Tag: streaming

Posted in: by Sean Axmaker, streaming

What to stream: ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’ on Netflix, ‘The Expanse’ returns on Amazon, ‘Tenet’ comes to VOD

Written by Sean Axmaker Leave a Comment on What to stream: ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’ on Netflix, ‘The Expanse’ returns on Amazon, ‘Tenet’ comes to VOD

Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, video-on-demand, and other streaming services …  

Viola Davis plays Ma Rainey, the mother of the blues, and Chadwick Boseman (in his final screen performance) is the fiery trumpeter in her band in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” (2020, R), a drama of music, power, ambition, and race in America set at Chicago recording studio in 1927. Tony Award-winning Broadway director George C. Wolfe helms the screen adaptation of the August Wilson play and Colman Domingo and Glynn Turman costar. Davis and Boseman are favored to get Oscar nominations. (Netflix)

“Tenet” (2020, PG-13), Christopher Nolan’s high-concept thriller starring John David Washington as a nameless agent whose mission to save the world involves the unraveling of time, is a puzzle box of a mystery with spectacular set pieces. Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, and Kenneth Branagh costar. Nolan insisted that it get a theatrical release when major theaters were closed during the Covid lockdown, where it made back a fraction of its cost. Months later, it now debuts at home. (VOD and Cable On Demand, also on DVD and Blu-ray and at Redbox)

Continue reading at Stream On Demand

Posted in: by Sean Axmaker, Contributors

The Top 10 Classics Released On Streaming Platforms In 2013

Written by Sean Axmaker

In the years since Netflix added a library of streaming titles to its disc rent-by-mail business, that stream has become a gusher and streaming movies and TV shows changed the home video habits of American households. But while there are plenty of classics are readily available to stream via subscription or VOD, from Birth of a Nation and The Rules of the Game to Citizen Kane and Chinatown, countless titles come and go. While this is far from a definitive list, these 10 noteworthy films that became available on streaming platforms in 2013 deserve singling out.

“Fantomas: The Complete Saga” (1913-1914)

The adventures of the cinema’s first supervillain in five wicked, delirious surreal short features, Fantomas was Louis Feuillade’s first great serial and there was no more creatively energetic, playfully inventive and entertainingly surreal filmmaking of the era. Fandor has the complete five-film sage as well as his later serials Les Vampires and Judex, but Fantomas is the only one of them available to stream in HD.

‘Die Nibelungen: Siegfried’

“Die Nibelungen: Siegfried” (1924) and “Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild’s Revenge” (1924)

Fritz Lang’s pair of early works combine into the original fantasy epic, an astounding silent spectacle based on the German myth that inspired Wagner’s “Ring” cycle. It is magnificent to behold, a mythic landscape of ancient forests, fairy tale waterfalls, lakes of fire, and caves and crevices hewn out of earth and rock, built entirely in the studios of Ufa. They have previously been available on streaming services but the new restoration from the F.W. Murnau Institute trumps all previous editions and this definitive edition of Lang’s silent epic is now available on both Netflix and Fandor.

Continue reading at Indiewire