January's New and Departing Titles

A lot of great movies found their way to Prime since the beginning of January—far more than are departing, fortunately. But with the end of the month fast approaching, let's first tackle:

WHAT'S EXPIRING

Many of these, strangely, are also among the new arrivals (including the always grin-inducing Buckaroo Banzai, David Cronenberg's The Dead Zone, and the original Sabrina), but in general this relatively sparse list constitutes the usual rotating EPIX titles that used to pop on and off Netflix with semi-annual regularity (and are now doing the same over on Hulu). So if you're not sure you'll get a chance to (re)watch Apocalypse Now or Glengarry Glen Ross this month, don't worry: you'll likely see them streaming again by summer. Here's the full list of notable departures:

January 28

That Sugar Film (2015)

January 30

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (1984)
Apocalypse Now (1979) - Review
Charlie Bartlett (2008)
The Dead Zone (1983)
Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
Godzilla (1998)
Hammett (1982)
Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man (1991)
Jennifer 8 (1992)
Kill Me Again (1989)
Kiss the Girls (1997)
Licence to Kill (1989) - Review
One from the Heart (1982) - Review
Panic (2000)
Sabrina (1954) - Review
Wild Bill (1995)

December's New Titles

A nice batch of movies debuted on Amazon Prime in the last week, mixing new releases with classics, silents, foreign, and titles by some of cinema's top directors. There are horror films, musicals, blaxpoitation flicks, and even a lone James Bond movie (but catch it quick—it expires at the end of the month).

Nick Cave broods in 20,000 Days on Earth

Recent releases

Among new and recent releases are the acclaimed Nick Cave documentary, 20,000 Days on Earth, Chris Rock's autobiographical comedy, Top Five, a new-ish film from Swimming Pool director Francois Ozon, In the House, plus a brand-new one starring Catherine Deneuve, In the Courtyard.

20,000 Days on Earth (2014)
Casual Encounters (2015)
The Details (2012)
In the Courtyard (2015)
In the House (2012)
Top Five (2014)

New Arrivals, Upcoming Departures

Excalibur arrives

Lots of activity on Prime in the past week, with new titles that include a decent mix of recent releases, documentaries, and a few classics for good measure, including Broadway Danny Rose, Excalibur, The Great Santini, A Little Romance, and Near Dark. It's a bit of wash, however, when you consider that November's departing titles include such titles as Tim Burton's two Batman films, Gremlins, Martin Scorsese's epic Hugo, and an indisputable horror/sci-fi classic, 1956's Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Be sure to look over the full lists below as you plan your (non-football) holiday viewing. Have a happy Thanksgiving!

Recent Releases

In the Name of My Daughter (2014)
Only God Forgives (2013)
Partisan (2014)

Classics and Other Notables

The Amazing Transparent Man (1960)
Babes in Toyland (1986)
The Beast Must Die (1974)
Broadway Danny Rose (1984) - Review
The Careless Years (1957) - starring a young Dean Stockwell
Excalibur (1981)
The Great Santini (1989)
Hero's Island (1962)
The Last of the Mohicans (1992)
A Little Romance (1979)
Near Dark (1987)
One on One (1979)

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)

Adding to the Horror

Despite the loss of a number of horror films last week, Amazon didn't entirely forget the need for Halloween frights, adding several other scary titles to its Prime roster—including the first three Scream flicks, a slew of Hellraisers, and the suspiciously terrible-sounding Bloody Indulgent and Just the Vampire Hunter.

Also in the (non-horror) mix are the acclaimed 2010 Will Ferrell comedy-drama, Everything Must Go—based on a Raymond Carver short story—last year's Hunger Games movie, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, and Noah Baumbach's excellent comedy for grownups, the recent While We're Young.

Bonus title: the early Nicole Kidman short, 1987's Room to Move, an engaging family drama directed for Australian TV by Flirting's John Duigan, which snuck onto Prime on 9/25.

The full list of last week's notable arrivals:

October 21

Everything Must Go (2010)

October 22

Bloody Indulgent (2015)
Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice (1993)
Dark Places (2015)
Halloween Vi: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)
Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992)
Hellraiser IV: Bloodline (1996)
Hellraiser V: Inferno (2000)
Hellraiser VI: Hellseeker (2002)
Hellraiser VIII: Hellworld (2005)
Just the Vampire Hunter (2015)
Scream (1996)
Scream 2 (1997)
Scream 3 (2004)

October 23

The Dead Hate the Living (2000)
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 (2014)
While We're Young (2015)

From September 25: Room to Move (1987)

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.

New in September: Movie Overload

Up In the Air

I've been trying to finish this post since last week, but there have been so many new additions to Amazon Prime since then, it's taken me much longer than expected. While Netflix is busy shedding older catalog titles left and right in favor of exclusive content, Prime continues to bulk up its film library with an enormous assortment of new arrivals. A number of them (such as The Captains, The Blair Witch Project, and Up In the Air) also just showed up on Netflix, but unlike Netflix—who's letting its licensing agreement with Epix expire on September 30—Prime won't be losing those titles at the end of the month. Amazon also seems to have picked up a major chunk of the hundreds of 2nd- and 3rd-tier older titles Netflix began shedding without warning back in July.

Here for one month only

That doesn't mean Amazon is entirely off the hook, however. Once again Prime picked up a number of older films that already come with an expiration date. Those include notables like Street Smart, The Gambler, Racing with the Moon, and West Side Story. Why this behavior, which also occurred last month, is being repeated is a mystery (to those of us on the outside, anyway), but we can only hope it doesn't become the new normal. In the meantime, here are the new titles marked to expire on 9/29. If their status changes or you find any others, please let me know in the comments.

The Bellboy (1960)
The Gambler (1974)
Ghoulies (1984) / Ghoulies II (1988)
Invasion U.S.A. (1985)
Nobody's Fool (1995)
Racing with the Moon (1984)
Sliver (1993)
Some Kind of Hero (1982)
Street Smart (1987)
West Side Story (1961)

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.

HBO, Comedy, and...Troma Time!

If you like really bad movies with lots of trashy titles (or is that lots of trashy movies with really bad titles?), then this new batch of Amazon Prime arrivals is for you. I can't claim to be a big follower of Le Cinema du Lloyd Kaufman (a.k.a. Troma Entertainment), but I'll always appreciate his influential role in the vanishing art of low-budget exploitation cinema. How much less rich would the world be without movies like Demented Death Farm Massacre, Maniac Nurses Find Ecstasy, Blood Sisters of Lesbian Sin, and Croaked: Frog Monster from Hell?

Each of us must make peace with this question for ourselves, but if you're looking for a little something to cleanse the palate between big-budget summer gloss, then you won't do worse (or is that better?) than settling into the La-Z-Boy with a brewskie and/or barf bag and queuing up one or more of the below titles. Given the number of imported titles, along with the lack of such (cough) classics (cough) as Tromeo & Juliet, Class of Nuke 'em High, and Toxic Avenger, my guess is that many, if not all, of these were distributed by Troma as opposed to actually being produced by them. Which means they could be much better—or far, far worse—than even the usual Kaufman fare.

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.

May's Noteworthy Arrivals

Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary

Some interesting PRIME ONLY entries this month, especially for fans of cult and art films. If you like things weird, wacky, and highly original, it's tough to go wrong with anything by director Guy Maddin. He's the guy who directed 2004's hoot, The Saddest Music in the World (probably his best-known film), as well as Careful (1992) and the highly regarded ballet adaptation, Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary (2003), both of which are now streaming.

Also falling into the weird category are a handful of cult horror flicks released under the Mutant Sorority Pictures label (which for some of you should be recommendation enough):

Death Laid an Egg (1968)
Demon Seed, a.k.a, Satan's Mistress, Dark Eyes, Demon Rage (1982) - not to be confused with Donald Cammel's far superior 1977 film starring Julie Christie
Jail Bait Babysitter (1977)
Satan's School for Girls (1973)

New & Expiring

A few new notable indies arrived on Amazon Prime in the last few days:

Bathory: Countess of Blood (2008) - starring Anna Friel as the (misunderstood) bloodthirsty Hungarian
Come Undone (2010) - not to be confused with the 2000 movie of the same name on Netflix
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: Extended Edition (2011)
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Next: Extended Edition (2011)
The Girl Who Played with Fire: Extended Edition (2011)
Poison (1991) - controversial film from director Todd Haynes (Far from Heaven, I'm Not There)
Pussy Riot: The Movement (2015) - documentary on the eponymous Russian punk rock feminists

There are also a number of other new Film Movement, Monterey Media, and Zeitgeist titles, most of which I've never heard of but are exclusive to Prime and look interesting.

And here's what's about to expire, watchable through the dates below. Note that a number of these will also be expiring from Netflix.

April 29

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) PRIME ONLY
Airplane! (1980) / Airplane II: The Sequel (1982)
Bitter Moon (1994)
Boys Don't Cry (1999)
The Brothers Bloom (2009)
Cecil B. Demented (2000)
Dirty Girl (2011) PRIME ONLY
Fantastic Voyage (1966)
Finding Forrester (2000)
Hitch (2005)
The Jewel of the Nile (1985)
Kicking and Screaming (1995)
Life Is Beautiful (1998)
Little Odessa (1995)
Permanent Midnight (1998) PRIME ONLY
Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2009) PRIME ONLY
Ulee's Gold (1997)

April 30

Annie (1982)
Flight (2012)

May 3

Skyfall (2012)

May 10

Robot & Frank (2012)

New Arrivals: Let's Get Literary

Here are the latest titles to hit Amazon Prime, most of which aren't available on Netflix (although a couple of them, The Polar Express and Sherrybaby, used to be).

9 Full Moons (2014) PRIME ONLY
Belle Epine (2010) PRIME ONLY
Hitler's Children (2011)
Personal Effects (2009) PRIME ONLY
The Polar Express (2004) PRIME ONLY
Sherrybaby (2006) PRIME ONLY
Sieze the Day (1986)* PRIME ONLY
Winnebago Man (2010)
Who Am I This Time? (1982) PRIME ONLY
With Friends Like These (1998) PRIME ONLY

Women In Trouble (2009) PRIME ONLY

I've long been an admirer of the short film, Who Am I This Time?. A charming slice of Americana directed by Jonathan Demme for PBS's American Playhouse in 1982, it stars Christopher Walken and Susan Sarandon as small-town actors who learn to see each other through their roles in an amateur production of A Streetcar Named Desire. Walken is especially effective as a shy introvert who transforms into a god-like Stanley Kowalski when he hits the stage.