10 movies from 10 decades you can stream

For years, I've been working on a list of "my favorite movie from each year of the last 100 years." It'll still take me a while to finish, but since we're all binging movies during the coronavirus situation, I'm going to give you a sneak preview…

So here's a sampling of one movie for each decade from my upcoming list. The final list will have a lot more to it than this — not just 10+ times as many movies, but also extra content about each one.

If you like this list so far, stay tuned — I'll be posting the list of all 100+ movies on this blog and my Facebook page once it's done.

From the 1920s: 

The Kid (1921) (Charlie Chaplin, Jackie Coogan/dir. Chaplin)

Watch on YouTube. (This is in the public domain, so it's freely available.)




From the '30s: 

A Night at the Opera (1935) (Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, Chico Marx, Margaret Dumont, Allan Jones, Kitty Carlisle, Sig Ruman/dir. Sam Wood)

If you have a Roku, you can watch this movie on the channel called "My Retro Flix" (free with ads). Once you're in the channel, click "movies," then click "comedy," then scroll through to the 9th movie in that section. (If you'd rather pay than watch ads, you can rent it for $2.99 on Amazon.)




From the '40s:

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) (Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin, Kirk Douglas, Lizabeth Scott, Janis Wilson, Judith Anderson/dir. Lewis Milestone)

Watch on Amazon Prime. (And since this movie is in the public domain, you can find it in many other places too, like YouTube.)

This was the movie debut of Kirk Douglas, who died earlier this year at age 103.




From the '50s:

Some Like it Hot (1959) (Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, George Raft, Joe E. Brown/dir. Billy Wilder)

Watch on Amazon Prime. [Update: a few months after I first posted this, Amazon started charging to rent the movie.]




From the '60s:

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) (Natalie Wood, Elliott Gould, Robert Culp, Dyan Cannon/dir. Paul Mazursky)

Watch on the Criterion Channel. [Update: not anymore.]




From the '70s:

Manhattan (1979) (Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Mariel Hemingway, Michael Murphy, Meryl Streep/dir. Woody Allen)

Watch on Amazon Prime.




From the '80s:

Atlantic City (1980) (Susan Sarandon, Burt Lancaster/dir. Louis Malle)

Watch on Amazon Prime.




From the '90s:

The Shawshank Redemption (1994) (Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman, Bob Gunton, Gil Bellows, James Whitmore/dir. Frank Darabont)

Watch on Netflix. [Update: not anymore.]




From the 2000s:

Ghost World (2001) (Thora Birch, Steve Buscemi, Scarlett Johansson, Illeana Douglas/dir. Terry Zwigoff)

Watch on the Criterion Channel (with a free trial if you don't already subscribe). This will be gone after May 2020.




From the 2010s:

Burning [Korean: 버닝 — Beoning] (2018) (Yoo Ah-in, Jeon Jong-seo, Steven Yeun/dir. Lee Chang-dong)

Watch on Netflix.




I think that's a pretty good mix of movies for now, although there's only one in any language other than English. I expect that the final list of 100+ movies across 100 years will include at least 10 different languages.

I don't know when the list will be done, but again, check back here...