(Welcome to Hidden Streams, a column focused on the best older movies available to stream on your favorite services, including Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and more.)
In this edition of Hidden Streams, you’ll find plenty of golden (and not-so-golden) oldies to check out or revisit, including one of Brian De Palma’s best movies, an under-seen vampire classic, Larry Cohen’s wild dragon horror movie, and more – and nothing that was released after 1985.
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(Welcome to Hidden Streams, a column focused on the best older movies available to stream on your favorite services, including Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and more.)
In this edition of Hidden Streams, you’ll find plenty of golden (and not-so-golden) oldies to check out or revisit, including a Dutch erotic thriller, space vampires, another Herzog gem, and more – and nothing that was released after 1985.
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(Welcome to The Unpopular Opinion, a series where a writer goes to the defense of a much-maligned film or sets their sights on a movie seemingly beloved by all. In this edition: M. Night Shyamalan‘s critically lambasted Glass is actually good!)
Reactions from critics to the Unbreakable trilogy have grown increasingly divisive with each film – not unlike reactions to M. Night Shyamalan’s work as a whole. It was only years later, after the subsequent surge of studio attempts to make “gritty” and “grounded” superhero movies, that appreciation for Unbreakable began to swell. And despite being hailed as part of Shyamalan’s comeback, Split received more negative reviews than its predecessor upon its release in 2017.
Two years later, it’s hardly surprising that Shyamalan’s trilogy-capper, Glass, has fared far worse among most critics than the films before it, and yet I find it to be a near-perfect culmination – and escalation – of this particular narrative. Glass continues the subversion and dissection of the superhero genre, while continuing to explore the compelling thematic elements at work in its predecessors – particularly those in Split. The cleverness of Glass extends beyond its mere plot points and transcends the expected Shyamalan twists, with a thoughtful aesthetic and self-aware implementation of the filmmaker’s more heavy-handed tendencies.
This post contains spoilers for Glass.
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(Welcome to Hidden Streams, a column focused on the best older movies available to stream on your favorite services, including Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and more.)
The death of FilmStruck might make it harder for cinephiles to dig those older hidden gems out of the overwhelming piles of streaming titles. From lesser-known classics to cult favorites, we’ve put together a handy guide to some of the best older films you can stream on the various platforms. In this edition of Hidden Streams, you’ll find plenty of golden (and not-so-golden) oldies to check out or revisit, including psychological terror, erotic horror, a fantastic Werner Herzog double feature, and more – and nothing that was released after 1985.
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(Welcome to Hidden Streams, a column focused on the best older movies available to stream on your favorite services, including Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and more.)
The death of FilmStruck might make it harder for cinephiles to dig those older hidden gems out of the overwhelming piles of streaming titles. From lesser-known classics to cult favorites, we’ve put together a handy guide to some of the best older films you can stream on the various platforms. In this edition of Hidden Streams, you’ll find plenty of golden (and not-so-golden) oldies to check out or revisit – and nothing that was released after 1985.
Read More »
Posted on Wednesday, December 26th, 2018 by Britt Hayes
‘Tis the season for Grinches and Gremlins, for leg lamps and Clark Griswold, and for the annual debate over the quality (or lack thereof) of Love, Actually – an argument that has grown more boring (and annoying) than the annual declaration that Die Hard is actually a Christmas movie. But in this house, ’tis the season for Stanley Kubrick; be it the wintry and claustrophobic familial terror of The Shining, or the harrowing yuletide sex odyssey taken by Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut. Kubrick’s final film hardly needs justification for its place in the Christmas movie canon (many others have successfully argued for this classification). What could – and will – be argued, however, is that Eyes Wide Shut is the best Christmas movie of our lifetime. Read More »
It’s been a hot minute since we last checked in with the young heroes of Marvel’s Runaways, which debuted last year on Hulu. The series, based on the Marvel comics of the same name, follows a group of teens who discover that their parents are part of an evil supervillain group/cult known as the PRIDE. Despite their differences, the kids band together to cope with this life-altering information… and try to stop their parents. In case you need a refresher, here’s everything you need to know about the first season of Marvel’s Runaways before Season 2 premieres on December 21.
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(Welcome to Hidden Streams, a column focused on the best older movies available to stream on your favorite services, including Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and more.)
The demise of FilmStruck might make it harder for cinephiles to dig those older hidden gems out of the overwhelming piles of streaming titles. From lesser-known classics to cult favorites, we’ve put together a handy guide to some of the best older films you can stream on the various platforms.
In this edition of Hidden Streams, you’ll find plenty of golden (and not-so-golden) oldies to check out or revisit, including a transcendent concert documentary, a rowdy girl gang ahead of its time, a great Stephen King adaptation, and more – and nothing that was released after 1985.
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(Welcome to The Soapbox, the space where we get loud, feisty, political, and opinionated about anything and everything. In this edition: why have people embraced the troubled musician in A Star is Born, but not the troubled musician in Vox Lux?)
The story goes like this: A world-famous musician who can’t get out from under their traumatic past struggles with an addiction that threatens to destroy their relationships. Their narcissism and recklessness are crudely exacerbated by drugs and alcohol. They are perhaps only, as the narration might inform us, marginally talented, and yet they endure. That unnamable something – the “it” factor, that sparkle, that je ne sais quois – has kept their fans adoring long past a reasonable expiration date.
That description could be attributed to prominent characters in two films released this year; while one of them has drawn near-consistent praise, the other has been criticized as being aggressively unlikable. The biggest difference between the two is, perhaps unsurprisingly, their gender.
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(Welcome to The Unpopular Opinion, a series where a writer goes to the defense of a much-maligned film or sets their sights on a movie seemingly beloved by all. In this edition: the sequel to Wayne’s World is actually better than the beloved original.)
In 1993, just one short year after Wayne’s World transitioned from SNL favorite to box office hit, Paramount unleashed the sequel. Despite the fact that Wayne’s World 2 received mixed reviews and couldn’t seem to attract as many fans as the first film, it remains a hilarious and highly-underrated sequel – a delightfully silly follow-up that ups the ante while wryly (or obnoxiously, given the behind-the-scenes drama) delivering a formulaic sequel; a sort of self-aware cinematic Mad Libs. In my mind, Wayne’s World 2 belongs to the small group of comedy sequels that are better than their predecessors, like Problem Child 2 and Gremlins 2. At the very least, it should be considered just as great as the first film.
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