[iNane9000]

How do I find these movies? Amazon has some old, mostly low quality movies, but nothing good or recent. They got rid of the criterion collection years ago. Sincere question: How does one even find or acquire films today? I’d love to watch a movie, but literally don’t know how to go about it anymore. Netflix is not an answer as most of their content are not movies and basically spam to me.

[Arainach]

justwatch.com lets you search and discover what services have what movies.

Alternatively, DIY. As streaming became more popular, optical media and hard drives became far more cheap. Over the last 10-15 years I've ended up with more than 500 movies, all of which I own legally and most of which cost me $5 or less. They get to all of my devices through Plex (I used to use Kodi, which is fine over a LAN if that's all you care about).

A significant number of them aren't available for streaming anywhere at the moment, and plenty more would require obscure services I don't feel a need to pay for. It was a gradual upfront cost, but not that extravagent compared to the cost of paying for a couple of streaming services over that time - to say nothing of the 6-10 I'd have to subscribe to to actually have access to all of it.

[vo2maxer]

In addition to the criterion channel, already mentioned, try MUBI [1]. It’s a cinephile’s dream: a film discovery nearly everyday while also curating the great directors.

[1] https://mubi.com/

[paganel]

+1 for MUBI, really great cinephile resource.

One can also find very interesting stuff on YouTube, depending on how good your search skills are, I know that at the start of the pandemic I had discovered a user who was uploading Italian western spaghetti movies in HD format. I think I might also have found something similar for Hong Kong wuxia movies from the 1960s and 1970s but I'm not sure.

[hallarempt]

My wife and I used to buy a DVD in the second-hand books/new dvd's shop round the corner every Friday for a Friday-night movie viewing. He knew our tastes -- it must be sweet, funny with a happy ending and no adultery or rape -- but the shop closed.

We regularly ask each other "Where's Roman Holiday but with a cute girl instead of Gregory Peck. Audrey Hepburn can stay."? Why all the drama in movies these days? We just wanna see two girls kiss and walk away in the twilight, hand-in-hand. But all we get is drama like Ammonite.

Why isn't there yet a Poser or Daz3D/Blender/MakeHuman/$GAME_ENGINE that combined makes it easy for people to tell tales as movies yet? It should be possible to put everything together in an interface that even a movie producer could understand, which would make it a doddle for ordinary people.

[blooalien]

> Why isn't there yet a Poser or Daz3D/Blender/MakeHuman/$GAME_ENGINE that combined makes it easy for people to tell tales as movies yet? It should be possible to put everything together in an interface that even a movie producer could understand, which would make it a doddle for ordinary people.

Okay, seriously? That's a really good idea right there. I personally would lean towards Blender + Godot game engine for such a project, but I'm just hugely in favor of open source in general, so… The thing to make such a tool useful though would be an easily accessible library of actors (character models), animation/movement presets/prefab library, scenery and set dressing, and an interface to tie it all together in a way "which would make it a doddle for ordinary people" as you say. I could see something like that bein' a huge boon for "storyteller" types to get a good start in the media creation arena though.

[hallarempt]

Yes, right? We've got pretty much all the tech for that, it only needs to be joined up and made accessible. Of course, it would be simple at first, but improveed on later.

And of course, that library... That would be a source of _real_ money.

[nerpderp82]

> Why isn't there yet a Poser or Daz3D/Blender/MakeHuman/$GAME_ENGINE that combined makes it easy for people to tell tales as movies yet?

This is happening right now and it is mostly an update of the film techniques used in schlock, b films, but the results are much better.

[hallarempt]

Where?

[nerpderp82]

Making of Kung Fury, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLKOHJs17rc

Corridor Crew makes a movie in Unreal Engine, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K7a_aMGA7Y

Sassy Justice talked to Jared Kushner about Deep Fakes, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjmmP1rE_3A

1/3 of the posts on Two Minute Papers, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEsYo9L5lOo

I won't be surprised when someone can feed a script into a model and out comes a fully rendered movie.

[chrisseaton]

> Why all the drama in movies these days? We just wanna see two girls kiss and walk away in the twilight, hand-in-hand.

I don’t see how that’s enough to support a film? No challenge to overcome or issue to resolve? That’s a basic of storytelling. What’s left without it?

[hallarempt]

That's just the ending, geez...

[heurist]

Check out the Criterion Channel: https://www.criterionchannel.com/

[ghaff]

Amazon has tons of movies but many of them you have to buy/rent a la carte. At least in the US, there's Red Box for mostly recent films. You can also subscribe to Netflix' DVD service--although their back catalog isn't as good as it used to be.

[kwertyoowiyop]

Your local library probably has tons of DVD and Blu-Ray discs (and librarians who can provide recommendations), and maybe free access to an app like Hoopla with classic/highbrow movies.

[marnett]

Friendly plug for kanopy.com. Amazing, changing collection and likely free signup and streaming (monthly-refreshing limit) with your local library card (:

[indigodaddy]

Also/or, your library may give you access to a similar service called Hoopla. I have access to both via my local library, and I find Kanopy’s selection (and picture quality) somewhat better, especially for foreign (non—USA) content.

[esperent]

If it's an old film and it's not easily available on a streaming service, I torrent it.

[WalterBright]

The TCM channel does a good job of organizing films into categories. I've been watching their Film Noir picks every Saturday night. Lots of fun movies I never knew existed.

[handrous]

HBO's streaming service rotates a decent selection of TCM material, too, complete with the intros.

[sosborn]

Netflix has a tab to browse only movies.

Amazon does too. They usually have a handful of quality old movies (lots of junk too), but some of their originals are very good.

[telesilla]

This is my go-to when I want to browse Netflix

https://www.finder.com/uk/netflix-around-the-world/genre-lis...

[quickthrowman]

I pay for Spotify and Steam Games and HBO Max, but pirate movies since Hollywood isn’t interested in making films available to be watched.

[graeme]

Criterion channel is a great streaming service for old classics.

[weeblewobble]

I never understood this complaint. There are dozens and dozens of recent, popular (good is subjective) movies on the front page of Amazon, Netflix and HBO Max right now.