Streaming Video Power Rankings #102

Daylight Savings Time is ridiculous. For one thing, it's one less hour to stream this weekend, and then an extra hour of daylight just means, what, we're supposed to go outside? There had better be good wi-fi outside.

1) Filmstruck: I am loving, loving, loving this, and I am pleasantly surprised that it seems to add stuff every few days. It actually has me watching movies again instead of just old TV shows (not that there's anything wrong with the latter). New this week=Peter Falk movies, Christopher Guest joints, and Texas-themed flicks like Giant and The Last Picture Show, and for TCM Select, the original Father of the Bride. All this plus a bunch of foreign films. 

In fact, this gives me another criticism to add: The "Recently Added" section isn't very useful because it doesn't include enough films to cover the whole week. Another small but important thing it should fix, yes, but a good problem to have.

2) Warner Archive Instant: Folks, it's essentially free for me now, so as long as it sticks around, I'm gonna rank it high. I mean, I AM watching it more than just about any of these other services even though on paper it doesn't exist. Stay tuned for Behind the Rankings this week and a little more on WAI.

3) Netflix: Another week, another bomb of a movie that Netflix blew who knows how much money on. Netflix did "win" the Oscars, I think, in terms of the SVOD services, so there is that, and several original series return this week with new episodes. How about a round of applause for the first two 1970s Benji movies?

4) Amazon Prime: Is the premiering Aftermath (also new to Hulu) the lowest-profile Ah-nuld movie ever? I haven't seen Sneaky Pete, but I am still loving Mrs. Maisel and the Dean Martin roasts. Prime Video added an awful lot of reality TV reruns this week, too, but I will try not to punish it.

5) Hulu: It's really nice to know The Oscars are here for on demand viewing and I can just skip the interminable live telecast. I still haven't gotten around to watching the show, but I like having the option.

6) Shout! Factory TV: So they have this "VHS Vault" section that has the movies begin with faux tracking issues and FBI warnings (I think this is how they appear on the DVD). I finally watched one of the movies and thought the gimmick was hilarious and the movie a lot of fun, too (More on that in the future).

7) The CW: Part of me keeps thinking I shouldn't enjoy Legends of Tomorrow as much as I do, but the goofiest of the DC shows on the network (and that says something) makes me smile each episode. I also appreciate that the tone on Black Lightning is so different than the other DC Comics series.

8) YouTube: It warms my heart to see a music video posted with a comment along the lines of, "The greedy bastards from Vevo and [insert name of record company] won't upload a decent version of the original video, so here is the song in good quality."

9) Boomerang: It finally added some new old content this week in the form of some Yogi Bear cartoons.

10) The Lee Van Cleef Channel: The movies and TV shows here are pretty much the same public domain stuff you can get in a million other places--you won't see The Master here--but I have to rank this at least once for the name and concept alone.