June Expirations: Riding Into the Sunset

For those of you who also subscribe to Netflix, most of the below titles may look familiar—the majority of them are also streaming there. But not all of them are expiring from both services (a bit confusing, yes).

In addition to the shared titles that are expiring this month, a number of PRIME ONLY movies are also leaving, five of which belong to the increasingly beleaguered category of Genuine Classics. That means fans of westerns like 1958's The Big Country, starring Gregory Peck, and 1950's Broken Arrow, with Jimmy Stewart—not to mention John Ford's 1939 Drums Along the Mohawk and the John Wayne-starrer Brannigan (1975)—should move those titles to the top of their watchlists right away (especially The Big Country, which clocks in at almost three hours).

If you've already seen those but are still craving something less current than the usual streaming fare, check out the more obscure Lily in Love (1984), starring Christopher Plummer and Maggie Smith, or the Alistair Maclean thriller, When Eight Bells Toll (1971), featuring a young Anthony Hopkins in a rare action-adventure role. Some of the more highbrow critics championed Paul Schrader's Douglas Sirk-like melodrama, Forever Mine (1999), but I found it a bit hard to take (even with generous helpings of Gretchen Mol's many charms). View at your own risk.

Here's the full list of what's expiring in the next few days. Feel free to add your own in the comments below.

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.

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.

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.

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