While some people prefer to rag on Netflix for their fluctuating streaming catalog, I’m rather fond of it on most occasions. I’m not a gambler, so the site’s movie lottery is pretty much the only thing I like to bet on. And for all the goodness that we’ve gotten on there recently, from Big Bad Wolves to My Girl, a big chunk of classic (and non-classic) features are getting expunged during July 2014. (Like the Rocky movies.) So get on these quick, or forever hold your Amazon Prime, Hulu Plus and Redbox Instant subscriptions.
The Comedies
Dr. Strangelove
Gentlemen, there’s no fighting about what movies will and won’t stay on here. This is my living room. Stanley Kubrick’s near-perfect 1964 satirical classic remains just as fresh and as hysterical as ever, with George C. Scott and a multi-faceted Peter Sellers playing this case of mass-murdering Cold War madness as straight as possible.
Beavis and Butt-head Do America
And if you’re into satire, then you can’t get much better…or more slottier…than Mike Judge & Co.’s 1996 yuk-fest Beavis & Butt-Head Do America, in which the bumbling moronic duo take a far-flung road trip to save a stolen TV. Plus, that soundtrack.
Use the Schwartz and get this movie in front of your non-big-helmeted eyeballs as soon as possible. While some people sardonically think that J.J. Abrams upcoming Star Wars: Episode VII will be a spoof of the series, Mel Brooks already did it, and he knocked it out the galaxy with a stellar cast including Bill Pullman, John Candy and Rick Moranis.
The Look Who’s Talking Trilogy
Yeah, so forget the second two movies – except for the part in the second one where the toilet comes alive – and just watch the first one, in which John Travolta greases his way through surrogate fatherhood with Kirstie Alley, while Bruce Willis’ voice presents the rare childhood P.O.V. that made sense to me as a child. What's a light bulb?
The Dramas
Chinatown
Movies don’t get much more priceless than Roman Polanski’s 1974 classic Chinatown, with Jack Nicholson delivering an arguable career-best performance as private detective Jake Gittes, who enters into a complicated case involving Faye Dunaway, Diane Ladd, John Huston and a whole lot of twists, turns and sinus problems.
The African Queen
Does anyone in life ever get sick of watching Humphrey Bogart kick ass and take down women’s names? In John Huston’s 1951 treasure The African Queen, he’s making a fuss while drinking gin, working a steamboat and wooing a snobby Katherine Hepburn.
Taxi Driver
Are you talking to me? Cause I’m not the only one here. It’s me and the whole Cinema Blend crew, and we love Robert De Niro’s menacing and mohawked turn as Travis Bickle for Martin Scorsese’s 1976 nailbiter Taxi Driver, in which Bickle's anger management gives up and joins the gun-toting club.
James Bond Movies
Fans of all James Bond iterations may be saddened to know that For Your Eyes Only, Goldfinger, From Russia with Love and Never Say Never Again are all going away. But they’ll be back in…Bond 24, I guess.
The Sci-fi and Horrors
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Steven Spielberg had his imagination cap running at full capacity with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, in which Richard Dreyfuss is drawn out into the middle of nowhere to find a UFO, and nothing terrible happens to him. That’s how Hollywood used to work.
Rubber
Quentin Dupieux’s third film, Rubber, is about as polarizing as films can be without centering on controversial subject matter. A bit of an absurdist horror, the film follows a rubber tire that figures out it has telepathic powers and starts making people explode. I loved it, but it’s not for everyone. Especially not Netflix users in August.
Event Horizon
To me, Paul W.S. Anderson will never get better than Event Horizon, an increasingly horrifying trip into space with Sam Neill, Laurence Fishburne and Kathleen Quinlan, in which a black hole is used as a beautiful portal into hell. Neill is completely unhinged by the end of this thing, and It. Is. Glorious.
Angel Heart
Alan Parker’s 1987 mystery horror Angel Heart is one of the most underrated films of either genre, and for no good reason. It’s 1950s New York, and Robert De Niro hires private eye Mickey Rourke to find a war veteran who isn’t keen on being located, and all kinds of voodoo-related hell breaks loose.
These are but a few of the many titles biting the dust for now. Check out the full list here and let us know in the comments what you'll miss the most.
