Behind the Rankings: Stuff like "The Best of Years of Our Lives" helps make Filmstruck a winner

As long as I have Filmstruck and am able to watch it, I am going to rate it high in the weekly power rankings. It's great to be able to sit down and watch The Best Years of Our Lives just because, as I did last week. William Wyler's 1946 film depicting the troubles of servicemen returning home won multiple Oscars including Best Picture and is widely considered one of the best of its era. For what it's worth, it made a ton of money in initial release and is #37 on the American Film Insisitute Top 100 list.

Also, in a recent podcast interview with Ken Levine, TCM host Ben Mankewicz said Best Years is one of the most popular films the channel shows. In an interesting bit of dissent, Levine says he hates the movie because it is so heavy handed. I know Mankewicz feels otherwise because, one, he defends it in a non-aggressive way on the podcast, and, two, he talks about it on Fi;mstruck.

One of the interesting things about Filmstruck is that it has extras. In the case of Best Years, it has about 10 different intros/outros. I mean, it is almost overkill considering the movie itself runs nearly 3 hours and there are 20 minutes of intros. I'm glad they are all there, though, and no one is forcing you to watch them--not even Alec Baldwin. Baldwin is in "gracious guy who seems like he would be pretty cool" mode in several clips from when TCM screened the movie as one of The Essentials.

You also get a conversation B-Mank had with a representative of a disabilities interest group, a segment aired when TCM screened the film as part of a theme. Did I mention that TCM shows Best Years often? Plus there's a short clip of commentary from Wyler's son, producer David Wyler; as well as a new intro by B-Mank himself.

The movies are the thing, but it's nice to get a little added value with your viewing and, maybe more importantly, a little extra TCM. These kinds of extras help make Filmstruck more like the TCM on Demand we wanted.