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.]