the least of the four Paul Feig/Melissa McCarthy collaborations (the correct order of superiority goes: The Heat > Spy > Bridesmaids), but there’s an energy to the film that’s contagious. It’s a fun movie that crumbles a bit if you squeeze it too tight. The at-home experience can’t recapture the theater experience, and I have to say that seeing this one with a crowd was one of the better movie experiences of the year. But watching Ghostbusters at home, you really get an appreciation of what live wires Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones get to be. This is their movie, and they walk away with it. You can see a kernel of the estranged-best-friends movie that Wiig and McCarthy were making, but it gets lost in the shuffle. Just replay every Kate McKinnon line reading multiple times and you’ll have a better go of it.
You can rent Ghostbusters (2016) on Amazon Video and iTunes.
Elsewhere, Blue Jay is a sweet, funny romantic comedy that pairs up Sarah Paulson and Mark Duplass as former high school sweethearts that connect again 20 years later after a chance encounter. The leads have great chemistry, as do the performers, as witnessed in Decider’s interview with the pair of them. Paulson’s star has been majorly on the rise over the last few years, but Blue Jay lets her play notes that American Horror Story and The People v. O.J. Simpson couldn’t provide.
You can rent Blue Jay on Amazon Video and iTunes.
Best Scary Movie to Stream This Weekend
Happy October! Once again, there are PLENTY of horror offerings across the streaming platforms to keep you huddled behind a pillow all month. I Saw the Devil is a Korean horror movie from 2011 that keeps an unbearable tension as it follows a law enforcement agent as he seeks revenge against the serial killer who murdered his wife. The agent risks losing his own humanity in the quest, and also, oh right, he’s trying to hunt down a SERIAL KILLER. Anybody who’s watched any film or TV show about Hannibal Lecter knows how dangerous that can be. I Saw the Devil will kill you with tension, but there is one particular scene whose bloody fury comes out of nowhere and is so fast and brutal that you’ll forget to breathe. It’s worth it for that one scene alone.
