I've been organising online film watch-a-longs during lockdown and there's actually a great selection of stuff available for free outside Netflix, Prime and the rest of the paid streaming sites, so I thought I'd put together a list of the best and/or most interesting if people fancy it. I'll be adding to it, but anyone else can too if they find something good (though obviously, links may not work long term and picture quality varies).
Notorious (1946)
Arguably the start of Hitchcock's golden era, Cary Grant recruits Ingrid Bergman, the daughter of a convicted nazi spy, to inflitrate a group of Nazis that have moved to Brazil after the war. But how much can she trust him?
Paris Blues (1961)
Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier star as expat jazz musicians who strike up a romance with American women on holiday. The live music scenes, with Louis Armstrong playing a fictional touring trumpeter, are scintillating and the black and white depiction of early 60's Paris is a fascinating counterpart to...
Charade (1963)
In my top five favourite movies of all time, this is a Rolls Royce of a film from the Saul Bass credits and Henry Mancini's iconic score to the killer last line. Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn banter their way through a Hitchcockian romantic murder mystery in Paris with some of the wittiest dialogue in cinema. James Coburn, George Kennedy and Walter Matthau make up a top notch cast.
Onibaba (1964)
A beautifully filmed and unexpectedly risque Japanese horror film about desperation and alienation. A woman and her daughter-in-law are forced to survive in wartime by killing and robbing soldiers, until a man comes back claiming to be a comrade of the latter's husband.
The Wild Angels (1966)
Roger Corman's Easy Rider forerunner isn't as well made but it is more fun, a speed-fueled B-movie that also stars Peter Fonda, with Nancy Sinatra, Bruce Dern, Diane Ladd and a bunch of real-life Hell's Angels in the supporting cast. A pre-fame Peter Bogdanovich wrote it and it includes one of the most famous samples in music history.
Medium Cool (1969)
The only film to be directed by multi-Oscar winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler, Medium Cool is an early cinema vérité film starring Robert Forster (Jackie Brown) as a news journalist who finds out the feds are using his footage to keep tabs on protesters. Features dozens of real-life people including Black Panthers and attendees of the 1968 Democratic convention, along with some of the best picture and sound editing you've ever seen, courtesy of Verna Fields and Christopher Newman, who'd later win four Oscars between them.
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)
The best rock n'roll film ever, mostly because there's barely any actual music in there. It's also Russ Meyer, which means a decent helping of nudity along with the increasingly soapy and sordid private lives of the Carrie Nations, an all-girl band who've moved to the bright lights of Los Angeles. Every scene in the last 45 minutes gets crazier and more entertaining.
Opening Night (1977)
Part of that great run of John Cassavetes films starring his partner, Gena Rowlands, who gives an award-winning performance as an ageing alcoholic actress haunted by the death of a fan while she prepares for her new play.
The Brood (1979)
Prime early Cronenberg, with a climax to match. Ollie Reed is a pioneering psychiatrist who encourages mentally ill patients to express their trauma through physiological changes. He's treating the bonkers Samantha Eggars, who's going through a custody battle. It couldn't have anything to do with those mutant children killing everyone, could it? This version has Portuguese subtitles for some reason.
Suburbia (1984)
Fresh from the epic Decline of Western Civilization documentary, Penelope Spheeris (who'd go on to do Wayne's World) went back to the LA punk scene for her first feature, which follows a bunch of kids holed up in a house avoiding bigoted adults and packs of wild abandoned dogs. Roger Corman produced it, a 20-year old Flea (from the Chili Peppers) features, and the soundtrack's great.
A Better Tomorrow (1986)
The film that broke John Woo as a director and Chow Yun Fat as an action star, this pretty much invented the Heroic Bloodshed genre, adding soap opera-like love elements to a thrilling cops and robbers film full of twists and turns. You can draw a straight line between this and later classics like Hard Boiled and The Killer.
Maniac Cop (1988)
Decent 80's B-movie with Bruce Campbell as a police officer who may or may not be the psychotic cop going on a killing spree. The sequel is also on YouTube.
Chopper Chicks In Zombietown (1989)
Primo Troma film about a gang of badass biker chicks who run into a full on zombie outbreak when they cruise into a small town for some R&R. Features a pre-fame Billy Bob Thornton and 80's MTV VJ Martha Quinn. Most Troma stuff is also on YouTube.
Slacker (1991)
Richard Linklater's debut film features an interlocking group of Austin scenesters, weirdos and randoms as they criss cross over the course of a day. Very of its time, but endlessly fascinating and extremely entertaining.
1991: The Year Punk Broke (1992)
A tour film following Sonic Youth and Nirvana as they travel add perform through the summer festival season in Europe. Also features Dinosaur Jr, Babes in Toyland and the Ramones.
Short Cuts (1993)
Robert Altman was hot at the start of the 90's and he followed up his excellent Hollywood study, The Player, with this, an adaptation of a group of Raymond Carver short stories about suburban LA life presented as overlapping vignettes. Fairly grim, but what a cast: Julianne Moore, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Robert Downey Jr., Madeleine Stowe, Chris Penn, Jack Lemmon, Frances McDormand, Andie MacDowell, Lily Tomlin, Matthew Modine, Huey Lewis, Lyle Lovett and Tom Waits among them.
Roadracers (1994)
Between El Mariachi and Desperado, Robert Rodriguez made this enormously enjoyable 50's pastiche starring David Arquette in probably his best ever role, Salma Hayek in her first ever American role, and the grim reaper William Sadler as a cynical fry cook. Music by Tito & Tarantula, the house band from Desperado and From Dusk Til Dawn.
Dead Man (1995)
I'm not a huge Jim Jarmusch fan but this might be my favourite. An acid western in which Johnny Depp plays (not that) William Blake, who goes looking for a job as an accountant and finds something much weirder and darker. Robert Mitchum, Lance Henriksen, Crispin Glover, Iggy Pop, Billy Bob Thornton, Gabriel Byrne and John Hurt all have supporting roles, the cinematography is gorgeous and Neil Young's score is sparse and atmospheric.
Tromeo and Juliet (1997)
Another Troma classic. Released in the wake of the Baz Luhrmann film, this is the superior version of the story, as it adds gore, nudity, mutants, car crashes, lesbianism, extreme violence and Lemmy as the narrator. It's what Shakespeare would have wanted. Spanish subtitles.
