More current fare includes “Smashed,” an indie from 2012 with Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Aaron Paul, and the occasionally terrifying “Flight” from the same year, which melds the alcoholism drama with the near disaster pic, turn an airline pilot played by Denzel Washington. “Krisha,” last year’s much-praised indie anywhere a raging drunken aunt gives her family a super-memorable Thanksgiving, is available free to Prime members. I didn’t accommodate it — but I loved the rentable “Sideways,” the 2004 film directed by Alexander Payne about two friends’ ill-starred journeys in California wine country.Netflix seems a little thin on instructive or inspiring fare with respect to the adverse effects of booze, although officially to enjoy cheesy, borderline-creepy soft-core variants on “The Hangover,” which perchance appropriate if you’re spending New Year’s Day determined also behaving badly. Cinephilia-inclined services offer strong stuff from strong directors. John Cassavetes was a maestro with boozers, although you couldn’t say that alcoholism singularly was a central theme of his films. Nonetheless, “Faces” (1968), “A Woman Under the Influence” (1974) and “Opening Night” (1977), all viewable on Filmstruck, depict with painful clarity the messes one can make by drinking. “Days of Wine and Roses” is a remarkably tough-minded film for Hollywood in 1962, but that’s the director Blake Edwards for you. Nonalcoholics information and think, “So sad about Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick”; alcoholics in 12-step programs word and think, “Damn, why can’t I have Jack Klugman as my sponsor?” The movie is on the Warner Archive site, as is “The Helen Morgan Story,” a 1957 picture with Ann Blyth as Morgan, the singer who catapulted to fame in Broadway’s “Show Boat” and fell hard for the hard stuff. A young Paul Newman is the cad who takes advantage of her condition.I know, I know — where’s the “That Wasn’t So Bad” stuff? There’s not a lot of it, and much of it is, well, loud and empty, like the films of the “Hangover” franchise, which Amazon has up
