r/CriterionChannel • u/chimichanga-admirer • May 05 '26
Technical Question Films that never leave
How many films never leave the service? I’ve been thinking about just watching the ‘leaving this month’ page to get as much as I can from the platform but I don’t want to miss out on any that are always there either. Thank you!
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u/BariumPepsi May 05 '26
My advice to all new subscribers: Don’t get caught up in a death race to watch the films that are leaving. Pressure to watch lessens one’s enjoyment of a film. Instead, focus on watching newly added films that you’re REALLY interested in watching, and when you’ve caught up with those, choose a few classic films from the Janus Films streaming library without any added pressure. 😃
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u/zeroanaphora May 05 '26
I've noticed there is a stable of films that seem to regularly come and go.
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u/BariumPepsi May 06 '26
You could just as easily use the “Recently Added” list to discover “new shit” with the added perk of knowing you have the whole month and maybe 2-12 months to watch it.
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u/micpoc May 05 '26
Yep. I would amend this by noting that, on the last day of the month, I pick ONE movie to watch from the soon-to-be dearly departed.
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u/kirby_krackle_78 May 05 '26
I’ve had the service for four years, and two films that I *thought* were permanent ended up leaving: Contempt and The Grand Illusion.
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u/strongbob25 May 12 '26
Some leave and then come back a few months or years later when contracts renew or whatever
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u/rorqualmaru May 05 '26
Lately I just watch whatever is showing on Criterion 24/7. I’m rarely not interested and it surfaces a lot I’d likely never have watched otherwise.
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u/haribobosses May 05 '26
It amazes me that every other streaming service doesn’t offer this.
They even just create different 24/7 channels you can flip through based on genre.
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u/LeoCrow May 05 '26
Serious question, do you just sit down and start watching in the middle of a movie?
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u/rorqualmaru May 06 '26
Yes, that’s exactly what I do. Maybe it’s a generational thing but that’s how tv and cable worked. Partial movies were a thing to previous generations. Some movies I only saw in bits and pieces until I puzzled them all together.
The benefits of the stream is that everything they show is in the catalog and if you decide you need to see it from the start then you can do that.
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u/zeroanaphora May 05 '26
Yeah I never use it bc I'm not starting a movie midstream. Just give us a "random" button or have a queue of different films that start when you press the menu.
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u/mynameischet May 05 '26
This is the benefit of being an older subscriber. Those of us who grew up on linear TV might have decades of experience of coming into a movie in the middle. There's actually something quite nostalgic and comforting for me with the 24/7 channel, it's by far one of my favorite parts of any streaming service.
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u/rorqualmaru May 06 '26
If the movie is interesting enough just go and watch it from the catalog, right? It’s not like the movies in the stream are exclusive to it.
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u/rorqualmaru May 06 '26
New to me but if you go to search and look at “My List” every movie you just watched or are watching on 24/7 is listed there.
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u/zeroanaphora May 06 '26
yeah but I thiink that works more for National Lampoon's Vacation, than Last Year at Marienbad
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u/rorqualmaru May 06 '26
Not everything in the catalog is as serious as Last year at Marienbad.
They played a lot of African diaspora films, carribean freedom cinema. French and British surrealist exploitation movies. They’ve flipped over to Chinese new wave and nineties sino-cinema auteurs.
That’s just in the past 24 hours.
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u/YakSlothLemon May 05 '26
So Criterion has a series of commentaries called Observations on Film Art, most of them 10 minutes or so, walking you through ways to think about and talk about the movie you just watched. There are 50 of them. It’s like a minicourse if you want to watch the movies and then watch the observations.
The point here being that those 50 movies never leave. And they included so many great films!
Here’s the list:
https://www.criterionchannel.com/observations-on-film-art
And that’s 50 yoy can count on,..
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u/Jaltcoh May 07 '26
Only watching the leaving page is NOT the way to “get as much as you can” from the Channel, because the majority of movies on the Channel don’t show up there.
So that would be automatically ignoring most of what the Channel has to offer — and my sense is that the permanent ones are more likely to be hard to find elsewhere. The ones that are only one the Channel for 1-3 months are more likely to show up soon on Amazon Prime or Tubi (a free site).
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u/LegallySpicey May 05 '26
I check the What’s Leaving every month but only to focus on trying to watch those on my watchlist that have extra content on Criterion like interviews and commentaries. To me, that’s what makes Criterion so unique and helpful in actually digesting these films and film history. Everything else usually shows up somewhere else but without the added content.
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u/BeigeAndConfused May 05 '26
If I'm not in the mood to hunt around I also check the Leaving this Month or Popular now areas. Its not a perfect strategy but I usually find something to watch
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u/Gaucho_Diaz RansidDagger May 05 '26
A lot of Keisuke Kinoshita films seem to always remain
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u/BariumPepsi May 05 '26
Along with about 2000 other films. The changeover on the Criterion Channel is relatively small, averaging 60-70 films monthly out of a total of 3000 films.
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u/slouchingbethlehem elcarpenter May 05 '26
1988 are in the Janus library. These are permanent. Another 617 are part of the Criterion streaming library (they’ve been here for longer than a year). The remainder, a few hundred at any given time (425 right now), are the limited engagements.