I forgot to cancel my Amazon Prime free trial, so now I have Amazon Prime for the year. Turns out they have movies! That I can watch! For free! On my computer! So I went searched for all of the remaining movies on my Best Picture list and found that eight of them are free for Amazon Prime members.

This afternoon while the kids were down for Quiet Time, I fired up “You Can’t Take it With You,” the 1938 Best Picture winner. And I watched an hour of it, then turned it off. And later the kids wanted to watch some TV so I set them up downstairs and watched some more of it. And then when the kids were done with their shows they came up and watched the end of it with me, and Poppy wanted to know why there were so many grandpas in the basement. (Which would entirely make sense if you’d seen the movie, which is heavily peppered with white-haired men.)

The movie was directed by Frank Capra and starred Jimmy Stewart (my favorite) and Lionel Barrymore. Here’s the Amazon synopsis:

Lionel Barrymore is the eccentric patriarch of a clan of frustrated artists who decided 30 years earlier to retire from the rat race and use his fortune to encourage friends and family to pursue vocations that really interest them. At the center of his family is his granddaughter, Jean Arthur, who is carrying on a romance with her boss’ son, James Stewart.

It was like a not-as-good version of “It’s a Wonderful Life” featuring a whole houseful of Uncle Billies.