Netflix Post-Mortem

My eight-month endeavor has come to an end.  Since the end of July, I've been, really, working hard to catch up on movies -- the great ones that I really should see, blockbusters I happened to miss, and other just plain good movies I'd probably enjoy.  For the last few weeks, as the main and instant queues tapered off, I realized that I was where I'd wanted to get, finished those last few, and called it quits.

Upon clicking the "cancel subscription" link, I was prompted to take a short survey -- a sort of apologetic, almost plaintive list of what they might have done wrong. There were really no choices to reflect my circumstances; I guess it goes against the entire concept of Netflix to think that one could ever see enough movies?

My final tally stood at 77 -- something like the equivalent of sitting in front of a TV for a week straight! Of course, this was pretty evenly split over more than half a year. Works out to a new movie every three days or so, apparently pretty consistently over that time. I'd say I need to take more vacation (!), but I actually brought a DVD on a few trips or tapped into Instant from out of town as well. The final picture:

I count it all as time well spent (not to mention money -- paid $70.71 total, so less than a dollar a movie).  For those of you not familiar with Netflix's rating system, customers are encouraged to rate movies ordered and seen otherwise on a one-to-five scale, five being the highest. In their terminology, from five down to one, that translates to "Loved it," "Really liked it," "Liked it," "Didn't like it," and "Hated it."  The 77 I watched I rated thusly:

It's very reassuring to see that nearly four fifths of the movies I saw I at least "liked" (3 and above).  Of course, most of what I saw came recommended, by friends or Netflix's algorithm. I'm not one to waste time on movies I doubt I'll enjoy, but I did get a chance to  pick a number of random suggestions and take a few others on faith. It's good to see that recommendations/reputations were on point and I mostly liked them to some degree.

In terms of what I rated where... tough to generalize. I can say that my top-rated movies show that, in my opinion, the movie industry can still put out excellent stuff -- Inception, The Hurt Locker, Restrepo (yes I watched a lot of war movies). Television too, in particular Firefly and Archer. And while plenty of classics seem dated by this point, others absolutely stand the test of time -- Amadeus, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Deer Hunter got 5's, with plenty more good ones at 4 (OK, can't help name-dropping a few more -- Bullitt, Patton, Citizen Kane, (the original) Taking of the Pelham One Two Three, Rio Bravo, The Wrath of Khan).

And as for the (thankfully) few below... I tended to rate more recent movies that just weren't any good at 2. The 1's?  Transformers, I hope needing no further explanation. And the other was Where Eagles Dare -- a promising movie based on a great thriller book, but I was really disappointed to see the clever scheme turned into just a shoot-em-up bloodbath. I don't think it's really my style to post the complete list publicly, but I could probably be persuaded to share...


I definitely enjoyed my something like a two-semester course in cinema. With the success of this Netflix stint, I'll end up watching fewer classics in the near future, but that wasn't my only reason for paying the $70. I also felt like I had to catch up on the hits that I missed, even if they won't ever be held up next to those timeless classics (Avatar, Inception, Wall Street 2, Inglourious Basterds). So, the goal now becomes to keep up with those movies as they hit theaters, and not be stuck waiting for Netflix to get ahold of enough DVDs to meet the online demand. Anyone up for a movie?