On deciding what to watch (or rewatch)

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

The Mosfilm channel has a ton of stuff, some of it canonical classics (Solaris, The Ascent, Ivan the Terrible, etc.) but most of it movies that would be unlikely to get picked up by a Western video label even if sanctions weren't an issue. Last weekend I watched Taming of the Fire, a heavily-fictionalized biopic of rocket scientist Sergei Korolev, which is basically hagiographic but interesting in that the qualities that make him heroic also make him pretty off-putting. You have to put up with a semi-transparent bug in the corner of the screen for the whole movie, which isn't a deal-breaker in my opinion (especially if you ever watched movies on Chinese TV), but YMMV.

Speaking of Chinese TV, there's also an official CCTV-6 channel that's absolutely inundated with direct-to-streaming wuxia and war movies, but I've found some films I've actually heard of and liked: After Separation, Postmen in the Mountains, Feng Shui, Fall of Ming. I'm sure there's other hidden gems in there, but you have to do a lot of digging. If you prefer Hong Kong cinema, Shaw Brothers has a channel with a lot of titles—the most well-known are typically locked behind their members-only "Golden Vault," but there are others of interest, like King Hu's debut The Story of Sue San and the bizarre corporate-espionage musical Intrigue in Nylons.

The Korean Film Archive has a similar channel for South Korean films. It's mostly pre-1990 films of which I know next to nothing, but of the more recent titles I can vouch for, there's Gagman, The Power of Kangwon Province, The Age of Success, To the Starry Island, Nambugun, and A Single Spark. The Fox with Nine Tails is fun if you're in the mood for something like Cat People (the Schrader version more than the Tourneur) with egregious Video Toaster-level CGI.

[domino harvey]

Thank you to those who have suggested thus far for only providing links to official licensor uploads. As a reminder, please do not provide any direct links to illegal uploads or channels hosting illegal uploads (and do not do so and plead ignorance or innocence as to what I mean)