A couple months ago I subscribed to a new movie streaming service called FilmStruck. It has all kinds of classic and critically-acclaimed movies, including the Criterion collection, indie films and foreign films, along with bonus material like hosted introductions and short interviews. It's basically like Netflix for film lovers. It wasn't available on any devices I owned, so I used my credit card reward points to buy an Amazon Fire TV player just so I could watch FilmStruck. And it's been worth it!
There's also a FilmStruck blog at http://streamline.filmstruck.com/. Several times a week they write about a movie in their collection and provide all kinds of interesting background information. This has been required reading for me; I've discovered films I would otherwise have never heard about.
I've watched over a dozen movies so far. Here are some of the best:
Dodsworth (1936)
This was the first movie I watched on FilmStruck, and I have yet to see anything better. I was shocked that a movie made in the 1930s could be this good. The FilmStruck blog wrote about it on New Year's Eve, framing it as a film about new beginnings. It's about a rich businessman who sells his business and retires. He and his wife travel to Europe to see the world, but her insecurity about growing old starts to drive them apart. I've seen the movie described as "a mature and intelligent marital drama" and I think that sums it up. The acting by everyone is incredible, and the cinematography in some scenes was so good I still think about it. Dodsworth was directed by William Wyler, who I'd never heard of, but he is apparently one of Hollywood's greatest directors. I've seen several people refer to his film The Best Years of Our Lives as being a masterpiece, but I have yet to watch it. (It won Best Picture in 1947, beating out It's a Wonderful Life.)
World on a Wire (1973)
I found this movie just by browsing the FilmStruck catalog. It's a made-for-TV German movie and is basically The Matrix, about 25 years before The Matrix was made. Instead of focusing on people in the matrix, it focuses on the people who created it. They simulate their society inside a computer and use it to predict consumer trends and election results. The movie has been described as "gloriously paranoid" and I think that is an understatement. Everyone is being watched by someone else. And the cinematography is on steroids! The camera never seems to stop panning, zooming, tracking, or circling. And mirrors are everywhere! Nearly every scene has one and you constantly see reflections and reflections within reflections within reflections! It's crazy, but I loved it. There are lots of Kubrick references throughout the movie, too.
It seemed odd that this was a made-for-TV movie, but one of the bonus interviews explained that in Germany in 1973 there were a grand total of 2 TV channels: channel 1 and channel 2. By making it for TV, they had a much larger audience than they would if it was released in theaters. TV viewers also got more excited about multi-night movies ("television events"), so World on a Wire is split into two 2-hour parts. It has a rather glacial pace as a result. Still, I enjoyed the movie, and the more I thought about it afterwards, the more I liked it.
My Dinner with Andre (1981)
This is the one movie I've seen so far that I like as much as Dodsworth. Two friends meet for dinner at the beginning of the movie. They eat dinner, they talk, and they leave. That's the whole movie! It's just a 2-hour dinner conversation between two friends! I was highly skeptical that this would be good, but I read that Roger Ebert ranked it as one of the best movies of the year, so I gave it a try. While watching it I realized that it all boils down to storytelling. They're just two guys telling stories about their lives. There's no reason their stories couldn't be just as fascinating as any other movie.
Andre is played by Andre Gregory. His friend is Wallace, played by Wallace Shawn (instantly recognizable as the "Inconceivable!" guy from The Princess Bride). Andre does most of the talking, and shares the real-life experiences of Andre Gregory, the actor. He's had a very unusual life with a number of strange experiences (one of which borders on the supernatural). Wallace is the more down-to-earth guy who's led a normal life and is skeptical of some of Andre's beliefs. The film is fascinating, and makes the point that most people go through life asleep. I would like to watch this again sometime.
I learned about My Dinner with Andre on the FilmStruck blog. I hadn't heard of it before, but apparently it's a well-known movie. The blog post pointed out that The Simpsons once poked fun at it, when an episode showed a kid playing a My Dinner with Andre video game. Ha!
Finally, a few honorable mentions:
* The Baron of Arizona (1950) - Vincent Price stars in a non-horror role. It's based on the nearly unbelievable true story of a man in the late 1800's who spent years creating fake land grant documents in an attempt to con the U.S. government into believing he owned all the land in Arizona. And he nearly succeeded!
* To Be or Not to Be (1942) - A very dark comedy about Polish actors who get mixed up with a Nazi spy. The jokes about concentration camps were in shockingly poor taste, but the movie is now considered a comedy masterpiece. It has one of the funniest lines I've heard in a movie in a long time.
* Gaslight (1944) - A man marries a woman (Ingrid Bergman) and slowly drives her mad in an effort to uncover her family secrets. A young Angela Lansbury plays their maid, and both she and Ingrid won Oscars for their performances. The term gaslighting originated from this movie.
I will of course let you know if I encounter any movies better than Dodsworth!