Knowledge Problem

Netflix Streaming

Michael Giberson

I like to watch good movies, and particularly for someone who now lives outside a major metropolitan area, Netflix has been unbelievably useful.  Netflix really has been amazing. Return one disk by mail and get another a day or two later. Incredible selection.

Recently Netflix raised the price on their DVD/Blu-ray rental packages which lead us to switch to the online streaming-only option to save a few bucks.  Really, however, for all practical purposes we’d already switched.

Today I’m mailing back “The Hurt Locker,” the last of the physical disks we received from Netflix, which we’ve had around for nearly six weeks without watching it. In the meantime we’ve viewed about 20 movies via streaming. In fact, I was going to watch it last night before sending it back, but wound up watching the German comedy “Soul Kitchen” instead.

Not every movie is on Netflix, and not every movie on Netflix is available via streaming, but since my Netflix instant queue is up above 100 it hardly seems to matter. It’s “kids with the keys to the candy store” overwhelmingly good. In fact, if it weren’t for the HBO Series Treme, I’d pull the plug on our HBO subscription.

I meant to do some serious damage to the instant queue during the break between semesters, but despite viewing several good movies the queue is longer than ever. Tyler Cowan’s post this morning, “Important 2010 movies that weren’t released in most of the USA,” added three more.  Seems like no matter how much candy you eat, there is still more candy to eat!

For the holiday season I’ve rated the following movies “Really Liked It”: Soul Kitchen, Shutter Island, Exit Through the Gift Shop, Life and Debt, Ip Man, and The Girl Who Played with Fire. Rated “Liked It” were: I am Trying to Break Your Heart, Flame and Citron, Let the Right One In and Youssou N’Dour: I Bring What I Love.