Stream On Demand - The best home viewing on streaming, VOD, DVD, and Blu-ray

‘Train to Busan’ – Korean zombie classic on Amazon Prime Video and more
What to stream: ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ and ‘Rebecca’ on Netflix, a new ‘Borat’ on Amazon, ‘The Witches’ on HBO Max
‘Force Majeure’ from Sweden on Amazon Prime and Hulu
‘The Wailing’ – South Korean horror on Netflix
‘Batman: The Killing Joke’ on Netflix

What to stream: ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ and ‘Rebecca’ on Netflix, a new ‘Borat’ on Amazon, ‘The Witches’ on HBO Max

Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … An isolated, orphaned girl in 1950s Kentucky becomes a chess prodigy and (played by Anya Taylor-Joy as an adult) battles the chauvinist world of competitive chess (as well as addiction) in the limited […]

What to stream: Aaron Sorkin’s ‘Chicago 7’ on Netflix, Heidi Schrek’s ‘Constitution’ on Amazon

Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … Courtroom drama meets political theater in “The Trial of the Chicago 7” (2020, not rated), Aaron Sorkin’s dramatization of the real-life trial of the protest leaders at the 1968 Democratic National Convention charged […]

What to stream: ‘The Haunting of Bly Manor’ on Netflix, ‘The Right Stuff’ on Disney+, final seasons of ‘Schitt’s Creek’ and ‘Mr. Robot’

Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … “The Haunting of Bly Manor” (TV-MA), from “The Haunting of Hill House” creator Mike Flanagan, adapts the Henry James classic “The Turn of the Screw,” updating it to 1980s England. “Hill House” actor […]

Paul Rudd is Scott Lang, aka Ant-Man. in the Marvel superhero movie directed by Peyton Reed.

‘Ant-Man’ – Marvel gets small on Disney+

Ant-Man (2015) hit theaters with a slightly different approach for a Marvel superhero movie. It’s more playful and comic, with a reluctant hero who has a motley crew of buddies and a mentor with a sly sense of humor as well a drive for justice, and while the stakes are big (stopping a tech giant […]

James Woods and his wild bunch of vampire hunters in 'John Carpenter's Vampires'

‘John Carpenter’s Vampires’ on Amazon Prime

John Carpenter’s Vampires (1998) is not just the first and only vampire film from the great American horror director, it’s the closest he’s gotten to directing an actual western. It’s not simply the dusty, dusky New Mexico setting or the Ry Cooder-esque electric country blues score. He and screenwriter Don Jakoby transform John Steakley’s novel […]

What to stream: Aaron Sorkin’s ‘Chicago 7’ on Netflix, Heidi Schrek’s ‘Constitution’ on Amazon

‘Moneyball’ – the business of baseball on Netflix

Brad Pitt makes it look effortless in Moneyball (2011), a drama about the business of baseball in the era of multi-million dollar payrolls. Pitt plays Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics struggling to field a competitive team against organizations with much deeper pockets. His solution is to—with the help of unprepossessing Peter […]

‘My Beautiful Laundrette’ on Amazon Prime

Provocative and potent, My Beautiful Laundrette (1986) launched a lot of careers while shaking up British cinema in the eighties. Gordon Warnecke stars as Omar, the son of a Pakistani immigrant in London who takes over the management of a failing launderette in a seedy neighborhood owned by his entrepreneurial uncle (Saeed Jaffrey). Omar is […]

Zoe Saldana kills in ‘Colombiana’ on Netflix

Zoe Saldana was a rising star when she took the lead as a sexy assassin in Colombiana (2011), a revenge thriller from producer Luc Besson’s international action movie factory. But where his other productions tend to drop American badasses in European locales, this one reworks La Femme Nikita in a South American context. Saldana is […]

‘Train to Busan’ – Korean zombie classic on Amazon Prime Video and more

You could call Train to Busan (South Korea, 2016) “Zombies on a Train”—it certainly makes a catchy logline and it frames the premise accurately and succinctly—but it reduces this fleet, fierce, unexpectedly human thriller to a mere gimmick. Apart from the slyly eerie prologue, the film opens without any hint of the viral rampage to […]

‘The Wailing’ – South Korean horror on Netflix

The Wailing (South Korea, 2016) is a thriller that takes a dark turn into supernatural horror. Kwak Do-won is Jong-goo, a somewhat dim underachiever cop who is way over his head investigating a double homicide in his little town. Jong-goo isn’t too bright but he’s a doting father to his smart little girl and there’s […]

‘The Mimic’ on Amazon Prime and Shudder

The ghost story The Mimic (South Korea, 2017) draws its premise a Korean myth of a tiger that mimics human voices to lure its victims into the forest, but it goes its own way from there. Hee-yun (Yum Jung-ah), still grieving over the unsolved disappearance of her son, moves from the city to her rural […]

Bong Joon-ho's 2006 South Korean monster movie 'The Host'

‘The Host’ – Bong Joon-ho’s monster mash on Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Criterion Channel

The Host (2006), Bong Joon-ho’s South Korean monster movie hit, is neither a parody, subversion, or revision of the often campy horror movie genre. It stirs a stew of genre conventions, from political commentary to dysfunctional family satire to earnest emotional pathos, into an often thrilling monster movie as indebted to the B-movies of seventies American […]

‘A Tale of Two Sisters’ – a South Korean ghost story on Criterion Channel and Shudder

Ji-woon Kim has proven himself one of the most interesting and versatile filmmakers to come out of South Korea in the past two decades with such films as The Quiet Family (1998), The Good the Bad the Weird (2008), and I Saw the Devil (2010). With the haunting A Tale of Two Sisters (South Korea, […]

Duane Jones in the 1968 American horror classic by George Romero

‘Night of the Living Dead’ restored on HBO Max and Criterion Channel

Fifty years ago, commercial filmmaker George Romero marshaled the resources of his production company Latent Image and the talents of friends and colleagues to produce a low budget feature film in Pittsburgh, PA. The rest is, as they say, history. Night of the Living Dead (1968) is the first genuinely modern horror movie, shot more […]

What to stream: ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ and ‘Rebecca’ on Netflix, a new ‘Borat’ on Amazon, ‘The Witches’ on HBO Max

What to stream: ‘The Haunting of Bly Manor’ on Netflix, ‘The Right Stuff’ on Disney+, final seasons of ‘Schitt’s Creek’ and ‘Mr. Robot’

What to stream: ‘Woke’ on Hulu, ‘The Duchess’ and ‘Social Dilemma’ on Netflix, ‘Noughts + Crosses’ on Peacock

Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … Inspired by the work of artist Keith Knight, “Woke: Season 1” (not rated) stars Lamorne Morris as a cartoonist on the verge of mainstream success, in part for steering clear of politics and […]

Alfred Hitchcock’s original ‘Psycho’ on Peacock

Psycho (1960) shocked America in 1960. Suburban theatergoers headed to the theaters to see the latest offering from the director of the glamorous and sexy Rear Window and the Technicolor confection North by Northwest. Who expected the droll host of TV’s showcase for suspense, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, to get so down and dirty and tawdry. […]

Universal Horrors: the birth of American horror cinema and the original cinematic shared universe on Peacock

The great monsters of horror were first defined for the movies almost 100 years ago at Universal Studios when they ushered in the golden age of American horror cinema. They weren’t the first horror movies and they weren’t even the first adaptations of the literary horror classics but they took hold of the public’s imagination, […]

‘Vampyr’ – Classic horror as tone poem on HBO Max and Criterion Channel

Vampyr (Denmark, 1932) is a horror movie as tone poem. An early sound film shot with a distinctive and evocative silent film aesthetic, dialogue is sparse and large blocks of text (either intertitles or pages from a book of vampire lore) provide the exposition. And it’s eerily abstract film with vague motivations and ethereal imagery […]

‘Ant-Man’ – Marvel gets small on Disney+

Angelina Jolie is ‘Maleficent’ on Disney+

Maleficent (2014) does sort of a “Wicked” number on the story of Sleeping Beauty’s evil sorceress, casting her as the tragic figure of a dark fantasy (but not too dark for children—barely) of a revisionist fairy tale. Angelina Jolie plays the adult Maleficent, a fairy who watches over and defends the natural and supernatural wilds […]

Taika Waititi’s ‘Hunt for the Wilderpeople’ on Netflix

Based on title alone, you might expect Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016) to follow the mockumentary spoofing of Taika Waititi’s previous film What We Do in the Shadows, his deadpan portrait of ancient vampires as eternal idiots on the fringes of Wellington nightlife. In fact it’s a coming of age comedy with a heartwarming soul […]

‘Train to Busan’ – Korean zombie classic on Amazon Prime Video and more

Johannes Kuhnke and Lisa Loven Kongsli star in the Swedish drama from Ruben Östlund

‘Force Majeure’ from Sweden on Amazon Prime and Hulu

One of the surprises in the 2015 Oscar nominations was that Force Majeure (Sweden, 2014), Sweden’s official entry for the foreign language film category and a Cannes film festival winner, did not place among the five nominated films. Director Ruben Östlund gives us a family on vacation and what appears to be the inciting event […]

‘The Wailing’ – South Korean horror on Netflix

‘Train to Busan’ – Korean zombie classic on Amazon Prime Video and more

‘The Wailing’ – South Korean horror on Netflix

‘The Mimic’ on Amazon Prime and Shudder

‘Escape at Dannemora’ on Amazon Prime and Showtime Anytime

In 2015 Richard Matt and David Sweat, two inmates at Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York, escaped with the help of Joyce “Tilly” Mitchell, who ran the sewing shop and engaged in sexual affairs with both men. The eight-hour limited series Escape at Dannemora (2018), originally produced for Showtime, dramatizes the true story. Benicio […]

Elisabeth Moss, John Slattery, Jon Hamm, Christina Hendricks, and the cast of 'Mad Men'

The complete ‘Mad Men’ – free on IMDbTV

Mad Men: Seasons 1-7 (2007-2015) – “Who could not be happy with all this?” That’s the question at the heart of Mad Men, the series that transformed former movie network American Movie Classics into cable channel AMC, home to smart, daring, addictive original TV shows. Set the way-back machine to 1960, a world of cigarettes […]

‘The Wire: Complete Series’ on HBO Max and HBO Now

“Follow the drugs, and you’ll find dealers and users. Follow the money, and you have no idea where the case will take you.” So began the first season of HBO’s compelling tale of cops, crooks, and the social and bureaucratic forces that both divide and bind them, and the begining of an epic series that […]

‘Vampyr’ – Classic horror as tone poem on HBO Max and Criterion Channel

‘Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle’ on Hulu

Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle (2004) is one of those rare movies that has its entire plot contained in the title. John Cho is Harold, a timid Asian-American white collar cubicle slave at a brokerage firm, and Kal Penn is his roommate Kumar, an Indian-American college grad deftly avoiding his future while his […]

What to stream: ‘Little Women’ on VOD, ‘Parasite’ on Hulu, ‘Quibi’ launches short form streaming programs

Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … Greta Gerwig directs and adapts “Little Women” (2019, PG) and her take on Louisa May Alcott’s beloved novel brings a modern perspective to the lives of women in Civil War-era America. Saoirse Ronan […]

‘Marie Antoinette’ – decadent young royals on Amazon Prime

Kirsten Dunst is Marie Antoinette (2006) in Sofia Coppola’s portrait of the decadent, indifferent monarchy that toppled in the French Revolution. Marie is a teenage Austrian princess married off to France’s distant young King Louis XVI (Jason Schwartzman) and sent to the alien of the French court. She’s a political naïf dropped into a world […]

Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray in Sofia Coppola's 'Lost in Translation'

‘Lost in Translation’ on Peacock

Lost in Translation (2003) – Bill Murray is Bob Harris, a former movie star and minor film icon in Japan to shoot a whisky campaign (for which he’ll earn more than he’s seen in many a movie). Set up in a modern hotel the size of a small city while his marriage back ossifies in […]

Ben Mendelsohn and Ryan Reynolds in 'Mississippi Grind,' directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck

Ryan Reynolds works the ‘Mississippi Grind’ on Showtime and free on Kanopy and Hoopla

Mississippi Grind (2015) plays like a seventies character drama, a meandering road movie through the byways of American characters who populate the card rooms and dice tables and racetracks, and an oddball buddy movie built on a chance encounter and an instant kinship between two losers gambling their lives away. Ryan Reynolds is Curtis, a […]

‘Force Majeure’ from Sweden on Amazon Prime and Hulu

‘A Tale of Two Sisters’ – a South Korean ghost story on Criterion Channel and Shudder

‘Vampyr’ – Classic horror as tone poem on HBO Max and Criterion Channel

Ricky Gervais stars on the BBC comedy 'The Office'

The original British ‘The Office’ on HBO Max

“You can’t put a price on comedy.” In the original The Office (2001-2003), creator/co-writer/co-director Ricky Gervais stars as David Brent, the insufferably self-satisfied office manager of a paper company branch who fancies himself a born comedian and a natural leader. He’s wrong about both, naturally, but his yes-man team-leader Gareth (Mackenzie Crook), a brown-noser with […]

David Tennant stars in the British mini-series based on the Alan Furst novel.

‘Spies of Warsaw’ – WWII espionage on Amazon Prime Video

Spies of Warsaw (2013), adapted by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais from the novel by Alan Furst, has an almost old-fashioned clarity to it. It’s set in 1937 Poland, and Germany is quietly amassing troops outside the border. David Tennant continued his post-Doctor Who career redefinition playing French military attaché Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier, an […]

Bertie Carvel and Eddie Marsan are 'Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell' in the BBC adaptation of Susanna Clarke's novel.

‘Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell’ on VOD and Blu-ray/DVD

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2015), adapted from the dense, richly-woven debut novel by Susanna Clarke, brings a different of approach to fantasy fiction and the idea of magic in the real world. Set in 19th century England, at the start of the Napoleonic Wars, it weaves the tale of two magicians—Mr. Norrell (Eddie Marsan), […]

‘The Wire: Complete Series’ on HBO Max and HBO Now

The original British ‘The Office’ on HBO Max

The cast of NBC's 'Hannibal,' starring Hugh Dancy, Caroline Dhavernas, Laurence Fishburne, and Mads Mikkelsen

‘Hannibal: Complete Series’ on Netflix

Hannibal (2013-2015) reimagines the universe created by author Thomas Harris in the cycle of novels that began with Red Dragon and introduced Dr. Hannibal Lecter to the world. Freely drawing inspiration for the novels and characters, creator and showrunner Bryan Fuller images the relationship between Dr. Hannibal Lecter (played with enigmatic intensity and cool charm by Mads […]

‘Train to Busan’ – Korean zombie classic on Amazon Prime Video and more

‘Batman: The Killing Joke’ on Netflix

While Warner Bros. builds it superhero universe on the big screen by reinventing the classic heroes, it’s also creating a parallel universe of animated movies that are, for the most part, faithful adaptations of some of the great storylines and graphic novels of the comic book line. Produced for home video, they’re low budget by […]

‘The Host’ – Bong Joon-ho’s monster mash on Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Criterion Channel

Alfred Hitchcock’s original ‘Psycho’ on Peacock

‘Vampyr’ – Classic horror as tone poem on HBO Max and Criterion Channel

Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Larry Fishburne in 'The Matrix'

‘The Matrix’ trilogy on HBO Max

The Matrix (1999) has become such a touchstone of American pop culture—referenced, copied, parodied, and parroted—that it’s hard to remember just how new and different and distinctive it was when it debuted in 1999. Which is not to say that it is completely original. Image Tron as a Greek Myth, or Sim City as an […]

What to stream: ‘Boys in the Band’ on Netflix, ‘Monsterland’ and ‘Wilderness of Error’ on Hulu

Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto, and Matt Bomer star in “The Boys in the Band” (2020, R), a new revival of the groundbreaking 1968 play about the lives of gay friends in the era […]

What to stream: documentaries ‘All In’ on Amazon, ‘The Fight’ on Hulu, ‘Challenger’ on Netflix, plus ‘We Are’ on HBO

Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … Election season brings out the political documentaries. “All In: The Fight for Democracy” (2020, PG-13) takes on the rights of American citizens to vote and the issue of voter suppression, guided by the […]

Chris Strompolos, Eric Zala, and Jayson Lamb in the documentary 'Raiders! The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made'

‘Raiders! The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made’ on VOD and Blu-ray/DVD

Raiders! The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made (2016) – The legend is true. In 1982, 12-year-old friends Chris Strompolos, Eric Zala, and Jayson Lamb started shooting a shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark on a borrowed VHS camcorder in their small Mississippi town. Chris played Indiana Jones, Eric directed and […]