By Pearce Hungate
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. —We’re still under quarantine, which means that Hogs at Home is still here to give you ideas for how to pass the time in style. This week, we head to our favorite streaming services to finally watch some movies with a little more substance.
IMDB maintains a list of the top 250 movies, as rated by its users. Now is a great time to start from the top and see some of the movies that everyone’s been talking about since the very dawn of filmmaking.
These movies cross all genres, eras, styles, and even languages. While that last part might be enough to push some watchers away, remember, Parasite won the Oscar for 2019. If subtitles are good enough for the Academy Awards, then they should be good enough for you.
Not all movies are on your preferred streaming services for free, but many can be rented, and the Redbox, if you live near one, is a socially responsible option during quarantine. If there’s a line, just make sure that you’re six feet apart.
UARK students also have access to the streaming service Kanopy. This streaming service has many of the movies that are featured on the IMDB Top 250 page, especially Japanese movies from the 1950s by famous director Akira Kurosawa, who holds a number of entries on the Top 250 and whose works directly inspired many of the western movies that have become part of the cultural zeitgeist.
Watching movies you’ve seen before in quarantine is perfectly fine. But wouldn’t it be nice to branch out and see some of the movies that have shaped our very culture as we know it? And if you’re daunted by the seemingly insurmountable list of movies, don’t worry. We’re going to be inside for a long time anyway.
One can find the Top 250 list at https://www.imdb.com/chart/top/ and other, user-created lists are out there from big name critics as well as anonymous internet users.
Tune in to Hogs at Home every Monday and Wednesday for more suggestions on how to spend all your newfound free time.