With 2012 just about to enter its final quarter, we can expect a nice step-up in the number of this year’s films arriving as streaming titles. Indeed, this week alone offers a range of movies all of which first hit cinema screens within the past twelve months, giving the VOD customers among us even better chance to catch up with the titles we might have missed from the year to date. A smattering of horror, as usual mostly bad, is the centrepiece of the week’s new releases, with Norway, China, and Canada our latest choices of foreign destinations. Get watching, and be sure to check back next week for the traditional first-of-the-month deluge. We’ll have a little something to tide you over until Skyfall…

With the week’s two strongest films both released just this year, it’s fair to say…

The keenest-eyed among you may have noticed a curious absence in your routine last week: no VOD column! Apologies abound for this unforgivable transgression, the consequence of technical issues aplenty that will, with any luck, not happen again. Welcome instead to what we can call This Fortnight on Demand, a compensational compendium of the best—and in one case very, very worst—the last fourteen days have to offer the streaming connoisseur. It’s a good period for playing catch-up, some very notable 2012 releases among the batch below, and some very worthy independent documentaries which might otherwise have escaped your eyes are crying out for their deserved audience. My incessant desire to find a linking theme for each issue has this to offer: wolves. You’ll see what I mean.

With the year’s two finest films released in the last two weeks, it’s only fair that we should be now saddled with the very worst of 2012. Thankfully it’s one terrible title among few, and as usual the good far outweighs the bad in the latest batch. Acclaimed classics from auteurs the like of Huston, Wilder, and Coppola are some of the week’s finest offerings, but it’s horror fans who’ll find themselves most well served in this edition, with one of the genre’s most inarguably formidable giants joining the catalogue alongside a trio of iconic classics.

A particularly good week for world cinema welcomes titles from Iran, Chile, Japan, Turkey, and Italy alongside a double bill of American creature features and low-key independent documentaries. Again film history is well represented, our oldest new addition stretching back to the birth of Italian neorealism while the newest dates back just a few short weeks. Netflix continues to boost their considerable selection of this year’s films, this week alone adding a personal selection for one of the best films of the year, as well as one of the worst. It need not be said that the movies below hold something of appeal for every viewer; the varying posters alone should tell you that.

If ever one were to want to showcase the immensely divergent tastes Netflix is capable…

The post-boom slump that is the second week of any month in VOD releases is often a time of mixed fortunes, the previous selection’s vastness far overshadowing the comparably meagre offerings the rest of the month has to offer. It’s nice to be able to say, then, that this week has two distinctly great films to offer us, as well as a respectable selection of serviceable side dishes too. Classic Canadian horror and recent political documentaries await below, as well as an impressive four 2012 releases to boost the choice of this year’s films in the catalogue.

Welcome back for part 2 of this week’s bumper video on demand selection. As with…

Here we are again: the first edition of a new month, and an explosion of…

It’s something of a superhero special here on this inescapably (but no less apologetically) belated edition of This Week On Demand, with Marvel adding a third to their Netflix collection of Avengers films, plus a documentary portrait of company figurehead Stan Lee. It’s the best of the week’s three documentaries, the others looking at a highly dysfunctional Montana family and the early poetic career of Leonard Cohen. Also on offer is the traditional terrible horror movie and a pair of Oscar-nominees, rounding out a week that’s decent, but far from great. Tune in on Sunday for yet another first-of-the-month bumper edition.