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Movies Since Last Post: 

It’s been a couple weeks since I’ve posted, and a big crop of movies, which is great, because it puts me at 53 for the year so far. So, on average, that puts me on a good pace, but the average may be skewed a little, since I did watch three in one day last Friday. I admit it’s a bit of a cheat, because my job required me to babysit an event, so I was asked to sit in an AV booth all day, and it was suggested I bring my laptop, so I watched two movies, and then went to see Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 that night. So, banner day for me, but there probably won’t be a lot of triple-features for the rest of the year.

The cool thing about that day was that I broke new ground by trying out Google Play, which allows you to rent or buy movies, same as Amazon or whatever. So, I paid $4.99 to watch The Founder, the movie about Ray Kroc, and the discovered that I got a second one for $.99, so I rented The Girl on the Train, the movie about drunk Emily Blunt (Thank God it was only $.99, because it was a basic Lifetime movie with a slightly better cast.)  For some reason, I was more willing to pay Google for a movie than some of these other companies. Maybe I just feel like I’ve given Amazon enough money, but also that whole 24-hour watching period debacle put a bad taste in my mouth. There also seems t be a slightly better quality of movie on Google Play, so there’s not as much sifting through as there is on some of these other sights.

Speaking of other sites, I started my 30-Day free trial on Hulu, so that I could see what they had and compare them to the other venues. Despite what I wrote about in my last post, Hulu’s movie selection was not as abundant as I hoped. I basically opened an account because they had Brie Larson’s breakout role in Short Term 12 for free, while other sites were charging, but despite the fact that I have watched five movies on there this month, I kind of have to call it a failed experiment. Although, they are the only site that has the very cool documentary Batman & Bill, based on one writer’s quest to get Bill Finger credit for being a creator of Batman, because it’s a Hulu Original, something that I didn’t know existed. It’s been good to nail down a few of the ones I was hoping to watch this year for free, but mostly it’s like that junky old video store that you would go to as a last resort when you were dying to watch something. They also have a very weird way of categorizing movies, as they list Thomas the Tank Engine: Muddy Matters under Action/Adventure. I’m sure it’s a wild adventure for Thomas, but there’s no way in the world that his movie should be in the same section as The Hateful Eight.

The real problem I’m running into is the variety of movies. I was hoping Hulu would open up a whole new world of free movie (for a month, anyway), but in fact, all I found were the same movies that Amazon has listed in their “Included with Prime” section. For example, all the Indiana Jones, James Bond, and Hunger Games movies seem to be available on both platforms, plus a lot of really bad action and horror movies. I scroll through and keep coming across the same stupid B-movies over and over, and eventually I’ll probably be worn down enough that I’ll just watch one of them (It’s like my days of Internet Dating, only with movies).  I’m sure that this is some studio marketing thing, where you just put them in  front of as many eyeballs as possible, but in the context of my experiment, it’s not working. All is not lost, though, as I did unearth this hopefully helpful article on Paste Magazine’s website.

We all know that the business model of TV is changing constantly (I’m now hearing rumors of Facebook getting into it with 5-10 minute original shows, or full-length shows with one commercial in the middle), but what does it all mean for movies? Hollywood just avoided a writer’s strike which was primarily about royalties for streaming content (among other things). Obviously, Netflix and Hulu survive purely on their subscriptions, so you don’t have to pay extra for their movies, but that’s all they got. Amazon can charge for Prime, and then have a lot more movies available that are included, because they can make money on everything else they sell (which is everything else.) They weird thing is, I definitely don’t consider Amazon Prime a rip-off, because I get free two day shipping and all that, but I pay for Netflix every month and almost never use it unless there’s a new Marvel show on (and I haven’t watch any of Iron Fist yet. Heard it stinks!) So, I can imagine that the same could be said for Hulu if I was thinking about staying around when my free month expires (which I’m not.) I could see if I got rid of cable, which a lot of people are doing, then it might be worth it. But I really like my sports, so I’m sticking with cable.

Totally my house every Sunday, man!

Speaking of cable. I pay an obscene amount of money forcable, internet and phone (which I don’t even have), plus the DVR, HD channels, the remote that you can talk to, and everything else they offer, but out of the 53 movies I’ve watched this year, only 11 have come from Xfinity. Now, they also offer the ability to rent movies, but I already pay a crapload of money for cable, why should I pay $6 more just to watch something that maybe-kinda came out sorta recently? Especially when it will probably be available in a couple months on one of the many movie channels I subscribe to?

Because we’re consumers, that’s why. So, if I have to pay Google to watch something, I guess I will. At least I’ve given them less money so far than all these other websites. I mean, my Pixel was a lot, but, whatever. Still better than an iPhone.