Conserving the Classics: The top ten movies to watch on FilmStruck before it’s gone

Home Culture Conserving the Classics: The top ten movies to watch on FilmStruck before it’s gone
Conserving the Classics: The top ten movies to watch on FilmStruck before it’s gone
A violent romance. | Courtesy Wikipedia

To the disappointment of cheapskate film lovers everywhere, WarnerMedia recently announced that it will discontinue FilmStruck, its streaming service for classic, foreign, and independent cinema, on Nov. 29.

The stated reason: not enough subscribers. The real reason: FilmStruck was structured poorly and allowed users to blow through an infinite number of free trials. And now: no money, no ticket.

But! You still have 15 days. And whether you knew it or not, you’re a FilmStruck subscriber. The Mossey Library signed up for service — for research purposes — in 2016, and will retain it until the bitter end. Here are 10 movies you should try to see before then:

1. “Three Colors Trilogy: Blue, White, Red” (1993-1994)
Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski’s trilogy focuses on the French flag and its corresponding ideals — liberty, fraternity, and equality. Watch for the sugar cube in “Blue.”

2. “Chungking Express” (1994)
It’s hard to say if Wong Kar-wai’s violent romance is actually “about” anything, but it looks cool. And that’s more than most action films can say.

3. “The Double Life of Veronique” (1991)
Another Kieslowski film, “Double Life” follows a Polish woman and a French woman bound together by an inexplicable bond. Come for Irene Jacob’s haircut, stay for Zbigniew Preisner’s concerto.

4. “The Player” (1991)
Robert Altman’s send-up of Hollywood, this movie has one of the longest continuous opening shots out there. It also has one of the most discreet sex scenes in American film.

5. “Gates of Heaven” (1978)
Errol Morris made his documentary about pet cemeteries on a bet with Werner Herzog. Herzog told Morris if he could make an interesting film on the subject, he’d eat his shoe. Two years later, the documentary “Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe” (1980) hit select theaters.

6. “M” (1931)
Fritz Lang is famous for the silent “Metropolis,” but his first talkie — about a child killer — was always his favorite.

7. “Solaris” (1972)
The Russian response to “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968). Much darker. Much grittier. Much better.

8. “The Castle” (1997)
Libertarians will love this one: the comic story of an Australian family’s refusal to sell its house to an airport that wants to pave it over with a runway.

9. “Knife in Water” (1962)
Fans of Roman Polanski’s “Rosemary’s Baby” (1969) and “Chinatown” (1974) should see this one. “Knife in Water” got the Polish pervert started fittingly—with a story about two men struggling to dominate a woman.

10. “The Spirit of the Beehive” (1973)
The movie that inspired Guillermo del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth” (2005). But fewer fauns, more political allegory.