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What to stream: ‘Luke Cage’ returns, ‘In Bruges’ and Barbra Streisand on Netflix, The Beatles’ ‘Yellow Submarine’ and more
Oscar-winner ‘The King’s Speech’ on Netflix
‘The Maltese Falcon’ – the stuff dreams are made of on FilmStruck
Last Chance: ‘Desperately Seeking Susan’ on Amazon Prime Video and Hulu
Holy retro, Batman! It’s ‘Return of the Caped Crusaders’ on Amazon Prime Video!

Helena Bonham Carter, Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush in the Oscar-winning film by Tom Hooper

Oscar-winner ‘The King’s Speech’ on Netflix

Whether or not you agree that The King’s Speech (2010) was indeed the Best Picture by the Best Director (Tom Hooper) of 2010, it was certainly the feel-good film of 2010 with portfolio. Colin Firth (who well earned his Oscar for Best Actor) stars as Duke of York (Bertie to his friends) and the man […]

Rosanna Arquette and Madonna in Susan Seidelman's 'Desperately Seeking Susan'

Last Chance: ‘Desperately Seeking Susan’ on Amazon Prime Video and Hulu

Desperately Seeking Susan (1982) is remembered for giving Madonna her first starring role; she’s the Susan of the title, a free spirit in thrift store chic fashions who connects up with her musician boyfriend through personal ads in the local weekly papers. This modern bohemian take on the classic screwball comedy (complete with amnesia, mistaken […]

Holy retro, Batman! It’s ‘Return of the Caped Crusaders’ on Amazon Prime Video!

Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders (2016) is a different kind of animated superhero film, a flashback to the tongue-in-cheek approach of the 1960s Batman TV series. It isn’t really a theatrical feature—it was produced for Warner Bros.’s DCU Original Animation unit for VOD and home video—but perhaps thanks to the nostalgic pull of the […]

Mike Colter stars in the second season of Marvel superhero series for Netflix

What to stream: ‘Luke Cage’ returns, ‘In Bruges’ and Barbra Streisand on Netflix, The Beatles’ ‘Yellow Submarine’ and more

Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, Showtime Anytime, FilmStruck, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … The streetwise version of Marvel’s superhero universe continues on Netflix with the second season of their hit series Luke Cage, starring Mike Colter as the bulletproof Harlem hero. The show steps […]

Donnie Wahlberg, Neil McDonough, and the men of Easy Company in the miniseries from Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks

‘Band of Brothers’ on Amazon Prime Video and HBO

After Saving Private Ryan in a single mission, Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks teamed up to produce a chronicle of the European theater of World War II from a soldier’s-eye view on a vast canvas. The resulting made-for-HBO ten-hour miniseries Band of Brothers (2001), based on the non-fiction book by historian Stephen Ambrose, takes us […]

Lily Sullivan and Madeleine Madden in the 2018 Australian miniseries

What to stream: back to ‘Hanging Rock,’ ‘Beatriz at Dinner,’ Steve Martin and Martin Short

Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, Showtime Anytime, FilmStruck, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … The miniseries Picnic at Hanging Rock (2018), based on the novel about four young women who vanish without a trace during an outing in the Australian outback in 1900, takes a […]

Nick Robinson in the gay coming-of-age romantic comedy from director Greg Berlanti

What to stream: ‘Set it Up’ and the end of ‘Portlandia’ on Netflix, ‘King of California’ on Prime Video, ‘Love, Simon’ on VOD

Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, Showtime Anytime, FilmStruck, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … Love, Simon (2018, PG-13) uses the familiar conventions of the coming-of-age teenage romantic comedy for the story of a gay high school boy (Nick Robinson) coming out to his friends and […]

Chadwick Boseman is the African superhero in the Marvel Comics hit movie

What to stream: ‘Black Panther’ on VOD, ‘Cargo’ on Netflix, plus ‘In the Fade’ and the end of ‘Orphan Black’

Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, Showtime Anytime, FilmStruck, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … Chadwick Boseman as Prince T’Challa, aka Black Panther (2018, PG-13), in the first Marvel superhero movie built around black hero. Director Ryan Coogler adds his own sensibility with his creation of […]

Star Wars: The Last Jedi - Photo credit: Walt Disney Pictures

What to stream: ‘The Last Jedi’ on VOD and more ‘Unfortunate Events’ on Netflix

Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, Showtime Anytime, FilmStruck, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … The interstellar saga continues in Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017, PG-13) as Rey (Daisy Ridley) goes in search of guidance from Jedi master Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) while the Resistance […]

Kyle MacLachlan and Michael Nouri in the film by Jack Sholder

Cult Blu-ray: ‘Basket Case,’ ‘Ichi the Killer,’ ‘Macon County’ justice, and ‘The Hidden’ with Kyle Maclachlan

Basket Case (Arrow, Blu-ray) Ichi the Killer (Well Go, Blu-ray) Macon County Line (Shout! Factory, Blu-ray) The Hidden (Warner Archive, Blu-ray) Basket Case (1982), the debut feature of filmmaker Frank Henenlotter, is a gruesome little cult indie-horror drama of brotherly love and righteous vengeance shot on location in the seedier sections of New York City. […]

Anne Carlisle in the cult film by Slava Tsukerman

Blu-ray: Androgyny and aliens in eighties cult film ‘Liquid Sky’ on Vinegar Syndrome

Liquid Sky (Vinegar Syndrome, Blu-ray+DVD Combo) An avant-garde artifact straddling the eighties movie underground and the growing American independent movement, Liquid Sky (1982) broke into the college film circuit thanks to a trippy mix of drug culture, sexual androgyny, and indie sci-fi weirdness playing out in the New York eighties bohemian scene. Director Slava Tsukerman […]

Jessica Harper in Dario Argento's landmark giallo

Profundo Argento: ‘Suspira,’ ‘Cat O’ Nine Tails,’ ‘Deep Red,’ ‘Opera,’ and ‘The Church’ in new Blu-ray editions

Suspiria (Synapse, Blu-ray) The Cat O’ Nine Tails (Arrow, Blu-ray+DVD Combo) Deep Red (Arrow, Blu-ray) Opera (Scorpion, Blu-ray) The Church (Scorpion, Blu-ray) Dario Argento was the master choreographer of the distinctly Italian art of horror known as giallo, was a baroque, often sadistic kind of slasher movie that favors intricately-designed murder sequences and aesthetic beauty […]

Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, Mary Astor, and Sydney Greenstreet in the film adapted from the Dashiell Hammett novel by John Huston.

‘The Maltese Falcon’ – the stuff dreams are made of on FilmStruck

If there is a cooler, tougher, more shrewd and self-sufficient private detective in the movies than Humphrey Bogart’s incarnation of Sam Spade in John Huston’s note-perfect adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon (1941), I’ve yet to see him in action. The 1941 classic wasn’t the first screen version of Hammet’s iconic novel, but it […]

Colin Blakely is Sherlock Holmes in the film by Billy Wilder

‘The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes’ on FilmStruck

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) is one of the loveliest of Billy Wilder’s pictures, a sly, bittersweet, autumnal film that approaches the Holmes legacy with a sense of humor and a sense of respect. Robert Stephenson plays Holmes as a genial, witty fellow well aware of his reputation and quite a bit more […]

Anthony Quinn, Peter O'Toole, and Omar Sharif star in the Oscar-winning epic from director David Lean

David Lean’s masterpiece ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ on Hulu

Lawrence of Arabia (1962), David Lean’s epic adventure based on the true-life story of T.E. Lawrence (played by Peter O’Toole in a compelling, complex performance), is the most beautiful big screen film ever made, which means it’s grandest attributes suffer on video no matter how big your screen is. It’s also a fiercely intelligent drama […]

Last Chance: ‘Desperately Seeking Susan’ on Amazon Prime Video and Hulu

Alexandra Norton directs the documentary on movie star and inventor Hedy Lamarr

‘Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story’ – Brains meet beauty on Netflix

Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story (2017) – Hedy Lamarr was one of the most glamorous movie stars of her day. The Czechoslovakian actress became notorious for nude scenes in the 1933 erotic European drama Ecstasy and fled Nazi Europe and a marriage to a munitions mogul to become a star in Hollywood famed for her […]

Colin Farrell and Jessica Chastain in Liv Ullman's 'Miss Julie'

Jessica Chastain is ‘Miss Julie’ on Amazon Prime Video

You can imagine Miss Julie (2014), Liv Ullman’s screen adaptation of the August Strindberg play, as a call back to the classic 1951 Swedish screen adaptation by Alf Sjöberg, who was a mentor to Ingmar Bergman, the Swedish master who directed Ullman to some of her greatest performances. Ullman directed Bergman’s screenplay in Faithless and […]

‘The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes’ on FilmStruck

The animated Superman from Max and Dave Fleischer

‘The Complete Animated Superman’ – The original classics on Amazon Prime

The Complete Superman Collection (1941-1943) – “Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. The infant of Krypton is now the Man of Steel: Superman!” The 17 animated shorts produced by Max Fleischer between 1941 and 1943 were the first big screen incarnation of […]

Nicolas Cage stars in the surreal sequel directed by Werner Herzog

‘Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans’ on Amazon Prime Video

Neither remake nor sequel in any conventional sense of the terms, Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans (2009) takes the basic premise out of the Abel Ferrara universe of guilt and redemption and drops it into post-Katrina New Orleans and the Herzog world of indifferent and unforgiving nature. It really is a […]

Diane Kruger stars in the German drama directed by Fatih Akin

Diane Kruger is ‘In the Fade’ on Hulu

Director Fatih Akin, a German filmmaker of Turkish heritage, likes to dig deep into raw emotion and conflict, both personal and cultural. In the Fade (Germany, 2017) takes on the rise of white nationalism and domestic terrorism through the ordeal of a young widow grieving over the brutal bombing murder of her family. Diane Kruger […]

Lambert Wilson as Jacques Cousteau in the film by Jérôme Salle

‘The Odyssey’ of Jacques Cousteau on Netflix

The Odyssey (France, 2016) is not Homer’s mythic quest but the epic voyage that Jacques Cousteau took around the world for years of TV documentaries on the exploration for marine life. Lambert Wilson is Jacques-Yves Cousteau in a biographical drama that presents a portrait of a man cultivating an on-screen image very different from 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 FilmStruck

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 […]

Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson in the third "Harry Potter" feature

Last Chance: ‘Harry Potter’ – the complete saga on HBO Now

HBO presents the entire cinematic Harry Potter saga: all eight films based on the seven books by J.K. Rowling on HBO Now, HBO Go, or HBO On Demand. Looking back on the original Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001), directed by Chris Columbus, we see a painstakingly literal translations of J.K Rowling’s first novel, […]

Mowgli and friends in Disney's live-action 'The Jungle Book.'

‘The Jungle Book’ – Disney’s 2016 remake on VOD and disc

The Jungle Book (2016), Jon Favreau’s live action (or at least photo-realistic) version of the Rudyard Kipling stories, offers far more than the bare necessities as it combines Kipling’s stories and Walt Disney’s 1967 animated musical adaptation for a marvelous new version of the classic story of a boy quite literally raised by wolves. The […]

‘The Odyssey’ of Jacques Cousteau on Netflix

William Zabka and Ralph Macchio in the streaming sequel to 'The Karate Kid'

What to stream: fictional crime ‘Safe’ and true crime ‘Evil Genius’ on Netflix and ‘Karate Kid’ sequel ‘Cobra Kai’ on YouTube Red

Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, Showtime Anytime, FilmStruck, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues is a sequel that promotes Johnny (William Zabka), the bullying villain of the original film, on a redemptive journey more than 30 years later […]

Kelly Reilly in the historical drama co-starring Zoë Wanamaker, Mackenzie Crook, and David Morrissey

What to stream: a sweeping ‘Britannia’ on Amazon and a ‘Futile and Stupid’ biography on Netflix

Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, Showtime Anytime, FilmStruck, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … Amazon Prime reaches for Game of Thrones spectacle in Britannia, a sprawling, violent historical epic featuring Druid mages, Celtic warrior queens, warring tribes, bloody battles, and David Morrissey as a Roman […]

Aaron Staton, Hattie Morahan, and Owen McDonnell in the BBC homefront drama

‘My Mother & Other Strangers’ – Growing up in wartime on Amazon Prime

Set in a rural Irish town during World War II, My Mother & Other Strangers (2017) is another British TV homefront drama, this one viewed through the memories of an adolescent boy. Francis Coyne (Michael Nevin) is the son of Rose (Hattie Morahan), who is London born and bred and treated like an outsider by […]

Mutant X with Victoria Pratt (Shalimar Fox), Lauren Lee Smith (Emma DeLauro), Karen Cliche (Lexa Pierce), John Shea (Adam Kane), Victor Webster (Brennan Mulwray) and Forbes March (Jesse Kilmartin)

‘Mutant X: The Complete Series’ on Amazon Prime Video

Created by (then) Marvel Comics CEO Avi Arad, the syndicated Mutant X: Seasons 1 and 2 (2001-2003) was an early Marvel live-action series developed as a kind of a hip, low budget X-Men knock-off by way of the comic book spin-off The New Mutants, albeit with more attitude. The show kicks off in a two-part […]

The complete ‘Lost’ on Hulu

Lost: Complete Series (2004-2010) – The very definition of high-concept television, this addictive survival series turned metaphysical mystery is arguably the most successful and certainly the most richly and deeply woven show of its kind. What began as an exotic Gilligan’s Island through The Twilight Zone turned into a mind-bending show with supernatural echoes and […]

Aidan Turner, Russell Tovey, and Lenora Crichlow star in the BBC series

The original ‘Being Human: Season 1’ on Amazon Prime

A vampire, a werewolf and a ghost walk into a bar. No, it’s not a joke, it’s a scene in the BBC series Being Human, a supernatural drama about a trio of “monsters” sharing an apartment in Bristol and trying to live as humans despite the challenges to normal life. Mitchell (Aidan Turner), once the […]

‘The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes’ on FilmStruck

Caroline Munro, Christopher Plummer and David Hasselhoff star in the Italian science fiction cult film by Luigi Cozzi

‘Starcrash’ – cult sci-fi on Amazon Prime Video

The shamelessly and fabulously derivative Italian space opera Starcrash (1979) is both the most ridiculous and the most irresistible of all the Star Wars knock-offs of the late seventies and eighties. Caroline Munro spends much of the film in a black latex bikini as the great outlaw starship pilot Stella Star, who is arrested by […]

Christopher Plummer hosts 'The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,' a film by Terry Gilliam

Terry Gilliam’s ‘The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus’ on Netflix

With The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009) Terry Gilliam, the mad imagineer of such wickedly funny and wildly creative visions as Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Twelve Monkeys (okay, that last one isn’t quite so funny), dives back into his diabolical imagination for this carny sideshow of a Faust tale in the […]

David Lean’s masterpiece ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ on Hulu

Joan Crawford stars with Ann Blyth, Zachary Scott, and Jack Carson

Joan Crawford is ‘Mildred Pierce’ on FilmStruck

Is Mildred Pierce (1945) film noir or melodrama? I say why choose? Film noir is almost entirely associated with crime stories and life in the shadows and at night in the city and sure enough Mildred Pierce, based on the novel by James M. Cain, opens with death and darkness and the twilight of the […]

Clark Gable, Tully Marshall, Donald Crisp and Jean Harlow in the 1932 MGM classic directed by Victor Fleming

Clark Gable and Jean Harlow in ‘Red Dust’ on FilmStruck

Red Dust (1932), the jungle melodrama starring Clark Gable as a rubber plantation foreman in East Asia and Jean Harlow as the street smart showgirl who takes a powder from “Say-gone” (as they call the future Vietnamese city of Saigon) and lands upriver in his primitive plantation manor, is as sexy, frank, and grown-up as […]

‘Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story’ – Brains meet beauty on Netflix

‘For All Mankind’ – To the moon and back on Amazon Prime Video

For All Mankind (1989), Al Reinert’s celebration of the nine manned space flights between 1968 and 1972, was released to theaters in 1989, twenty years after first manned moon landing. It’s a stunning tribute composed entirely of the film documentation shot and archived by NASA, not a documentary of an Apollo mission but the story […]