1939 – Stream On Demand

Judy Garland is Dorothy Gale in the beloved screen adaptation of Frank L. Baum's fantasy

‘The Wizard of Oz’ – Over the rainbow on Max

!Featured, Academy Award, Blu-ray, Classic Movie, DVD, Essential Viewing, family friendly, fantasy, Max, National Film Registry, SVOD 09/21/2023 Sean Axmaker

Judy Garland goes over the rainbow to a Technicolor fantasy land in this classic that has charmed young and old audiences alike for decades.

Jean Renoir’s ‘The Rules of the Game’ on Criterion Channel

!Featured, Blu-ray, Criterion Channel, drama, DVD, Free, International Classics, Kanopy, Sight & Sound 100 Greatest Films of All Time, socially aware cinema, SVOD 01/05/2023 Sean Axmaker

Renoir’s beautiful and devastating social satire was reviled when it was released in 1939 and embraced as a masterpiece when it was restored 1959. It placed in the number 13 spot in the 2022 Sight and Sound poll of the greatest films ever made.

Myrna Loy and William Powell (with Asta) as Nick and Nora Charles in the great mystery series

‘The Thin Man’ – Champagne sleuths

!Featured, Academy Award nominee, Action, Classic Movie, DVD, family friendly, Hollywood Classic, literary adaptation, Max, Mystery, SVOD 09/14/2022 Sean Axmaker

It’s cocktail hour on the mystery beat when William Powell and Myrna Loy play Nick and Nora Charles, the world’s most debonair detective team, in the classic series of snappy mysteries.

‘Son of Frankenstein’ – Karloff’s final stand on Peacock

!Featured, Blu-ray, Classic Movie, Cult Movies, DVD, Halloween, Hollywood Classic, horror, Peacock, SVOD 10/13/2021 Sean Axmaker

Basil Rathbone plays the young scientist who continues his father’s experiments and Bela Lugosi is Ygor in Karloff’s final appearance as The Monster.

‘Drums Along the Mohawk’ – John Ford’s Colonial America on Criterion Channel

!Featured, Academy Award nominee, based on a novel, Blu-ray, Classic Movie, Criterion Channel, DVD, family friendly, historical, Hollywood Classic, SVOD, western 07/23/2021 Sean Axmaker

John Ford made his Technicolor debut with Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), a stunning pre-western about young settlers in the rich forest lands of the Mohawk Valley during the Colonial era. Claudette Colbert takes top billing as the cultured wife and Henry Fonda is her salt-of-the-Earth husband who takes her out of the city and […]

Gary Cooper is ‘Beau Geste’ on Peacock

!Featured, Academy Award nominee, adventure, based on a novel, Blu-ray, Classic Movie, DVD, family friendly, Have You Seen...?, Hollywood Classic, literary adaptation, Peacock, SVOD 09/02/2020 Sean Axmaker

Golden-age Hollywood adventures don’t come more rousing than Beau Geste (1939). Gary Cooper, Ray Milland and Robert Preston are the boisterous Geste brothers, orphans raised by a society lady as gentlemen with a sense of playful camaraderie and undaunted chivalry. Their sense of honor and sacrifice inspires all three of them take the blame for […]

John Wayne , Claire Trevor, Thomas Mitchell, John Carradine, Donald Meek, Louise Platt, directed by John Ford

John Ford’s ‘Stagecoach’ on HBO Max

!Featured, Academy Award, Blu-ray, Classic Movie, DVD, Essential Viewing, Max, National Film Registry, SVOD, western 06/30/2020 Sean Axmaker

Stagecoach (1939) – John Ford’s classic western is a landmark of the genre for so many reasons: mature, classically constructed and superbly directed, it made a star of John Wayne, revitalized the western genre, and introduced Ford to the breathtaking landscape of Monument Valley, which would become the mythic backdrop of his west. It was […]

Francine Everett is "Dirty Gertie" in the film directed by Spencer Williams

Black Film History Pioneers – The ‘Blood’ of Spencer Williams on Netflix and Criterion Channel

!Featured, African-American cinema, African-American filmmakers, American Independent Cinema, Blu-ray, Classic Movie, Criterion Channel, DVD, film history, National Film Registry, Netflix 02/27/2020 Sean Axmaker

The legacy of films made by and for African-American audiences before Hollywood integrated its casts is largely unknown to even passionate films buffs. They were rarely seen by white audiences in their day and were rarely preserved with the same dedication given to the maverick films of Hollywood. Netflix and Criterion Channel present over 20 […]