Why I resumed Netflix

Asa, a loyal MR reader, asks:

Tyler, I just finished reading your Inner Economist book and in there
you said you stopping doing Netflix because you felt that the waiting
Netflix discs sometimes felt like a burden to you. Have you changed
your mind on this? I use Netflix, but sometimes I feel compelled to
watch a disc I have at home just to get "the Queue flowing again" even
if I don't really feel like watching it at the moment. In reality I
should just send the disc back if I don't want to watch it anymore, but
somehow that seems like a waste. I'm wondering if you have more
thoughts on this.

My problem with movies is simple.  I can read faster than some people, but I can't watch a movie faster than anyone.  So the relative price of movie-watching for me is high (the marginal utility of books does not for me decline rapidly) and often I need the big screen to hold my interest.  Nonetheless I read Essential Cinema and the new David Thomson book — both superb — and decided I wanted to see a chunk of movies.  I've already blogged Satantango and Ruiz's Time Regained was a surprisingly good cinematic treatment of Proust (no jokes please).  I'm looking forward to I Am Cuba, Cat People (the original), Peeping Tom, Bottle Rocket, Night Moves, The Letter, Pasolini's Salo, and about fifteen others.  Probably then I'll quit again.

By the way, the movies I liked this year were Man on Wire, Let the Right One In, the first thirty minutes of Wall-E, Encounters at the End of the World, In Bruges, Burn After Reading, and Transporter 3.  I haven't yet seen either Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas) or Gran Torino but I expect to like both.  I even enjoyed Vicki Cristina Barcelona, against all expectations.

Tonight, from this very good article, I read a very good sentence: "In other words, older women are discriminating, which is why so few films are made for them."

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