A few years ago I got a free month of Amazon prime and immediately started adding movies to my watchlist. When my list was compiled you can imagine my surprise when I clicked the tab marked "prime" with my mouse and suddenly most of he movies I'd chosen disappeared. All that was left was stuff like Can't Stop the Music with the Village People. Yikes -- what happened to the good stuff?
What I found instead was some schlock and lots of "B" movies, some of which were terrible, and some of which were terrific. Still I didn't stay past the trial period. But then I decided to try Amazon Prime again and found that, so far, I've decided to keep it. Prime offers other advantages, such as free shipping on selected items, but I'm sticking with it -- so far -- because it has literally thousands of movies to stream. It's not for everyone, but real movie buffs, especially those who love older movies, will find lots of stuff to put on their watchlist. Sure there are lots of Bs and horror films, but also classics like Wuthering Heights and The Little Foxes -- they also have more recent and new movies like Rocketman -- and many others, all of which you can watch for free for a monthly fee. (Some people can get it at half price if they qualify.) I also found rare television specials on Prime, such as an adaptation of A Doll's House that I reviewed last week, as well as TV adaptations of the shows Kiss Me Kate, One Touch of Venus and even the fairly forgotten Bloomer Girl.
But the Amazon Prime movie experience can be odd. Not all "Prime" movies are free. Generally you can tell this if you see a price next to the film's description, but there have been times when I've seen no price, put it on my list, but it disappears when I click on "prime." Stranger still is the fact that some films have more than one listing even if its basically the same version. One listing might be free, while another will cost, say, $3.99! I had the horror anthology film Asylum in my queue, only to discover there was another listing for it, this time a remastered version, the one I watched (why didn't Amazon get rid of the other version? Wouldn't most of us want to look at the remastered print?). It's as if someone just throws every movie they can find into the mix but doesn't bother weeding out the poorer copies. In at attempt to get as many films as possible, Amazon streams some very poor and occasionally incomplete prints (such as Affair in Monte Carlo, which I reviewed this week).
On the other hand, the prints of most of the films are excellent. You can find pictures you hadn't seen in years or never saw (and always wanted to) on Amazon Prime. I'm always coming across something interesting by looking at the suggested titles (same director or actor or similar types of movies ) listed underneath the screen when I've finished watching a movie or TV program (yes, AP has tons of old and newer TV shows as well). My watchlist is growing to frightening proportions.
NOTE This is not an endorsement for Amazon Prime and they have not paid me for my critique, but they certainly can if they want to.
2 comments:
Have been thinking of discontinuing my very expensive comcast xfinity and filling in with Amazon, Hulu and HBO Max - a la carte looks a lot less expensive, but still a lot of movie content. I do have Netflix too, but their selection seems limited these days.
-C
Yeah, Chris, these days there's no need to have very expensive monthly fees for movies as there's so much available at a much cheaper price.
I don't have cable anymore. A representative from the company called and tried to get me back by offering what she thought was a great deal. What are you paying now? she asked. I told her that (at the time I had Hulu and Netflix) I was paying about $15 a month and she had to admit she couldn't do better than that!
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