Leaving in December

Dancing off into the new year...

Sadly, a lot of good flicks are leaving Amazon Prime this week (although not nearly as many as are leaving Netflix—yikes). Among these are some genuine classics, including The French Connection (1971), Gandhi (1982), It Happened One Night (1934), On the Waterfront (1954), and Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Modern classics include Eternal Sunshine of Spotless Mind (1994), Unforgiven (1992), When Harry Met Sally (1989), and Woody Allen's recent hit, Midnight in Paris (2011).

Speaking of the Woodman, two of his earlier comedies, Play It Again, Sam (1972) and Broadway Danny Rose (1984), are also departing, as are films by auteurs Robert Altman (3 Women), Terrence Malick (Days of Heaven), Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs), and Sydney Pollack (The Way We Were).

Some of these losses will be offset in January by such newcomers as An Affair to Remember, Dazed and Confused, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and Serpico, but those on again/off again EPIX titles don't make up for what may prove to be some long-term departures.

Here's the full list of what's been reported to be expiring before the new year:

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)

Leaving in October: Docs, Horror, More

Sad to say, quite a few notable titles are expiring from Prime this month, many of which will be leaving as early as October 23 (as opposed to the more typical last day of the month). So if you're looking to celebrate Halloween with a good horror flick, note that several choice selections will be available on Prime only through 10/23, including standouts The Host (2006), Monsters (2010), and Trollhunter (2011).

The visual (and emotional) feast that is Melancholia

Also taking a major hit on the 23rd are documentaries, with the departure of such esteemed nonfictioners as Crazy Love (2007), Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005), Food, Inc. (2008), I'm Still Here (2010), Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2012), Magic Trip (2011), and Man On Wire (2008)—the inspiration for Robert Zemeckis' latest, The Walk. Horror buffs may want to check out Birth of the Living Dead (2013), a Halloween-appropriate doc about George Romero, creator of the Living Dead movies—which expires two days sooner, on October 21.

Other titles worth noting: Lynn Shelton's Humpday (2009), Lars von Trier's brilliant Melancholia (2011), the Spanish time-travel thriller Timecrimes (2007), 1992's dark, critically lauded Batman: The Animated Series, the three Back to the Future movies, Fritz Lang's You Only Live Once (1937), Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Joss Whedon's charming Much Ado About Nothing (2013), and the cult sci-fi series, Warehouse 13.

Strangely, this month's genres and expiration dates are mostly in alignment, so I've grouped and sorted them accordingly. See how they all break down on the lists below:

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.

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)

August Departures: The New and the (Very) Old

Fallen Angels

Strange goings-on at Prime this month. As mentioned in my August 6 post, a significant portion of this month's arrivals also number among this month's departures. Most of these are Paramount titles, some quite notable—not just for their quality but for their scarcity among the streaming ranks. So now is the time if you've been waiting to check out Ironweed (1987), Mel Gibson's Hamlet (1990), Jane Campion's Portrait of a Lady (1997), the classic Johnny Guitar (1954), or Leo and Kate in Sam Mendes' 1960s drama, Revolutionary Road (2009).

If all those are a bit too highbrow for you, then other one-month stays include the more low-rent (but possibly more pleasurable) 10 to Midnight (1983), Bolero (1984), Hannie Caulder (1972), A Show of Force (1990), and Walking Tall (1973). Meanwhile, your kids (or the one still inside you) will soon be without Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown (1977), The Monster Squad (1987), and the evergreen Charlotte's Web (1973). All of these will be streaming through midnight on August 30 (full list below).

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.