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

What to stream: ‘Das Boot’ the series on Hulu, ‘City on a Hill’ on Showtime, and Jordan Peele’s ‘Us’ on VOD
‘4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days’ on The Criterion Channel
‘A Silent Voice’ – a moving story of bullying and redemption on Netflix
Robert Redford is a ‘Downhill Racer’ on Amazon Prime Video
Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Ran’ on The Criterion Channel

What to stream: ‘Das Boot’ the series on Hulu, ‘City on a Hill’ on Showtime, and Jordan Peele’s ‘Us’ on VOD

Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … A family faces dark, twisted, shadow versions of themselves in Jordon Peele’s eerie, ambitious Us (2019, R). Like his horror-satire hit Get Out, it’s a wicked piece of social commentary through a horror movie […]

What to stream: ‘Vice’ on Hulu, Martin Scorsese’s Dylan on Netflix, ‘Captain Marvel’ on VOD

Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … Brie Larson plays the first female superhero to headline a Marvel movie in Captain Marvel (2019, PG-13), which begins across the galaxy and lands in 1990s America. Larson’s chemistry with Samuel Jackson (as a […]

What to stream: More ‘Tales of the City’ and ‘Black Mirror’ on Netflix, ‘Handmaid’ returns on Hulu, The Jonas Brothers on Amazon Prime

Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … Laura Linney and Olympia Dukakis are back in San Francisco for the limited series Tales of the City (2019), the fourth series based on the novels of Armistead Maupin. In this direst sequel to […]

‘A Silent Voice’ – a moving story of bullying and redemption on Netflix

The animated feature A Silent Voice (Japan, 2016), adapted from a popular manga serial by Yoshitoki Oima and directed by Naoka Yamada, takes on the issue of school bullying through the story of Shoya, a fun-loving rascal who feeds off the attention he gets when he starts making fun of Shoko, a deaf girl who […]

Robert Redford stars in the ski drama directed by Michael Ritchie

Robert Redford is a ‘Downhill Racer’ on Amazon Prime Video

Downhill Racer (1969) is the feature debut of Michael Ritchie, the first project that frustrated actor and future movie star Robert Redford developed for himself and the first of Redford’s proposed trilogy about the meaning of “winning” in American culture. That’s what gives such a riveting perspective to what would otherwise be called a “sports […]

Heath Ledger is The Joker in the Christopher Nolan Batman sequel starring Christian Bale

‘The Dark Knight’ vs. The Joker on Netflix

Superhero films became increasingly sophisticated and decidedly darker as they become (for better or worse) a full-fledged genre in the 2000s. With Batman Begins, writer/director Christopher Nolan (drawing inspiration from the revisionist Batman comic books by Frank Miller and Jeph Loeb) rebooted the Batman mythos for the big screen, bringing the often lighthearted hero back […]

What to stream: More ‘Tales of the City’ and ‘Black Mirror’ on Netflix, ‘Handmaid’ returns on Hulu, The Jonas Brothers on Amazon Prime

What to stream: ‘Good Omens’ on Amazon, ‘When They See Us’ on Netflix, ‘Deadwood’ ends 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 … Michael Sheen is an epicurean angel and David Tennant a rebellious demon who team up to stop Armageddon in the Amazon Original limited series Good Omens (2019), a comic fantasy scripted by Neil Gaiman […]

What to stream: ‘Catch-22’ on Hulu, ‘Laugh-In’ on Netflix, ‘Muhammad Ali’ 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 … Christopher Abbott is John Yossarian, a bomber pilot trying to survive both the violence and the insanity of in World War II, in the six-part Hulu miniseries Catch-22. George Clooney produces, codirects, and costars […]

What to stream: ‘Vice’ on Hulu, Martin Scorsese’s Dylan on Netflix, ‘Captain Marvel’ on VOD

‘All About Lily Chou-Chou’ – Not your usual high school drama on Kanopy

Shunji Iwai’s cruel story of youth All About Lily Chou-Chou (Japan, 2001) has very little to do with pop star Lily Chou-Chou (a Bjork-like fictional creation who took on a cult life in Japan as the star of an interactive Internet novel) and everything to do with her adolescent fans in a Japanese junior high […]

Voyage of ‘The Damned’ on Kanopy

The Damned (aka Les maudits) (France, 1947) is a superb title for this noir-tinged 1947 French war thriller from René Clément. In the final days of World War II, as the Third Reich falls under the Allied advance, the Nazis send a special team on a secret mission to South America by submarine to prepare […]

Robert Carlyle and the cast of the SyFy series 'Stargate Universe'

The complete ‘Stargate Universe’ on Amazon Prime

Stargate Universe: Seasons 1-2 (2009-2011) – For a time, the Stargate franchise was the Star Trek universe of the SyFy channel. I confess I was never a fan of the original Stargate SG-1 series (which began on Showtime and then moved to SyFy) and never got past the first episodes of Stargate: Atlantis but Stargate […]

Ian Tracey and Klea Scott star in the Canadian TV series created by Chis Haddock

‘Intelligence: The Complete Series’ on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video

Created for Canadian TV by Chis Haddock, Intelligence: Complete Series (2006-2007) is a smarter and more sophisticated crime drama than the American counterparts of its era, cleverer in its tangle of narratives and less showy in its visual style. Set in Vancouver, B.C., a central hub for shipping between Canada, the U.S., Asia, and points […]

‘Killing Eve’ – Spy games on Hulu

Killing Eve: Season 1 (2018), BBC America’s clever, compelling, mordantly funny spy thriller, is the network’s first must-see original series since Orphan Black and is even more fun. Sandra Oh earned an Emmy nomination for her performance as Eve Polastri, a low-level security agent for MI-5 who has traced a series of unsolved assassination to […]

What to stream: ‘Das Boot’ the series on Hulu, ‘City on a Hill’ on Showtime, and Jordan Peele’s ‘Us’ on VOD

What to stream: ‘Vice’ on Hulu, Martin Scorsese’s Dylan on Netflix, ‘Captain Marvel’ on VOD

What to stream: ‘Good Omens’ on Amazon, ‘When They See Us’ on Netflix, ‘Deadwood’ ends on HBO

Akim Tamiroff and Orson Welles in the 1948 'Black Magic.'

Orson Welles in ‘Black Magic’ on Kanopy

Black Magic (1949), a gothic drama starring Orson Welles, is one of the best of Welles’ films of the era that he didn’t direct. The mid-budget costume drama from independent producer Edward Small, an adaptation of Alexander Dumas’ novel “Joseph Balsamo,” stars Welles as the 18th century hypnotist and charlatan Cagliostro, a gypsy showman who […]

John Wayne is ‘Hondo’ on Amazon Prime Video

The leathery frontier drama Hondo (1953) stars John Wayne as a Cavalry scout who comes across a lonely homestead where a toughened settler (Geraldine Page) and her son await the return of her brutish husband (Leo Gordon), refusing to leave even as tensions between the Apache nation and the Cavalry heat up into war. Wayne […]

TITLE: SUNSET BOULEVARD PERS: VON STROHEIM, ERICH / SWANSON, GLORIA YEAR: 1950 DIR: WILDER, BILLY REF: SUN025AL CREDIT: [ THE KOBAL COLLECTION / PARAMOUNT ]

I Wake Up Streaming – May 2019

Kanopy is one of the best kept secrets of the streaming world. A free service available through most public and college libraries, it features a robust selection of American indies, foreign films, and educational programming. And thanks to deals with Criterion, Kino Lorber, the Cohen Film Collection, and other libraries, it has perhaps the most […]

What to stream: ‘Vice’ on Hulu, Martin Scorsese’s Dylan on Netflix, ‘Captain Marvel’ on VOD

Samantha Robinson is The Love Witch in Anna Biller's retro-styled feminist / horror / fantasy / melodrama

‘The Love Witch’ – Sex, magic, and sixties style on The Criterion Channel

The Love Witch (2016), Anna Biller’s collision of feminism, romantic fantasy, power, sex, and horror opens with its cool heroine Elaine (Samantha Robinson), a slim, raven-haired beauty with a smear of turquoise eye shadow and eyelashes like wings, driving up the Pacific Coast Highway in a candy apple red convertible and matching outfit. She could […]

Jennifer Lawrence stars in the Oscar nominated film by Debra Granik

Jennifer Lawrence arrives in ‘Winter’s Bone’ on Netflix

Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone (2010), set in the crime and poverty of the Ozark Mountains, is a coming-of-age survival story in an outlaw culture where meth labs have replaced moonshine stills and the code of silence is enforced with pitiless finality. Jennifer Lawrence was revelation as the 17-year-old Ree, who has grown up fast to […]

‘A Silent Voice’ – a moving story of bullying and redemption on Netflix

Jake Gyllenhaal is Louis Bloom in Dan Gilroy's 'Nightcrawler'

‘Nightcrawler’ on Showtime Anytime

Nightcrawler (2014) earned an Oscar nomination for director Dan Gilroy’s screenplay, a wicked satire of the tabloid news television that chases sensationalistic stories for ratings (the cliché “if it bleeds, it leads” is the guiding philosophy). It should also have earned a nomination for Jake Gyllenhaal, whose Louis Bloom is a twisted Horatio Alger with […]

‘All About Lily Chou-Chou’ – Not your usual high school drama on Kanopy

Anamaria Marinca and Laura Vasiliu in Cristian Mungiu’s beautiful and harrowing Romanian drama '4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days'

‘4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days’ on The Criterion Channel

Cristian Mungiu’s beautiful and harrowing Romanian drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and Best Film at the European Film Awards, yet didn’t even make the short list for Best Foreign Language Film nominations. I can’t fathom this defiant snubbing of such a powerful and provocative film, […]

‘A Silent Voice’ – a moving story of bullying and redemption on Netflix

Tatsuya Nakadai in the Akira Kurosawa epic

Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Ran’ on The Criterion Channel

Akira Kurosawa Ran (Japan, 1985), the story of an aging warlord who hands power to his sons is loosely inspired by the story of sixteenth century warlord Mōri Motonari, who conquered his rivals and extended his kingdom with the help of his three sons. The script is firmly built on King Lear, with sons taking […]

Gene Wilder is Willy Wonka in the musical adaptation of the Roald Dahl novel

The original ‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’ on Amazon Prime Video

“Come with me and you’ll be in a world of pure imagination.” Gene Wilder is the weird, wonderful, slightly sinister candy bar king who invites five children into his factory kingdom in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971), a musical adaptation of Roald Dahl’s children’s fantasy. It is a rare breed: an imaginative live-action […]

Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz star in Stephen Sommers' 1999 'The Mummy' and the sequel 'The Mummy Returns'

‘The Mummy’ and ‘The Mummy Returns’ on Netflix

The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy Returns (2001) – Leave it to Stephen Sommers to create an action-movie out of the sleepiest of monster movie icons. Under his direction, it’s an adventure film through a yesteryear Egypt right out of the movies but with a modern sensibility. Brendan Fraser is a bit callow in the […]

Felicity Jones leads the mission Gareth Edwards' Star Wars stand-alone

‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’ on VOD and Blu-ray/DVD

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) is exactly as the title promises. Set in the margins of the original Star Wars, it stars starring Felicity Jones as Jyn Erso, an orphaned survivor living on the fringes of Empire-controlled territory. Part scavenger opportunist and part scheming survivor, she’s been raised in hiding by a revolutionary […]

Una Stubbs, Simon Callow, Virginia McKenna, and Bernard Hill star in the British caper comedy

‘Golden Years’ – Senior citizen crime wave on Amazon Prime Video and Acorn TV

Golden Years (2016) – Think of this caper comedy as a British twist on Going in Style with a side of social commentary on the treatment of aging pensioners. Bernard Hill and Virginia McKenna star as retirees who have lost their retirement savings in the financial crisis and turn to robbing banks, targeting the bonuses […]

‘Killing Eve’ – Spy games on Hulu

Patrick McGoohan and Leo McKern in the cult TV classic

‘The Prisoner: Complete Series’ on Amazon Prime Video

“I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. I am my own man.” There are those who proclaim The Prisoner: Complete Series (1968), Patrick McGoohan’s cerebral spy show and portrait of personal freedom as an existential prison, the greatest TV show of all time. I won’t argue the point. His insidiously […]

The complete ‘Stargate Universe’ on Amazon Prime

‘Farscape: Complete Series’ on Amazon Prime Video

Farscape (1999-2003), created by Rockne S. O’Bannon (who wrote the cult science fiction film Alien Nation) for the Sci-Fi channel (long before they rebranded themselves SyFy), is like no other SF show on TV. If you missed the trip through the wormhole, here’s the gist of it: Ben Browder is John Crichton, an American astronaut […]

‘Killing Eve’ – Spy games on Hulu

David Lynch’s ‘Mulholland Dr.’ on The Criterion Channel

Mulholland Dr. (2001) – David Lynch pulled a near magic trick in what can only be an exercise in creative rewriting and re-conception. Taking an open ended TV pilot rejected by the networks, he added 45 minutes and created closure in a weird, mystical logic that, in its unique Lynchian way, makes a twisted emotional […]

‘District 9’ on Amazon Prime Video and Hulu

The aliens arrived almost thirty years ago, their crippled spacecraft hovering to a halt over Johannesburg, where it remains floating over the city. That defining image hovers over the entirety of District 9 (2009), a savagely whipsmart satire of first contact with an alien species that has been reduced to repressed immigrant population stranded in […]

‘Deliverance’ – A harrowing backcountry odyssey on Netflix

Deliverance (1972), John Boorman’s harrowing adaptation of James Dickey’s novel, is as bracing and haunting now as it was when it first shook up audiences 35 years ago. Jon Voight stars as an urban family man whose weekend escape in a whitewater canoe trip with three friends down a soon-to-be-gone Appalachian river transforms from a […]

Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Ran’ on The Criterion Channel

‘Deliverance’ – A harrowing backcountry odyssey on Netflix

Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in John Huston's 'The African Queen'

‘The African Queen’ – Bogie and Hepburn on Amazon Prime Video

The African Queen (1951) – Humphrey Bogart is Charlie Allnut, the hard-drinking captain of a sputtering steam-powered boat that gives the film its title. Katharine Hepburn is Rose Sayer, a spirited missionary spinster serving the Lord in German East Africa with her brother (Robert Morley). It’s September 1914, the early days of World War I, […]

What to stream: ‘Wine Country’ and ‘Wandering Earth’ on Netflix, ‘Chernobyl’ on HBO, World War I revisited on VOD

Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … Peter Jackson brings history to life in They Shall Not Grow Old (2018, R), a documentary on the experience of British soldiers in World War I created entirely from archival footage and interviews. The […]

French filmmaker and film historian Bertrand Tavernier is your tour guide in this personal documentary

Bertrand Tavernier presents ‘My Journey Through French Cinema’ on Kanopy

Bertrand Tavernier is both an essential French filmmaker and a dedicated film historian. His epic (over three hours long) documentary My Journey Through French Cinema (France, 2016) combines the two professional callings in a decidedly personal look at the cinema that shaped and excited him as both a cinephile and a filmmaker. Forget the familiar […]

‘The King’ – An Elvis road trip through the American Dream on Amazon Prime Video

Elvis Presley is ostensibly the subject of The King (2018), Eugene Jarecki’s rambling road movie of a documentary. The award-winning director drives Presley’s 1963 Rolls-Royce across the US, from Mississippi and Memphis to Nashville, New York, Las Vegas, Hollywood, and elsewhere, talking to historians, musicians, members of Presley’s inner circle, and everyday Americans. Elvis centers […]

Film Noir on Blu-ray: ‘Moonrise,’ ‘Gun Crazy,’ ‘No Orchids,’ and the restored ‘Man Who Cheated Himself’

The Man Who Cheated Himself (Flicker Alley, Blu-ray+DVD)Moonrise (Criterion, Blu-ray, DVD)Gun Crazy (Warner Archive, Blu-ray)No Orchids for Miss Blandish (Kino, Blu-ray, DVD) Lee J. Cobb takes the lead as Lt. Ed Cullen, a veteran Homicide detective in a secret affair with socialite Lois Frazer (Jane Wyatt) while she’s in the midst of a divorce, in […]

Blu-ray Animation: Deluxe ‘Totoro’ and the complete ‘Batman’

My Neighbor Totoro: 30th Anniversary Edition (Shout! Factory, Blu-ray)Batman: The Complete Animated Series (Warner Bros., Blu-ray) Hayao Miyazaki is one of Japan’s living treasures, a beloved filmmaker whose animated films number among the most beautiful and most enchanting productions ever drawn by hand. In this day of CGI productions, the aging artists still personally draws […]

Blu-ray: Orson Welles’ ‘The Magnificent Ambersons’ on Criterion

The Magnificent Ambersons (Criterion, Blu-ray, DVD) How did it take so long for the sophomore feature from Orson Welles to finally get its Blu-ray debut? I don’t need an answer, I’m just thrilled that it’s finally here, and in such a beautiful edition. The magnificence of The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) is apparent from the first […]