1964 – Stream On Demand

Catherine Deneuve stars in the bittersweet musical from Jacques Demy

‘Umbrellas’ and ‘Young Girls’ – the essential Jacques Demy on HBO Max and Criterion Channel

!Featured, Academy Award nominee, Blu-ray, Cannes winner, Criterion Channel, drama, DVD, Essential Viewing, Free, French New Wave, HBO Max, International Classics, Kanopy, Musical, Romance, SVOD 02/05/2023 Sean Axmaker

Catherine Deneuve stars in these two musicals from the most romantic of the French New Wave filmmakers.

‘Goldfinger’ – James Bond goes blockbuster on Paramount+ and MGM+

!Featured, Academy Award, Action, Blu-ray, British Cinema, Classic Movie, Cult Movies, DVD, Essential Viewing, MGM+, Paramount+, spies and espionage, SVOD, thriller 02/04/2023 Sean Axmaker

Sean Connery helped turn the James Bond spy series into a blockbuster franchise in his third outing as 007, perhaps the most iconic film in the series.

Masaki Kobayashi directs the quartet of Japanese ghost stories

‘Kwaidan’ – Japanese ghost stories on HBO Max and Criterion Channel

!Featured, Academy Award nominee, Blu-ray, Cannes winner, Criterion, Criterion Channel, DVD, Halloween, HBO Max, historical, horror, International Cinema, SVOD 10/16/2022 Sean Axmaker

Masaki Kobayashi’s quartet of ancient ghost stories may not be, strictly speaking, a horror film but it is breathtakingly lovely, visually composed like a painting, and suffused in sadness, regret, and loss.

‘Onibaba’ – the horrors of war on HBO Max and Criterion Channel

!Featured, Blu-ray, Criterion Channel, DVD, Halloween, HBO Max, historical, horror, International Classics, SVOD 10/15/2022 Sean Axmaker

Kaneto Shindo’s primal classic looks like a ghost story and has the unsettling, hostile atmosphere of a horror movie but the real demons arise from the desperation and savagery of the human animal.

Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘Band of Outsiders’ on Criterion Channel

!Featured, Blu-ray, Crime, Criterion Channel, DVD, French New Wave, International Classics, SVOD 02/24/2022 Sean Axmaker

Anna Karina stars with Sammi Frey and Claude Brasseur in this cinematically playful lark that takes a turn into outlaw crime drama.

‘The Soft Skin’ – tragic romance from Truffaut on HBO Max and Criterion Channel

!Featured, Blu-ray, Criterion Channel, drama, DVD, French New Wave, HBO Max, International Classics, Romance, suspense, SVOD 02/09/2022 Sean Axmaker

Francois Truffaut’s cool, creamy smooth story of a doomed affair channels the director’s love of Alfred Hitchcock into a romantic melodrama.

Peter Sellers stars in Stanley Kubrick's political satire of mutually assured destruction

Last chance: ‘Dr. Strangelove’ – the screwball satire of mutually assured destruction on HBO Max

!Featured, Academy Award nominee, BAFTA winner, based on a novel, Blu-ray, Classic Movie, Comedy, Cult Movies, DVD, Essential Viewing, HBO Max, Hollywood Classic, Last chance, literary adaptation, National Film Registry, Politics, satire, Streaming Movies, SVOD, war 12/18/2021 Sean Axmaker

Peter Sellers plays three roles in Stanley Kubrick’s surreal farce of ideological hysteria and military arrogance, easily the funniest film ever made about nuclear holocaust.

‘Blood and Black Lace’ – Birth of the giallo on Criterion Channel

!Featured, Blu-ray, Criterion Channel, Cult Movies, DVD, giallo, Halloween, horror, SVOD, thriller 10/25/2021 Sean Axmaker

Mario Bava’s elegant 1964 slasher picture as ballroom dance, bathed in intense, unreal sprays of red and purple and green, is where the distinctly Italian horror genre known as giallo was born.

Satyajit Ray’s ‘Charulata’ on Criterion Channel

!Featured, Blu-ray, Criterion, Criterion Channel, drama, DVD, historical, International Classics, socially aware cinema, SVOD 05/25/2021 Sean Axmaker

Ray considered this drama of a gifted and sensitive young woman in 19th century India his masterpiece.

Rod Steiger is ‘The Pawnbroker’ on Amazon Prime and Hulu

!Featured, Academy Award nominee, Amazon Prime Video, based on a novel, Blu-ray, Classic Movie, drama, DVD, Hollywood Classic, Hulu, National Film Registry, SVOD 04/26/2021 Sean Axmaker

The Pawnbroker (1964), the Sidney Lumet-directed 1964 film based on the novel by Edward Lewis, is a real time capsule. It’s the first American film to really take on the legacy of the Holocaust on a personal level, and it’s set in a Harlem pawnshop where a stream of slum stereotypes wander in and out […]