The best streaming services for (serious) film lovers

There are more great films available free than on Netflix

When The Guardian recently published its list of the 100 best films of the 21st century my mission for the next few months became clear. I would stage a personal film festival and catch up on the cream of contemporary cinema.

A cursory review of the list reminded me of a lot of films that for which I’d read great reviews, but which I’d never managed to catch at the cinema. It turns out I had seen only fifteen out of one hundred films. It seems I’m not quite as dedicated a cinephile as I thought. Nothing for it but to fire up Netflix and sit back.

[Sound of needle being dragged across an LP] Not so fast. Starting at the top of the list (I also eat the yummiest food off my plate first), numbers 1 (There Will Be Blood) and 2 (12 Years a Slave) weren’t on Netflix. Oh well, 3 (Boyhood) and 4 (Under the Skin) were there. But then the next three were missing, down to number 8 (Moonlight). Then a gap of ten(!) down to 18, 19, 20 (A Serious Man, Lincoln, Roma), followed by a gap of fifteen.

Ruh-roh. It turned out Netflix had only thirteen of the top 100. Maybe Prime Video would plug the gaps? Not so much — it had only nine. But at least there were no overlaps with Netflix, so I now had twenty-two of the top 100. Hulu? Only five, of which one was also on Prime, so I was only up to twenty-six. This was turning into a much greater challenge than I expected. Nothing for it but to hunker down with…