Amazon Prime stands tall in July with an impressive new list of classic movies and fan-favorite TV shows offered for free to Amazon customers who pay the $99 annual fee for Prime — a service that includes a lot more than free streaming video.
For TV buffs, four classic series from HBO — the pay cable network that over the past couple of decades has taken over the position once occupied by PBS as the premier outlet for quality television — will become binge-watch fare for Amazon Prime subscribers.
Actually, Amazon Prime offers the most popular show currently on PBS as well on its list of new offerings for July 2015 . Season 5 of the hit British import Downton Abbey debuts on July 1.
The new HBO releases hit Amazon Prime starting on July 16, when Season 3 of the 1920s-period gangster drama Boardwalk Empire goes online, along with Season 5 of the tongue-in-cheek Southern Gothic vampire series True Blood .
One week later, Amazon Prime releases the first two seasons of one of HBO’s more polarizing shows, the Aaron Sorkin political-journalism drama Newsroom — and a week after that, on July 30, HBO’s ode to Hollywood “bro” culture, Entourage , goes online.
But Amazon Prime presents a healthy lineup of classic Hollywood feature films in July as well, starting on the first day of the month with the revisionist western Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid , starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. When the George Roy Hill-directed film came out in 1969, Newman was a veteran star and one of Hollywood’s biggest names.
But Butch Cassidy was the movie that turned Redford from a popular pretty boy into one of the most powerful box office draws of his generation.
Also on July 1, one of the most controversial movies of the 1970s, the action-packed street-gang thriller The Warriors , hits Amazon Prime. When the film hit theaters in 1979, screenings were marred by outbreaks of gang violence, and politicians turned the movie into a punching bag. But the film has gone on to be recognized as one of the most groundbreaking entries in the action genre.
July 3 sees the Oscar-winning biopic Gandhi alongside Stanley Kubrick’s brilliant Cold War satire, Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb .
Here is the complete list of Amazon Prime July releases.
July 1
- Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid
- Drive Me Crazy
- Dowtown Abbey (Season 5)
- The Day The Earth Stood Still
- Thumbelina
- Bulworth
- Heidi
- Wayne’s World 2
- 48 HRS.
- The Bad News Bears
- The Brady Bunch Movie
- The Butcher’s Wife
- Cadillac Radio
- Dirty Dancing
- Dragonslayer
- Flashdance
- Friends and Lovers
- Harlem Nights
- Heaven Can Wait
- King Kong
- The Odd Couple
- Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
- Stuart Saves His Family
- UHF
- The Warriors
July 2
- Annedroids (Season 2)
- Glory
- Underworld Evolution
July 3
- Gandhi
- Dr. Strangelove
July 5
- Extant (Season 2)
July 10
- The Expendables 3
July 11
- Two Men in Town
July 16
- Boardwalk Empire (Season 3)
- True Blood (Season 5)
July 18
- Glee (Season 6)
July 23
- Jim Norton: Contextually Inadequate
- Newsroom (Season 1 & 2)
July 24
- Hercules (2014)
July 30
- Behind the Candelabra
- Entourage (TV Series)
July 31
- The Skeleton Twins
The July lineup is one of the stronger months for Amazon Prime movies and TV for quite some time, and these offerings make a welcome alternative to the usual lineup of big budget blockbusters that will dominate the multiplexes this summer.
[Images: HBO Publicity Stills]
