November's Notables

One very tasty Delicatessen

November may not have brought the same cornucopia of new titles as September and October, but there are still plenty of worthy additions to hit Prime in the past week. Standouts include a Who's Who of films by significant directors, including Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro's Looney Tunes-like sci-fi dystopia, Delicatessen, Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, Michael Mann's slick, early Hannibal Lecter tale, Manhunter, Woody Allen's surprising (and very funny) recent hit, Midnight in Paris, and the Tom Hanks (and Oscar) showcase, Jonathan Demme's Philadelphia. Also on hand is Pablo Berger's 2012 silent black-and-white retelling of Snow White, Blancanieves, which is said to be haunting and quite beautiful (it's been in my Netflix queue for ages). The full list of standouts:

Awakenings (1990)
Blancanieves (2012)
Buffalo 66 (1998)
Crash (2004)
Delicatessen (1992)
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (2000)
Gods and Monsters (1999)
The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (2009)
Manhunter (1986)
Midnight in Paris (2011)
Philadelphia (1993)

October Arrivals: Still Going Strong

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

There's no shortage of new titles on Prime this month, with yet another boatload of old, obscure, and public domain flicks (Nabonga, anyone?) arriving to complement a number of genuine classics, some Halloween horror, and a smattering of new releases and returns. Oh, and if you've been yearning to watch (or rewatch) the Back to the Future trilogy, all three are streaming now till the end of the month, to celebrate the first film's (gulp) 30th anniversary.

Making more than welcome appearances in October are Roman Polanski's darkly funny Bitter Moon (1994), Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven (1978), Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman's brilliant Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Stanley Tucci's old-school farce The Impostors (1998), Woody Allen's Play It Again, Sam (1972), and Otto Preminger's classic noir, Laura (1944).

Also worth a look is the first season of the Amazon original series Red Oaks, a 1980s-set coming-of-age comedy whose pilot last year showed a lot of promise. And then there's season 1 of Schitt's Creek, a new Canadian comedy I haven't seen but which stars SCTV greats Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara and is co-created by Levy—which alone should put it on any comedy fan's radar.

All notable titles listed below. Once again there were too many for me to link them all, so I've given preference to those I thought especially worth a look.

Mid-August Arrivals (Now with More Troma!)

Steve Carell in The 40-Year-Old Virgin

Some fun new titles were made available for streaming on Amazon Prime in the past week, including Judd Apatow's unrated cut of the very funny The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Clair Denis' extreme 2001 vampire flick, Trouble Every Day, Clint Eastwood's White Hunter, Black Heart (a fictionalized account of director John Huston big-game hunting while making The African Queen), and the 1946 Barbara Stanwyck-Kirk Douglas film noir, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. Those titles alone show a nice range of the old and the new(ish) that seem to be hitting Prime with increasing regularity.

Among even newer releases are Kevin Pollak's documentary, Misery Loves Comedy (2015), exploring the psyche of comedians; A Most Violent Year, a 2014 thriller starring Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac, from the director of All Is Lost; the drama If I Stay (2014), starring Chloë Grace Moretz; and a pickup from Netflix, the Japanese music documentary, We Don't Care About Music Anyway (2013).

Television arrivals include The Forsyte Saga (which expired from Netflix mere days ago), the return of 2012's Masterpiece Mystery: Endeavour, which was among June's PBS casualties, and the (long-awaited?) debut of Toxic Crusaders, the 1991 animated series featuring a kid-friendly version of Troma's very own Toxie, a.k.a., The Toxic Avenger.

What's Noteworthy in August? A Lot.

Michael Douglas gets glittery

August has turned into an exceptional month for Amazon Prime. And while I don't want to keep harping on comparisons with Netflix (who's currently in my digital doghouse), the fact is, the quality of this month's new arrivals puts Netflix's spotty August list to shame. Whereas there were too few notable titles on that service to even bother listing, here on Prime it's all I can do to track everything. (Funnily enough, last month I had a similar urge to throw up my hands at Netflix—but it was over all the expiring titles.) At the same time, so many of Prime's new arrivals are exclusives, I've broken with my usual practice of labeling them PRIME ONLY and am noting instead those few exceptions that aren't exclusive.

HBO

So, where to begin? The most obvious headliners are the newly available HBO series, Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom: Seasons 1-2, which arrived towards the end of July, and today's debut of all eight seasons of Larry David's cringingly funny Curb Your Enthusiasm. These two high-profile shows will likely get plenty of visibility on the Amazon site, so I don't need to spend much time on them here except to say what a great coup the service's HBO deal continues to be.

If further proof were needed, there was also the late-July arrival of Steven Soderbergh's Behind the Candelabra, a 2013 production meant to be the director's final theatrical film but, due to the skittishness of Hollywood's bean counters, was financed and released by HBO. Starring Michael Douglas and Matt Damon, this biopic of Liberace boasts not only a ridiculously high 95% score on Rotten Tomatoes, but a passel of industry awards including Emmys for Outstanding Movie, Actor (Douglas), and Director. In other words, a prestige production if there ever was one—TV or otherwise.

More July Newbies

Robey and Co.

Another crop of interesting additions found their way to Prime Instant Video this week, including a few unexpected TV shows and a number of new-ish foreign and indie titles.

TV Series

All of the new TV offerings, except for Star Trek: The Animated Series—which I wrote up elsewhere a while back—are exclusive to Prime (i.e., not on Netflix), while Beauty and the Beast, like a number of previously mentioned arrivals, was another Netflix casualty earlier this month. Does this mean Prime will soon be acquiring some of the classic series currently scheduled to leave Netflix, like Adam-12, Magnum P.I., and Quincy, M.E.? One can only hope. Meanwhile, fans of cult '80s shows (and anyone old enough to remember Robey) will be thrilled to fill their watchlists with three seasons' worth of Friday the 13th: The Series. Brrr—scary, boys and girls!

Beauty and the Beast (1987-1990)
Belfast Zoo (2006-2007)
The Cleaner (2008-2009)
Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman (1993-1998)
Friday the 13th: The Series (1987-1990)
Star Trek: The Animated Series (1973-1974)

Pasolini, Chabrol, and Other Arty Newcomers

Claude Chabrol's The Bridesmaid

Through its agreements with distributors such as Film Movement, Indie Crush, Zeitgeist Films, Asian Crush, and First Run Features, Amazon has quietly pieced together a respectable catalog of foreign and indie titles on its Prime service, many of them exclusives. Yes, a lot of these may be obscure to mainstream audiences (some justifiably), but among them are plenty of unsung and forgotten jewels. (See the Foreign section of this site's Only On Prime page for a few older examples.)

This month Amazon added two Pier Paolo Pasolini films—his first feature, 1961's Accatone, along with 1967's Oedipus Rex. As the director of such controversial fare as Arabian Nights, Canterbury Tales, and Salo, Pasolini isn't for everyone. But given his importance to European cinema in the 1960s and '70s, it's nice to see these (less salacious) examples of his earlier work available to stream.

Another important European filmmaker was the incredibly prolific Claude Chabrol. As one of the French New Wave directors who came into their own in the late 1950s and early '60s (including Jean Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, and Jacques Rivette), Chabrol first made his mark with Les Bonnes Femmes (1960). He went on to distinguish himself with a long and vital career that included a string of acclaimed thrillers, making him, in many ways, France's answer to Alfred Hitchcock. Aside from a half dozen or so Criterion titles available exclusively on Hulu, Chabrol's work is severely underrepresented in the streaming world, so it's nice to see Les Bonnes Femmes and Merci Pour Le Chocolat (2000) joined by 2004's The Bridesmaid (never to be confused with the comedy Bridesmaids!) on Prime. [Note: It's been pointed out to me that Les Bonnes Femmes is set to expire on July 31—so catch it soon.]

New July Titles

Where Netflix this month seemed all about shedding as many older titles as possible, Amazon looks to be doing just the opposite, adding an impressive mix of genuine classics, public domain flicks, TV shows, and a diverse blend of 1980s and '90s content. In some ways the service has one-upped its larger competitor by acquiring a number of Netflix's recent castoffs, including King Kong (1976), the original The Odd Couple (1968), and David Cronenberg's Shivers (1975).

CLASSICS

Classic (i.e., pre-1982) movies are growing into one of Prime's unsung strengths. In addition to the older titles it often shares with Netflix, the service continues to add an assortment of rarely seen potboilers like Hour of the Gun (1967), The Red House (1947), and Three Came Home (1950), along with bona fide classics such as Howard Hawks' majestic Red River (1948) and, not one, but three Marilyn Monroe pictures (Bus Stop, Niagara, and How to Marry a Millionaire). There's also the campy fun of 1966's feature-length Batman movie, plus Abbott & Costello fooling around in 1952's Jack and the Beanstalk (you know, for kids). A summary of exclusive classics wouldn't be complete without mentioning Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (1964) and the Roger Corman biker flick, The Wild Angels (1966), starring Peter Fonda, Nancy Sinatra, and Bruce Dern.

For June: Coppola & Kubrick In, PBS Out

[6/19 NOTE: It appears most of the PBS shows have now been renewed.]

In a month that saw the arrival of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980), and a handful of classics that include People Will Talk (1951), Roman Holiday (1953), and The Paper Chase (1973), you would think there would be cause for celebration among subscribers to Amazon Prime (especially considering the ongoing scarcity of Kubrick films on streaming services).

Unfortunately, if you're a PBS fan, the more significant story is the scheduled June 13 June 20 departure of a large number of programs, including such stalwarts as Nova, Frontline, American Experience, and the many acclaimed documentaries from Ken and Ric Burns. Given the recent loss of nearly all things Comedy Central—plus a large swath of BBC content earlier this year—that leaves some sizable gaps in Prime's TV catalog. Sure, HBO and original Amazon series continue to grow, and there's still a decent mix of FOX, USA, and other network content, but that will be of little consolation to diehard comedy and public television fans.

Recent Arrivals, Upcoming Departures

When HBO first announced its HBO Now standalone service, the concern among many Prime subscribers was whether this meant the end of HBO's presence on Prime Instant Video. Would the contract on the service's current shows simply be allowed to run out, with no new content made available? If the additions of the last few days are any indication, you can relax: it looks like you've still got time to catch up on The Wire and The Sopranos—not to mention some other great shows that are now available, including the first seasons of Girls, Veep, and the very unlucky Dustin Hoffman-starrer, Luck.

Arrivals (HBO series)

Banshee: Season 1 (2013) (Cinemax)
Girls: Season 1 (2012)
Hung: Seasons 1-3 (2009-11)
In Treatment: Seasons 2-3 (2009-10)
John From Cincinnati: Season 1 (2007)
Luck: Season 1 (2011)


Treme: Season 4 (2013)
True Blood: Season 4 (2011)
Veep: Season 1 (2012)

Also among the new HBO titles is 2012's Game Change, with Julianne Moore kicking butt as Sarah Palin and Ed Harris as John McCain. This joins a number of other quality HBO films on Prime, many of which can be found toward the bottom of the Only On Prime page.

Welcome to What's On PRIME Now!

Similar to What's On NETFLIX Now?, this blog will focus on what's new, notable, and expiring on Amazon Prime. Since there don't seem to be a lot of sites dedicated to tracking Amazon's comings and goings, it seemed like a good idea to gather all this info in one place. The basic setup is the same as on sister site WoNN, but for now the emphasis will be less on critical commentary and more on providing simple lists of titles (which is what most visitors seem interested in anyway).

If you've used both services, you know that Amazon and Netflix stream a lot of the same content. Between the two, the consensus is that Netflix holds the edge in terms of exclusives and overall back catalog, while Amazon gives you the handy option to buy any titles not included with Prime.

But Amazon—beyond its much-heralded HBO contract (see: The Wire, The Sopranos), BBC America shows (e.g., Orphan Black) and growing stable of original series (the award-winning Transparent)—also offers desirable titles of its own. These include new releases like Listen Up Phillip and Michel Gondry's Mood Indigo, interesting indie fare (Monte Hellman's Road to Nowhere), obscure foreign cinema (some admittedly not so great), a surprising number of old exploitation films (Claudia Jennings in Unholy Rollers!), and a catalog of classics that nicely complements Netflix's rapidly shrinking pre-1980 list—for example, noirs like Dark Passage and westerns like Broken Arrow Red River and The Magnificent Seven.

The blog's priority will be noting these types of titles as they appear (or are discovered), then adding the best of them to the exclusive Only On Prime page.

Speaking of which, here are April's PRIME ONLY debuts:

Adaptation (2002)
The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland (1999)
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)
Bits and Pieces (1996)
Delicacy (2012)
Dick Cavett's Watergate (2014)
Forever's End (2014)
Ken Burns: The Roosevelts - An Intimate History (2014)
Lay the Favorite (2012)
Little Women (1994)
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997)
My Old Lady (2014)
Road to Nowhere (2011)
Submarine (2011)
Time Scanners: Season 1 (2014)
Troy: Director's Cut (2004)
When Harry Met Sally (1989)

Note that PRIME ONLY in this case simply means "not on Netflix." Some of these titles may show up on Hulu or other sites, but for now that's not within my capacity to track. For a complete list of new arrivals, be sure to check out the New This Month page. And of course titles scheduled to leave within the next 30 days should be listed on Expiring Soon.

As with its companion site, What's On PRIME Now? will be as thorough (and current) as possible. But since I only have one set of eyes—and so many hours in a day—a bit of help is always welcome. If any of you stumble upon titles you deem list-worthy, please don't hesitate to let me know via the comments section on the appropriate page. Not only will I be grateful, but so will everyone who comes here to see what's what. Thanks!

To readers old and new, I hope you enjoy your visit. If you do, please spread the word to other Prime users (the URL www.whatsonprimenow.com will take them here). You may also want to take a moment to subscribe—using the little box up top or via an RSS feed—so you can be alerted to new posts as they're published. I did consider porting over all my WoNN subscribers, but of course not everyone has both Netflix and Prime, so the choice is up to you.

As always, happy streaming!

David