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.

September Departures: With Guns A-blazin'

For those who don't regularly peek in at this site's Expiring Soon page, here's a quick rundown of what's departing the ranks of Amazon Prime in the next couple of days. The below dates represent the last day these titles will be streaming (as opposed to when they'll actually be gone). A number of them—including the Star Trek flicks, Racing with the Moon, and The Odd Couple—are part of Amazon's EPIX package, so in all likelihood they'll return before long.

But many others, such as Red River, The Magnificent Seven, and West Side Story, may not be so lucky. Combined with the list of 'B' westerns below, that's an awful lot of oaters for those of you who like your movies brimmin' with cowboy hats, horses, and six-shooters. So catch 'em now before they saunter off into the sunset.