Wait for the DVD

If you’re anything like me, you tend to skip the movies unless something comes out that you absolutely must see in the theaters. For me the last theatrical release I saw on the big screen was Avatar (2009) in 3-D. I really enjoyed the movie. I didn’t enjoy the $15 for IMAX 3-D, but I lived with it. The price tag is why I’ve turned to the video option, as many of us have. I’ve been in love with Netflix since they emerged in 1999. I was not one of the first to use Netflix, but I came around in 2003. Since then, I’ve been a 3 DVD devotee. When they started the Instant Queue in 2008 I was so excited! Then I saw the list of movies, and wasn’t so excited, but I gave them a chance.

In 2008-2009, before Netflix partnered with Starz Entertainment, I watched a lot of really bad movies. Movies I didn’t even know existed! My Netflix queue history tells me the first movie I attempted to watch on Instant Queue was Mulva: Zombie Ass Kicker! (2001) I got through 10 minutes of it before I turned it off. It took a few movies for me to find a gem. Fido (2006) stole my zombie-loving heart! It amused me, and validated my thirst for horror and mock-horror movies. This is why nearly all of the movies I had on my Instant Queue, for the first year or so, were bad horror movies.

Now Netflix has new releases on their streaming option, so I can watch a film that came out in the theaters, and is released on DVD. I recently watched The Runaways (2010) with Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning. It was a conscious decision to wait until the movie was on DVD before I watched it, then it was streaming, so it went to the top of my queue.

There are some movies that are way down my queue for both DVD and streaming that I have passed up because I happened to catch them on HBO, or even Sci-Fi or TNT. I would have to say these are the really bad movies that aren’t worth my time to even watch until I accidentally stumble on them while surfing through my options on a night when I don’t have any TiVo to watch, and just don’t take the effort to look through my streaming queue.

This is the reason I’ll mostly write about films that I’ve caught on Netflix, rather than review the newest movies in the theater. I simply don’t feel the need to sit in a room with 100 other people with super sound, and stale popcorn smell for a small fortune, when I can simply wait a couple of months and see the film in the comfort of my own living room on my HDTV, with soon to come stereo surround sound.

If someone tells me that I MUST see THIS MOVIE in the theater, then I’ll weigh my options, and consider it. I regret not watching Inception (2010) in the theater after watching the DVD a few weeks ago, as I will probably regret not keeping the tradition of watching Harry Potter movies in the theater when Half-Blood Prince (2009) was released.

So, if you’re interested in hidden gems on the Netflix Instant Queue, or the really bad movies that were never released in the theater, or even the movie you didn’t feel was worth watching in the theater and wanted to “wait for DVD” this is the place to come. Because I’m a Netflix junkie, and because I don’t have Showtime, I’ll keep Weeds and Dexter on my queue, and any other movie/TV series I can find that looks decent, or really disturbing (Asian horror has my attention right now).

Stay tuned! You won’t be sorry.