What to Watch: Cut the Crap

Note: I wrote four reviews for the Washington Post this week: "The Brutalist," Mike Leigh's "Hard Truths," Pedro Almodovar's "The Room Next Door" and "September 5." I'll send those out to paid subscribers in a separate post today.

Every few weeks, I go over to JustWatch.com and see what has newly landed on the major streaming platforms. It's possible to filter the listings by service, by format (movies or TV series) and by date of arrival, so this can be an easy snapshot of what's available for our viewing pleasure.

I just did this for Netflix and Amazon, and you know what's available for our viewing pleasure? Crap. Miles and miles of crap. Both services load in new titles at the beginning of every month and especially the beginning of every year, and once you get past the known hit of five years ago, the offerings look something like this:

Most of these have never seen the inside of a movie theater and most of them are hackwork, but that hardly matters to the streamers. The big streaming platforms are in the movie tonnage business, shoveling up vast quantities of "content" with no regard for quality because that's the business model. If it's Netflix, it has to bottom-line watchable, just like if it's McDonald's it has to be bottom-line edible. You're paying for the calories, the salt, the fat – not a meal you'll remember 15 minutes later.

But, yes, you're right, "Adventures of the Naked Umbrella" or "Never Back Down 2: The Beatdown" may in fact be classics of world cinema or even worth a lazy two hours on a Saturday afternoon, and, yes, I am being a snob. But the whole point of subscribing to these services is that you should be able to easily find a good movie without dumpster diving through miles of dreck like you used to do at Blockbuster.

(I will make one caveat here: "The Fall Guy," 2024, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐, with Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, is streaming on Prime and rentable on Apple TV and it is entertaining, funny and surprisingly sweet. Recommended.)

You know who does curation really well? The Criterion Channel. Sometimes I think it's where indie-theater programmers go when they die – revival house Valhalla. I was hoping I could point you to a good film on one of the mass-market streamers, but the pickings are slim unless you really want to watch "Inception" again. But here's what I'll do: Recommend a bunch of movies on the Criterion Channel and – for those of you foolish or impecunious enough to not subscribe – I will tip you to if and where they're streaming elsewhere (just maybe without the print quality and contextualizing of the Criterion folks). And if you really need some Netflix guidance, I've gone through the first half of the alphabet of their entire movie offerings – JustWatch.com stops listing after the letter K, don't ask me why – and can recommend 40 titles. You'll find that below. For now, here are eight great films currently playing on the Criterion Channel and elsewhere.

Want to become a paid subscriber to Ty Burr's Watch List? You'll get all my postings and streaming recommendations, and you'll gain the ability to leave comments and give me merry hell. Go on, you know you want to. (Also: Thanks.)