What to Watch on FandangoNOW and Vudu: ‘The Father,’ ‘The Little Things,’ Pixar’s ‘Soul,’ Spring Movies and More

Want to know what’s coming soon to digital and what to watch right now on FandangoNOW and Vudu? Here is your weekly guide to the latest releases:

Soul

What are the latest new releases to watch right now?

Pixar’s latest animated feature, Soul, is now available to own digitally from both FandangoNOW and Vudu. Nominated for three Oscars, including a much-deserved nod for Best Original Score, this fantastical and philosophical Disney release follows a New York City jazz musician (voiced by Jamie Foxx) into the afterlife and back again for an existential journey that’s both deep and hilarious. And yes, as always with Pixar, you’ll be needing to buy a box of tissues along with your movie purchase.

Pick up the movie today and get tons of bonus material, including deleted scenes and an audio commentary track. You can get started by watching the first 10 minutes of Soul courtesy of FandangoNOW right here:

John Lee Hancock’s The Little Things is also new to FandangoNOW and Vudu, as an early access rental. This neo-noir crime thriller stars the always-watchable Denzel Washington and the recent Oscar-winner Rami Malek as a veteran cop and a younger hotshot detective, respectively, who team-up to find a serial killer in 1990s Los Angeles. Jared Leto co-stars in the movie as the duo’s primary suspect, and he delivers a fascinating performance.

What movies are great to pair with those new releases?

Soul goes well with any Pixar animated feature, but the best pairing is Inside Out, which is also by director Pete Docter and also similarly deals with metaphysical ideas. There’s also Coco, which like Soul is partly set in the afterlife. You could also make a double feature with Soul and its fellow Oscar-nominee in the Best Animated Feature category this year: Onward (which is also available to purchase in a bundle with Coco). If you want something not animated, I recommend Albert Brooks’s Defending Your Life, Carl Reiner’s All of Me or the 1941 classic Here Comes Mr. Jordan.

With The Little Things, the most worthwhile pairing is David Fincher’s Se7en, to which it’s widely been compared — and I think it deserves to be, favorably. But other crime films from the 1990s are also potential picks, particularly those starring Denzel Washington, like The Bone Collector, Carl Franklin’s Devil in a Blue Dress, the John Grisham adaptation The Pelican Brief, the supernatural thriller Fallen and the noir-ish sci-fi movie Virtuosity.

Are there any other big movies coming out this week?

Another of this year’s major Oscar nominees, The Father, arrives on digital this Friday, March 26, to rent. Anthony Hopkins gives one of his best performances ever as a man suffering from severe memory loss and confusion while Olivia Colman matches him in the supporting role of his concerned daughter. Despite the heartbreaking subject matter, writer/director Florian Zeller executes the story in such a clever way that it’s never really a downer.

What are some great movies about spring to rent this week?

This is the first week of spring, so I suggest watching some seasonal fare that might brighten your mood. Most of my springtime recommendations are family friendly, such as Disney’s Bambi and Winnie the Pooh: Springtime with Roo and either the classic animated adaptation or the live-action remake of Charlotte’s Web (or buy both versions together). There’s also the musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers with its “Spring Spring Spring” number.

This is also the time for spring break, and there are a few movies worth watching for the occasion, albeit not so family friendly (unless we’re talking the Scooby-Doo Spring Break collection). Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers is the big favorite, of course, following a group of young women on a crime-filled beach vacation. I also recommend the goofy action comedy sequel 22 Jump Street. For something older and a bit tamer, you’ve got 1960’s Where the Boys Are and 1963’s Palm Springs Weekend.

Additionally, Vudu is having a sale on Hallmark Channel “Spring Fling” movies, including recent romance favorites Bottled with Love, Fashionably Yours, Love in Design, Love and Sunshine, Just My Type, Easter Under Wraps and Home by Spring.

Can you recommend some more great movie deals on Vudu?

This week, Vudu has a sale on 1970s movies, all for just $7 each! There are many essential classics in the bunch, such as Network, Nashville and Apocalypse Now, but I have some double feature favorites to recommend among the lot: conspiracy theory thrillers The Conversation and The Parallax View; blaxploitation staples Shaft and Coffy; gritty New York films Mean Streets and The Warriors, film noir throwbacks Chinatown and The Big Sleep; and cynical World War II movies Slaughterhouse-Five and Catch-22.

Vudu’s Actor’s Spotlight series continues to focus on actresses this week for Women’s History Month, with deals on movies starring Reese Witherspoon, Jada Pinkett Smith, Rosie Perez, Kate Beckinsale, Penelope Cruz and Susan Sarandon. My top picks for each of them, in order, and all from between the late ‘80s and the late ‘90s are: Election for Witherspoon; Set it Off for Pinkett Smith; Do the Right Thing for Perez; Cold Comfort Farm for Beckinsale; All About My Mother for Cruz; and Bull Durham for Sarandon.

Are we celebrating any big movie anniversaries this week?

This week marks the 25th anniversary of the release of David O. Russell’s Flirting with Disaster, the 30th anniversary of both Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze and the aforementioned Albert Brooks film Defending Your Life, the 35th anniversary of the comedies The Money Pit and Police Academy 3: Back in Training, the 40th anniversary of Michael Mann’s Thief and the 45th anniversary of Alfred Hitchcock’s Family Plot.

Going back further, the sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet and the early rock ’n’ roll musical Rock Around the Clock both turn 65 this week, the classic rom-com The Lady Eve turn 80 and the musical biopic The Great Ziegfeld turns 85. More recent movies with anniversaries include Spike Lee’s Inside Man, which turns 15, Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch, which turns 10, and Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which is already 5 years old!

Which must-see movies are coming soon to FandangoNOW and Vudu?

Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland, which is nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, is coming to digital on April 13, just in time to watch it ahead of the Oscars on April 25. The character-driven drama stars Frances McDormand as a woman recently widowed and laid-off who moves into her van and travels the country in search of seasonal work and odd jobs. On the road, she finds a support system in the form of a community of similarly house-less Americans, many of them played by real-life nomads.