This month, cinephiles and lovers of cult films were given a blessing from the movie gods: an honest to god rerelease of “The Fall,” Tarsem Singh’s singular 2006 fantasy adventure epic. The movie, which stars Lee Pace in a dual role as an injured 1915 Hollywood stuntman and the hero of an epic tale he spins for a hospitalized little girl, was greeted with mixed reviews but love from its biggest fans upon its 2006 Toronto Film Festival premiere. In the years since its premiere, the film has developed a passionate little fandom, but actually tracking it down has proven more difficult than it should be — it’s been completely unavailable on streaming for years.
With the July 15 news that Mubi will re-release “The Fall” this...
uh, fall, that long drought is about to finally end. The arthouse streamer and distributer is set to premiere the 4K restoration of Singh’s film at the 2024 Locarno Film Festival this August, followed by a September 27 streaming release. The announcement marks the end of one of the longest droughts a film has experienced in terms of streaming availability — and gives hope for other films stuck in that particularly brutal purgatory.
Generally speaking, people often discuss the streaming age as a landscape that offers nigh-unlimited access of film history to anybody — or, at least, anybody who can pony up money to the right services. And it’s true that streaming has its benefits, allowing for quick and easy availability of thousands of classics films, as long as you know where to look and how to find them. But, as American audiences have almost completely abandoned physical media for online access, that transition has left a lot of great, underrated works in the dust.
Whether it’s because of rights issues or sheer negligence, you don’t need to look too deeply to find plenty of iconic and worthwhile films that just can’t be accessed on streaming. Some of these films do occasionally pop up on streamers for a month or two before vanishing; others have had prolonged absences. While the answer to how to watch these movies is simple — invest in physical media — if you don’t have the ability to do so, the inability to throw on a banger like “To Live and Die in L.
A.” or “Pump Up the Volume” can prove more than a little aggravating. With “The Fall” finally heading to streaming, IndieWire is taking a look at some of the other streaming victims that deserve a new lease on life via streaming.
To qualify for this list, the movie cannot be available on any legal commercial streaming service or via VOD platforms like YouTube, Apple TV, and Amazon. Read on to find ten great movies that you can’t stream anywhere. Entries are listed in chronological order.
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