It's almost summer, which is the time of year I start thinking about renewing my Netflix subscription. I've had a love/hate relationship with Netflix over the years. I'd take a break from it then remember how nice things were and start up again, and it wouldn't be long before so many discs would be showing up in my mailbox scratched beyond recognition and physically unplayable. I thought streaming movies through my Blu-Ray player would be the answer, but that device turned out to be so frustratingly slow it reminded me of dial-up. I ended up watching most of the first season of "House of Cards" at my desktop computer, which wasn't really ideal. But now with this shiny iPad I'm currently typing away on? I have high hopes it will go a long way in solving that streaming problem for me.
I've done summer binges on TV shows dating back to the time before binge-watching was a trending catchphrase, and I'm looking forward to getting back into that habit again soon. I'm not a big TV watcher most of the time, so summer break is the perfect chance to get caught up on shows I've missed. I know Netflix doesn't carry everything but they do have season 2 of "House of Cards," and that alone is enough reason for me to reactivate my account.
But catching up on TV shows isn't the only reason to give Netflix another try -- they also have movies!! Part of my problem with movies is that I miss out on a lot of good ones when they're in the theater. I used to go to the movies nearly every weekend, often seeing something just because it was the least unappealing option available. But with the price of seeing a movie in a theater bordering on the ridiculous these days, I've pulled back considerably. When I go now, I'm looking for the pure entertainment, the thrills, the escape. I would probably see "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" five times before I'd even consider seeing something like "12 Years a Slave." Not because I don't think "12 Years a Slave" wouldn't be a landmark movie, but somehow I don't see myself walking out of the theater with a big stupid grin on my face after that one.
And this is where Netflix comes in. With that I can stream the movies I know would be good but wouldn't have been my theater choices, or see the smaller movies I was curious about but not curious enough to drive to the the one independent theater within a 40 mile radius. And this is to say nothing about the dozens of classics I've missed over the decades. I have huge cultural gaps there: Would you believe it if I said I've never seen "The Godfather?" Not because I'm not interested or completely unaware of it, but four hours is just such a long time to sit still for someone who doesn't have the attention span to endure most commercial breaks, so it's just one of many I've never gotten around to. (Although in a tangentially-related way, I have to say the film version of "Fight Club" is one of my all-time favorites; saw it in the theater, twice, owned it on normal and special edition DVD and Blu-Ray, and have seen it countless times on cable.) And now I'm kind of feeling like I should see "The Godfather," along with several other classics still on what I'll call my Gap List, too many of which would be humiliating to point out haven't seen yet.
So as soon as I pull the trigger and get the Netflix showing up on the iPad, I'm going to put together a queue of all those classic movies I've missed out on and finally get caught up. Maybe that will even become a semi-regular blog feature throughout the summer. In the meantime I'll just put this question out there: What are the must-see movies of cinematic history that I should put on the list, in case I haven't seen them yet?
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