Behind the Rankings: Initial impressions of Filmstruck

Why is Filmstruck so high in this week's streaming rankings? Well, because I go gaga over any channel right after I "subscribe" to it, and a free subscription makes me a very happy man! However, it's also a great service with only a few annoyances.

To recap, my Warner Archive Instant subscription earned me two free months of Filmstruck when the powers that be pulled the plug on the former. So I am playing with house of money as I explore the curated arthouse/indie/NOW classic Hollywood SVOD service. It's normally 7 bucks a month, 10 bucks if you want the broader selection of The Criterion Channel, and I will tell you right now that I have both and it's hard for me to judge the value of one option over the other because I'm not paying close attention at the moment. The fact that there are two pricing tiers in the same channel (and there is a division of content, not just no ads vs. ads) is something that is surely a nuisance to someone who doesn't have the higher tier, and it makes things more confusing than is necessary.

The service just looks cool, with great themed collections, like The Art of the Con and Mic Drop: Singers in Acting Roles, along with more straightforward ones like Written by Paddy Chayefsky. I was pleased to see a new selection of films added this week, like a Peter Falk assortment, so the service is constantly refreshing its selection.

The bad news is that it is constantly rotating movies out, too. However, the site is transparent about when titles expire, which is unique in the often shadowy world of SVOD licensing agreements, so it gets some slack. My advice is that if a movie is in the Criterion Collection on DVD or Blu-Ray, you can expect it to be around a bit longer or at least to come back, but if it is NOT, then it is probably licensed from another source and you should get to it quicker.

It's great to see supplements like trailers and extras and other features on a streaming service (Remember, this is CRITERION and CINEMA, so it's not "bonus material," it's "supplements"). By including this stuff and offering host intros for many of its titles, Filmstruck offers the respect for the medium that Netflix never did even though many cinephiles may have hoped it would.

I have joked about the pretensions of arthouse cinema in general and Filmstruck/Criterion in particular, but even without the new TCM Select category and the influx of Warner Brothers classics, there is a wide variety of movies available from all genres. At launch the one thing I found lacking was the classic Hollywood era, and now Filmstruck has that covered, too.

Part of me still looks at the TCM Select collection and laments that I already have so many of the titles on DVD, but, hey, it's still cool that they are there. I really hope that more rarities find their way on here soon. I can't imagine any lover of movies having trouble finding something to watch, although she might have to rewatch something if she has really seen a lot of stuff.

So what are the drawbacks? The Roku channel lacks some of the features of the website version, and it loads slower than many other of my channels. I really hope that changes, but given how terrible the Warner Archive Instant channel was, I am not optimistic, especially since they have already had months to fix this. The watchlist is rudimentary and could have better functionality.

The single most irritating thing is the lack of practical "continue watching." I read an explanation on the site about how to utilize the bookmarking, and it requires such a specific circumstance that it's essentially useless. Perhaps the site frowns  on people not watching their Kurosawa in one sitting, but if you're in the middle of a 170-minute movie and are interrupted, it's nice to be able to pick it back up at that spot. Otherwise, you  might as well just watch it on DVD!

Overall, I am impressed with Filmstruck and understand why movie lovers are so high on it. It seems like it will offer good value. Everything is uncut and ad-free, and there is a lot to enjoy, and, again, it just feels cool. if it can really take advantage of this TCM partnership and open those vaults, this will be a must-keep each month and not just an occasional splurge.