People often assume that ‘every movie ever made’ is available to watch via streaming, if you know where to look. Sadly, despite the growing number of streaming platforms serving film fans, countless films are currently unavailable. Here are 15 of the best, and – assuming you were smart enough to hang on to your DVD/Blu-ray player – how you can watch them.
Happiness (1998)
Another film with loosely interconnected characters and an outstanding ensemble cast – including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Lara Flynn Boyle, Ben Gazzara and Dylan Baker, Todd Solondz’s pitch-dark comedy-drama explores the lives of three sisters: Trish (Cynthia Stevenson), whose husband (Baker) is a pedophile; Helen (Boyle), a successful but lonely author who forms a connection with an obscene caller (Hoffman); and Joy (Jane Adams), a mousy educator who becomes involved with a Russian student (Chernobyl’s Jared Harris).
Where to watch: You can find it on DVD, but the Criterion Blu-ray is pure joy.
Short Cuts (1993)
With a cast that includes Tim Robbins, Julianne Moore, Matthew Modine, Jack Lemmon, Lily Tomlin, Lily Taylor, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tom Waits and Robert Downey Jr, you’d think Robert Altman’s beautifully constructed portmanteau film would be a must-stream. Inspired by nine short stories and a poem by Raymond Carver, the film vividly examines and frequently intertwines the lives of 22 principal characters, including a toxic traffic cop (Robbins), a children’s party clown (Anne Archer) and a phone sex worker (Leigh).
Where to watch: Again, it’s available on DVD, but we’d cut straight to the Criterion Blu-ray.
Ridicule (1996)
‘I’m told you can make a witticism on any subject. How about me?’ says King Louis XVI. ‘But your majesty, the king is not a subject.’ In Patrice Leconte’s razor-sharp comedy of manners, set in the periwigged and powder-faced 18th century, an impoverished nobleman seeking finance for an irrigation project that will save his people, is forced to ingratiate himself with the court of the last king of France using the only currency that counts: witticisms and withering put-downs.
Where to watch: Best buy a pre-owned DVD from eBay, as the only VPN-friendly European streamers (France and Switzerland) may not include English subtitles.
Coming Home (1978)
Jon Voight and Jane Fonda both won Oscars, from eight nominations, for Hal Ashby’s unforgettable story, set a decade earlier, in which Fonda plays a volunteer at a Vietnam veteran’s hospital who falls in love with a wheelchair-bound soldier (Voight) while her husband (Bruce Dern), a captain in the Marine Corps, is still ‘in country’. One of the earliest clear-eyed, straight-shooting reckonings with the Vietnam War Hollywood produced, it holds up as a searing indictment of the US war machine and its human cost.
Where to watch: It’s available on DVD and Blu-ray.
Two-Lane Blacktop (1971)
Thirty years before The Fast and the Furious took a look under the hood of LA’s street-racing subculture, maverick filmmaker Monte Hellman cast singer-songwriter James Taylor (‘The Driver’) and Beach Boy Dennis Wilson (‘The Mechanic’) as a couple of longhair speed freaks who set out to race old-timer ‘G.T.O.’ (Warren Oates), but wind up forming a kind of surrogate, post-hippie family. Stripped down like a disassembled carburettor, it makes Easy Rider look like Smokey and the Bandit.
Where to watch: It’s out there on DVD, but if your Blu-ray player can handle multiple regions, Eureka’s Blu-ray – supervised by Hellman himself – is sublime.
Vanishing Point (1971)
While not quite as pared-down as Hellman’s film, Richard Sarafian’s classic road movie sees former cop and race car driver Kowalski (Barry Newman) resolving to drive a white new-model Dodge Challenger the 1,500 miles from Colorado to California on a mysterious self-imposed deadline – or die trying. With half the California Highway Patrol on his trail and a blind disc jockey on his side, only the desert stands between him and the horizon.
Where to watch: It’s available on DVD and Blu-ray, most with director’s commentary.
Taste of Fear (1961)
Christopher Lee’s personal favourite of the films produced by British horror studio Hammer, and easily one of the best written, Taste of Fear – aka Scream of Fear – stars the reliably brilliant Susan Strasberg as a wheelchair-bound woman who, upon the death of her mother, goes to live with her father. Her father is away on business, her stepmother says. So why does she keep seeing – or imagine she sees – his dead body? Are her stepmother and her father’s friend (Lee) trying to drive her insane? Or is she simply imagining things?
Where to watch: Taste of Fear is available on DVD and Indicator’s packed region-free Blu-ray.
Pink Flamingos (1972)
More than half a century on, John Waters’ breakthrough film has lost none of its trashy, transgressive potency – lord knows what happened when Waters’ memorable guest spot on The Simpsons sent kids scurrying to devour his back catalogue. One-of-a-kind Divine and her family have been dubbed the ‘filthiest people alive’ by a Baltimore tabloid. But when a local couple (Mink Stole and David Lochary) threaten to steal their crown, things get very, very messy – especially in the infamous dog-poop-eating scene.
Where to watch: Some 25th anniversary DVDs are still around, but Criterion’s Blu-ray is, well, divine.
Norma Rae (1979)
One of the greatest films about union organisation, Norma Rae won Sally Field her first of two Best Actress Oscars and was also nominated for Best Picture. Field plays the eponymous union organizer, loosely based on the real-life of North Carolina textile worker Crystal Lee Sutton, who was fired from her job for forming a trade union and calling a strike to protest against working conditions. It’s inspiring stuff, and one of Hollywood’s rare portrayals of a trade union in a positive light.
Where to watch: Look for a DVD on eBay or fire up your VPN and stream it on Apple TV in Germany.
Matewan (1987)
Labor organizing takes a bloody turn in John Sayles’ powerful true-life story about coal miners in the titular West Virginia town, whose 1920 strike was put down with deadly force by goons hired by the mining company – a bloody counterprotest known today as the Matewan Massacre. In his debut film, Chris Cooper displays the talent that would later earn him an Oscar, with solid support from James Earl Jones. Mary McDonnell and David Strathairn. Arguably the greatest union movie of all time, it’s criminally under-seen.
Where to watch: Criterion’s extras-packed DVD has recently been upgraded with a Blu-ray, preserving Sayles’ audio commentary and adding two terrific new documentaries.
Airheads (1994)
In this largely forgotten ‘90s comedy from Heathers director Michael Lehmann, three low-IQ metalheads – Brendan Fraser, Steve Buscemi and Adam Sandler – break into a rock station (based in ‘Nakatomi Plaza’, aka the former 20th Century Fox building), in a bid to get their demo played. But when DJ (Joe Mantegna) and ponytailed manager (This is Spinal Tap’s Michael McKean) refuse, they take the whole station hostage. Ernie Hudson, Chris Farley, Michael ‘Kramer’ Richards, David Arquette and Harold Ramis add to the fun.
Where to watch: The long OOP Blu-ray now fetches upwards of $200 on eBay, so you’re best bet is a second-hand DVD – a snip at under twenty bucks.
The Great War (1959)
It’s a crime that Big Deal on Madonna Street director Mario Monicelli’s tragi-comedy La Grande Guerra, about Italians fighting Austrians in World War I, isn’t better known. While not quite on the level of All Quiet on the Western Front or Paths of Glory, it’s a wonderful picaresque in which conscript Giovanni (Vittorio Gassman) and volunteer Oreste (Alberto Sordi) connive, scheme and chance their way through the war. At least, until they can no longer escape a showdown with the enemy.
Where to watch: Even in Italy, DVDs are hard to come by, but with a VPN you can stream it in France. Just be sure to check it has English subtitles!
Head-On (2004)
It’s hardly a meet-cute when hard-drinking widower Cahit (Birol Ünel) and beautiful, scarred Sibel (Sibel Kekilli) meet in a clinic following their failed suicide attempts. But despite Cahit’s initial rejection of Sibel’s sudden proposal of marriage – his Turkish ancestry might assuage her parents’ fears about her lifestyle – they engage in a marriage of convenience. This suits the damaged pair as they go about their hedonistic lifestyle until they realise that even if they care for nothing in this life, they might just have feelings for each other.
Where to watch: Pick up the UK DVD, taking care not to accidentally buy the sexually-explicit 2008 film with the same title (though that’s also very good).
The Depot of the Dead (1959)
Rebuilding Poland after World War II requires trucking timber through some treacherous conditions in this gripping adaptation of Marek Hlasko’s acclaimed novel Nastepny do Raju (Next Stop – Paradise). The nerve-shredding ice trucking is made more gruelling by the frosty relations between the drivers, who have survived the Nazis only to find themselves under the yoke of Soviet rule. As bleak and forbidding as a Polish winter, it’s a seldom-seen, under-celebrated existential rumination that feels part Wages of Fear, part lost Bergman.
Where to watch: Track down the region-free Polish Blu-ray, released under the Polish title Baza Ludzi Umarlych (‘The Damned Roads’).
The Day After (1983)
The film that scared Ronald Reagan so much, he called his Soviet counterpart to launch disarmament talks, Nicholas Meyer’s ‘what if?’ warning about nuclear Armageddon spends a dread-inducing hour introducing us to the residents of a small Kansas town – including Jason Robards, Steve Guttenberg, JoBeth Williams and John Lithgow – before The Bomb drops. While not as devastatingly bleak as its British contemporary, Threads, it remains a terrifyingly plausible and powerful portrait of the aftermath of a nuclear exchange.
Where to watch: At press time, you could find a decent ‘rip’ on YouTube, but if you want a physical copy, be sure it’s the official German Blu-ray, not a ‘print on demand’ rip-off.
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