Filmstruck / Criterion Channel

The film streaming service from TCM & Criterion Collection goes live in 13 days — October 19th.
$6.99/month for the basic service, $10.99/month (or $99/year) for Filmstruck + Criterion Channel

Who's in?

looks good that they have the commentaries, extras etc of Criterion discs, or at least some of that kind of content. i hope this won't mean the end of the Criterion blu rays. i'm expecting 'that market' will always want the 36 page books and fancy packaging and such. i know i will.

http://www.filmstruck.com/

I'm in.

i wonder why the TCM lot and the Criterion gang decided to get into bed together. i mean Criterion doesn't seem like an obvious match for Ted 'Colourization' Turner.

Turner hasn't been involved in years...? TCM is a pretty good channel. Have they ever shown a colorized film?

Cons: US only, no Roku support at launch, extreme vagueness (how many films? "HUNDREDS of films!")

But I'll sign up, at least for a few months.

I'll wait to start until Criterion joins up in November. I'll drop the $99 for their catalog alone.

Criterion won't be available from day 1? I hadn't heard that part.

Yet no one posts on my Fandor thread

November 11th for Criterion. They have to wait for the Hulu deal to expire.

Not bad, if you do the $99 once-a-year payment, it's about $20 cheaper than a year of Netflix. Is there any way to browse the TCM catalog at the moment?

On their FB page they said Criterion will be available at launch.

I want to sign up but my two devices (Nvidia Shield TV and XB1) aren't supported.

I went by this press release that says the 1th of November.

https://thefilmstage.com/news/filmstruck-and-the-criterion-channel-reveal-subscription-pricing-plans/

Been reading a lot of information on the website and elsewhere, but haven't seen anything that says the TCM movies will also be part of the package. I have a nagging feeling that they're not. Also wonder if the Criterion movies will be available in 1080, instead of the 720 now on Hulu.

I don't think everything on nightly at TCM will be on there but a selection of TCM-sequel films.

I'm going to guess it will be like Mubi with a larger rotating library plus Criterion.

TCM-esque

yeah, TCM's tweet that filmstruck "will focus on indie, foreign & cult titles, not Old Hollywood. Some limited titles, not many" considerably dampened my enthusiasm.

https://twitter.com/tcm/status/777661149911347200

my guess is milo z otm re: criterion plus larger mubi. Which is cool, but not the turner library plus janus library nearly nonstop excellence that i had prematurely imagined

I have a Hulu subscription and honestly never watched a single Criterion title. The ones I want, I just buy.

I was excited when I thought this was gonna be criterion + old Hollywood tcm stuff. The latter element was critical for me. If it's criterion + buffet of other stuff then no.

Yeah, that's a bummer. I figured $99 was a no brainer but if it's Criterion plus some random rotating films I don't know.

basically i would pay... let's see... $15 a month for some reasonable fascimile of access to TCM's programming without having to have fucking cable tv

aw man. I too was pretty stoked for the TCM+Criterion version of this.

This weird in-between time where the biggest events still happen on old-fashioned cable TV, the "prestige" TEH DISCOURSE TV shows are on Netflix, film is either exploded across multiple competing streaming services or iTunes rental downloads that disappear after 24 hours or totally unavailable, video stores are rare — is totally excruciating.

whiney otm, i feel a deep nostalgia for, like, 2008-2010, when a full decade of DVD production had led to lot of foreign/classic/arthouse stuff to be available, and Netflix was still in the business of providing just about any DVD that got produced.

Like, the fact that we let this happen is ridiculous: http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/2014/09/12/netflix_streaming_dvds/

maybe i just wasn't reading the early filmstruck announcements carefully, but it seems like everyone i know was expecting it to have a major focus on classic hollywood, given tcm's involvement. My guess is that getting streaming rights to that old hollywood stuff is probably just insanely complicated and, from a business perspective, not worth the investment of time and resources. Still disappointing though.

I've never watched any Criterions on Hulu but that's because their interface is such a disaster - you don't know what's streaming in HD, there's no easy way to sort the entire Criterion list, etc. Higher hopes for this, though I'm a lot less inclined toward a burning need to watch Truffaut than when I was 23.

Their interface/searching/tagging/credits is all pretty awful in comparison to Netflix and even Amazon Prime. That said, damn I'm gonna have to rush out some screenings before they leave. Better get Lady Snowblood queued up.

The FAQ has changed to specify that only 4th-gen Apple TV will support this, so me and my 3rd-gen box are out of luck. I'll have to load a film on my iMac and push it to the tv with Airplay.

With airplay/casting, does it make a difference if you're casting from a phone vs. a computer?

(I think my Apple TV is second generation...)

I honestly don't know. That time David Lynch cussed traumatized me so bad I've never tried watching film or video on my phone.

sad trombone

Hello film fans:

We want to share some news that the launch of FilmStruck is delayed until November as we work to complete a seamless and easy registration process for subscribers.

Just like the final stages of completing a film, this additional time will allow us to put the finishing touches on FilmStruck in order to bring you a premium service with beautifully curated content and the largest streaming library of world-renowned arthouse, indie, cult and foreign films. Rest assured, we're working hard to bring you the high-quality streaming movie service you've been waiting for.

Thank you for both your patience and your enthusiastic interest in FilmStruck.

The FilmStruck Team

At this point they should wait until the Hulu contract for the Criterions expires.

Yep. I wasn't planning on starting any free trial until everything was available.

Launched.
Looks like the Criterions are up with an 11-day overlap with Hulu. Seeing a lot of fussing on the Facebook page about errors while setting up payment.

Anyone start using this yet? Any thoughts (apart from the still unavailable (?) Criterions?

I'm in, just getting the apps installed now. I need a tivo app! Apple and Amazon will do for now.

Sound like it's worth waiting a few weeks for them to get all the bugs worked out

Not available on Roku til Jan so nope for a while. Also copy on their site suggested that virtually all Criterions wd be available but several that I've searched for are not (incl All That Jazz, ugh)

They have someone responding to comments on Facebook, putting on the shiny happy face but being really vague with specific questions.

Some Guy Named Dave: Your Criterion selection seems to be quite limited. Are you ever going to offer the same number of Criterion titles as Hulu - over 900?

FilmStruck: Hi Dave, on the #CriterionChannel side you will find the largest selection of Criterion releases available to stream

Me: That doesn't really answer the question that was asked...

FilmStruck: #CriterionChannel has the largest Criterion selection available streaming, more than was ever available elsewhere.

Me: Ozu on Hulu: 30 features, 2 shorts and a trailer
Ozu on Filmstruck: looks like 18 features

Filmstruck: (crickets)

Huh, why would it have less than Hulu does? That doesn't make any sense to me. I did notice through a cursory search that they had at least two titles not on Hulu (Godard's Every Man for Himself and Yang's A Brighter Summer Day), so I was hopeful that maybe it had more than Hulu.

It doesn't have all the Oshima titles that are currently on Hulu either

I'm hoping they're still loading up the buffet table. They have quite a few things that aren't on Hulu -- Blood Simple, that JFK documentary stuff. They got The Killing of a Chinese Bookie back, which disappeared from Hulu a year or more ago.

I'm hopeful too, though the way filmstruck has been marketed and rolled out has dampened my expectations all around

Even Criterion doesn't have the rights to all the Criterions anymore

yeah, otm, and i'm sure there are a number of criterions that got dvd release, but where they never had streaming rights. the more i search around on filmstruck the more i think that WilliamC is probably right that they're still adding movies to the service.

hm. no amazon app even!

TBF, this is the day where they're going nuts with the press.

The talented star of that one, Laird Cregar, died shortly before the film came out from a dangerous crash diet he undertook for the role.

Dangerous crash diet?

Yeah, including amphetamines.

Ah.

Hal Hartley!!! oh man i have been wanting to see trust and the unbelievable truth again for ages. can never find them streaming or on dvd. they are showing all his movies! throwing a bone to us gen x grumps.

Hangover Square is a good one. i always like a good "during my blackouts i'm a murderer" story, and this one is elevated by the setting and the fiery conclusion (and the fiery disposal of one victim.) SPOILER as soon as i realized he was going to dispose of Netta by disguising her body as a Guy Fawkes effigy and sticking her atop the pyre i was impressed the film was going to go there. That ending is quite something, a real cataclysm. I don't know how well-regarded the film is overall, the wiki seems to suggest it was regarded dismissively, but i think it's very good.

I'm going to watch Massacre at Central High for the first time.

FINALLY watches Sorcerer. It was good. A nice relaxing movie. Didn't have that infuriating ending that Wages of Fear did. Had a different one, but I was glad.

October 2023 additions: https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/8262-the-criterion-channels-october-2023-lineup

Love that they're slipping The Devil, Probably into horror month.

I've been curious about Paul Morrissey's Frank/Drac films for years, glad I'll finally get a chance to see them.

Unfriended is a terrible movie.

gonna start in on some Linda Darnell films this week. She was mesmerizing in Hangover Square, just such a vicious and alive performance.

Fallen angel is p good

3 wives of course

She’s usually very good, despite her alleged and not totally surprising insecurity. At one point it seemed like maybe she was only remembered for My Darling Clementine and her horrible death.

Forever Amber worth watching also for George Sanders as the king with his entourage of dogs following him around and telling them “Come children!”

Wow that was Sanders? It's been so long since I've seen that I'd forgotten that!

She's great in Summer Storm

She’s great on What’s My Line?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KVk5fthbTU

Also I just found a recent audiobook of BBC radio productions of Patrick Hamilton plays that looks really intriguing.

Still kind of enjoying my teenage favorite "Dark City"

That’s a good one. I believe Roger Ebert once did a shot-by-shot analysis.

Linda Darnelll's birthday today, according to Criterion.

Linda Darnell even

Catching up on Kay Francis before those films leave. I was totally charmed by everything about One Way Passage.

November 2023 additions: https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/8291-the-criterion-channels-november-2023-lineup

December 2023 additions, arriving a few days earlier than usual: https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/8309-the-criterion-channels-december-2023-lineup

Wow...I apparently missed the news that 140 minutes (!!) had been restored to Abel Gance's "La Roue" since the 2008 restoration, now making it almost 7 hours long.

I can’t even.

(xpost) Oh god--it's a key work of poetic realism, but when I watched the 2008 restoration I had to fast-forward to not give up halfway through.

Hahaha I honestly appreciate the feedback - I loved loved loved Gance's "Napoleon" (although it was the 4-hour edit, with the Coppola soundtrack...this was like 15 years ago) but come to think of it, I did nod off at least once. I haven't actually seen "La Roue" yet but started watching "La Fin du monde" ("The End of the World") recently, which is REALLY REALLY SLOW so far (put me to sleep after 30 min.)

Relatedly, I had a hunch that Guy Maddin took a bit of inspiration from that for his short film "The Heart of the World" - this interview (translated from French) from 2015 confirms it (and also discusses "La Roue" ("The Wheel"):
https://www-debordements-fr.translate.goog/Guy-Maddin?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp

GM: That's why I made my own adaptations of Gance, based on The Wheel and The End of the World- -(Odilon Redon- -The Heart of the World) I thought they were lost...

AND: They are: The End of the World was butchered, Gance did not edit it and completely disowned it. It's more of a document of what the project was supposed to be, and it had to be all the more than just a film - as always with him. The Wheel is not lost but there are so many versions that we no longer know what the original cut looks like.

GM: I have a 4-hour version of it. What else was it supposed to be, The End of the World?

AND: A global mystical cinema company.

Had to notice that Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky is streaming on the channel. Could we possibly be blessed with a future Criterion disc release, following the same pattern as Last Hurray for Chivalry and Heroic Trio/Executioners???

been trying to sneak in some "gaslit noir" films before they leave:

Dragonwyck
Moss Rose
Ladies in Retirement

The above is in descending order of preference.

Dragonwyck is pretty great imo, a wildly goth melodrama w/the sinisterly suave Vincent Price as the latest in a long family line of mildly tyrannical upstate NY patroons who owns the title estate, and the luminously misguided Gene Tierney (the character is misguided) as a country girl from a religious family who is invited to live at the estate, falls for him, and seems to miss multiple red flags along the way, including the first act fate of his gluttonous wife. It's got a dash of the supernatural a la The Uninvited, though whether it's madness or an actual haunting is left unresolved. Joseph Mankiewicz directed it, and does a pretty solid job of things. Some excellent support from Walter Huston, Jessica Tandy, Glenn Langan, Anne Revere, and Spring Byington (as one of Dragonwyck's servants, whose early extremely on-point warnings to Tierney go thoroughly unexamined.)

Moss Rose is a bit less great but still very good. It bears some superficial resemblance to Dragonwyck, with Peggy Cummins playing an Irish girl in London of slightly ill repute whose friend is murdered, and she blackmails the man she thinks murdered her (Victor Mature) into letting her live the high life at his family estate somewhere in the English country. Like Dragonwyck, things get sinister there, and she falls for the guy. It looks good, but the big problem is Victor Mature's character is just a big lunkhead, very miscast, and it's hard to believe him in the role, let alone as someone Peggy Cummins would fall for. He tries, but no. But Cummins is quite legitimately incredible, just a real force of nature performance, the smallest person onscreen at any given moment but believably fearless to the point that you don't question why she's putting herself in a seemingly vulnerable situation. This one also has Vincent Price in it, playing a police detective investigating the murder, and he's put to good use here as a more heroic figure. Ethel Barrymore is Mature's increasingly scary and possessive mother.

Ladies in Retirement is good enough, another "remote country home" noir, mostly worth watching for the college-age Ida Lupino playing a matronly housekeeper supposedly in her forties, whose sketchy nephew in the film is played by her real-life husband at the time (Louis Hayward). Lupino's Ellen Creed has two very annoying but harmlessly insane sisters whom, in order to save from being committed, she invites to stay at the home. The home is owned by a retired former entertainer, Leonora (played by Isobel Elsom.) Leonora comes to regret allowing the sisters to stay for a couple days (because it eventually stretches out to a couple months), and orders the sisters *and* Ellen to leave, which she also eventually regrets. Lupino is excellent, and there are some beautiful visuals of the foggy moors (i presume they're the moors), some bonus nosey nuns, and the fine use of a bread oven as a tomb.

the first two are based on novels, the last based on a play.

Are they leaving? I can’t always keep track and drive myself a little crazy at the end of every month trying to figure out which films get into the lifeboat.

Wait AFIRE already arrived?

Here’s the tricky part. HANGOVER SQUARE is also part of the Linda Darnell series so I thought I would have more time to watch. Guess I was misinformed.

Screen Play by Barré Lyndon?

hangover square starts out a little slow but has a couple of incredible sequences in the back half

Opening sequence is pretty good at least.

all three of those are going tomorrow i think and yeah Hangover Square too.

Laird Cregar is great in the latter, really sad backstory to his role in the film.

The crash diet that Cregar followed for his roles in The Lodger and Hangover Square (which included prescribed amphetamines) placed a strain on his system, resulting in severe abdominal problems. He underwent surgery at the beginning of December 1944.[51]

A few days after surgery, Cregar had a heart attack and was rushed to the hospital.[54] He rallied briefly when put in an oxygen tent, but died on December 9, aged 31 years.[55]

When you see Linda Darnell in that film you can see why she was briefly a superstar.

Linda Darnell already in my pantheon for some of her other films.

Who is the Ella Raines-looking actress who plays Barbara?

Faye Marlowe, it seems. This was apparently her breakout role, as far as it goes.

Keep waiting for George Sanders to break out in his Man Hunt German.

She passed away only last year, and had an interesting late life:

Marlowe later worked as a writer under the name Faye Hueston. Her 2010 book "Silent Enemy" describes the effects of pesticide toxins on humans and other mammals; her 2016 book "Invisible Enemy," chronicles the effects of environmental illness caused by chemical pollution. Her autobiography, "Fanchon's Daughter," was published on July 14, 2014; in addition to recounting her life in show business, she also describes her interest in psychic phenomena.[2]

Noticed that Doctor X is going too.

I managed to sneak in Experiment Perilous at the end there as well. Definitely a minor Jacques Tourneur joint, primarily memorable for its atmospherics during a tense train ride in the opening scene, and in the fiery climax. Definitely worth seeing though it's not going to make anyone forget Out of the Past, Cat People, etc.

I was disappointed in that one. Felt like reading a book.

It is pretty clinical, maybe befitting the story. The three lead actors are a very mixed bag, Lukas and Brant are going through the motions,though they're not bad as much as they never catch fire and just aren't inspired. I think w/Lamarr's role her flatness is part of the character and kind of touchingly done when compared to the sunniness she shows in the flashbacks, but the best performances are by Albert Dekker and Olive Blakeney. The story doesn't get goth enough. I still think it's worth checking out but I wish I'd burned my last couple hours of gaslit noir on Ivy or one of the others.