The best streaming services for (classic) film lovers

The free option still wins — but not by as much

In my last story, “The best streaming services for (serious) film lovers”, I described the challenge of finding the Guardian’s “100 Best Films of the 21st Century” (hereafter BF21C) online. Seven were not available online, twenty-four were only available to rent or buy but twenty-nine were available for free. To see the remaining forty would require subscriptions to at least fourteen(!) separate streaming services.

I hypothesized that maybe the problem was the Guardian’s film critics or modernity and that it might be easier to find earlier classics from a more broadly sourced list. I turned to Metacritic’s list of “The Best Movies of All Time”. This is what I found…

Metacritic works by aggregating reviews from many publications to come up with a single score out of 100 for each film — the “Metascore”. In the case of Citizen Kane, the top-ranked film (surprise, not), eighteen reviews were combined to come up with a perfect score of 100. Reviews were sourced from a wide range of publications including The New Yorker, SF Examiner, Time Out London and Variety. If you are interested in a deeper dive into the workings of Metacritic, leave a comment.

Seven films were unavailable online, the same as for BF21C. From there, things went downhill for the streaming film lover. Four were only available to buy online, three of which were Disney releases. Way to monetize, Walt. A further thirty-four were only…