The following classic films have recently been added to the media and streaming platform Plex and are available to stream for free.
Floating Weeds (1959)
When a theatre troupe’s master visits his old flame, he unintentionally sets off a chain of unexpected events with devastating consequences. A remake of Ozu’s own silent film The Story of Floating Weeds (1934). Starring Ganjirô Nakamura, Machiko Kyô and Haruko Sugimura.
The film has a 96% critics rating and 91% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with the Critics Consensus being:
Floating Weeds boasts the visual beauty and deep tenderness of director Yasujiro Ozu’s most memorable films – and it’s one of the few the master shot in colour.
Rotten Tomatoes
The late Roger Ebert wrote of the film:
Sooner or later, everyone who loves movies comes to Ozu. He is the quietest and gentlest of directors, the most humanistic, the most serene. But the emotions that flow through his films are strong and deep, because they reflect the things we care about the most: Parents and children, marriage or a life lived alone, illness and death, and taking care of one another.
Roger Ebert
Labyrinth (1986)
When teen Sarah is forced to babysit her half-brother Toby, she summons Jareth the Goblin King to take him away. When he is actually kidnapped, Sarah is given just thirteen hours to solve a labyrinth and rescue him. Directed by Jim Henson and starring David Bowie, Jennifer Connelly and Toby Froud.
The film has a 77% critics rating and 86% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with the Critics Consensus being:
While it’s arguably more interesting on a visual level, Labyrinth provides further proof of director Jim Henson’s boundless imagination.
Rotten Tomatoes
In The Atlantic, Alison Stine wrote:
For all its flaws and superficial delights, Labyrinth reacquainted audiences with an old idea that Hollywood had long neglected: Childhood is a scary and dangerous place, an inherently strange time filled with dead-ends, wrong turns, lies, and traps. In other words: It’s not the Muppets.
Labyrinth and the Dark Heart of Childhood
Tokyo Story (1953)
The elderly Shukishi and his wife, Tomi, take the long journey from their small seaside village to visit their adult children in Tokyo. Their elder son, Koichi, a doctor, and their daughter, Shige, a hairdresser, don’t have much time to spend with their aged parents, and so it falls to Noriko, the widow of their younger son who was killed in the war, to keep her in-laws company. Directed by Yasujirô Ozu and starring Chishû Ryû, Chieko Higashiyama and Sô Yamamura.
The film has a 100% critics rating and 93% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with the Critics Consensus being:
Tokyo Story is a Yasujiro Ozu masterpiece whose rewarding complexity has lost none of its power more than half a century on.
Rotten Tomatoes
In The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw wrote:
The exquisite sadness of Yasujiro Ozu’s 1953 film, now re-released for its 70th anniversary, does not get any more bearable or less overwhelming with time. With each repeated viewing, the film of tears obscuring my own view of its star Setsuko Hara appears earlier and earlier, making her heartbreakingly decent, courageous smile shimmer and wobble. Ozu’s distinctive and stylised idiom, with low shooting angles and direct sightlines into camera, creates something mesmerically formal to match the drama’s emotional restraint, which is more devastating when the dam is breached. When Hara’s smile finally drops, it is like a gunshot.
Tokyo Story review – Yasujiro Ozu’s exquisite family tale stands the test of time
Widow’s Peak (1994)
Scandal and mystery reign following the arrival of Edwina in a small Irish town populated entirely by widows. Edwina quickly falls out with the locals while also falling in with the son of the community’s leader. Directed by John Irvin and starring Joan Plowright, Mia Farrow and Natasha Richardson.
The film has a 94% critics rating and 52% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
In the Los Angeles Times, Peter Rainer wrote:
“Widow’s Peak” is a lilting little whodunit trussed up as a domestic comedy. Set in the village of Kilshannon, Ireland, in the early 1920s, it’s an actors’ holiday of a movie. The lead female performers–Mia Farrow, Joan Plowright, Natasha Richardson–make it something of a holiday for us, too.
Movie Review : ‘Widow’s Peak’ an Engaging and Literate Comedic Piffle
