![\"nights\"](\"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/nights.jpg\")
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\nFuture generations won’t know the joy of driving to a Blockbuster and picking out a rental (or rentals) for the weekend.\u00a0 It was an inconvenient life, but nostalgia erases that.\u00a0 Waxing romantic on it now makes me exhale in deep wistful wonder, my heart full of bliss.\u00a0 Video stores fostered my burgeoning cinephilia in the late nineties, and provided some of the best memories of my life.<\/p>\n
But Netflix has changed all that, and I say good riddance. All Netflix really does is add convenience to the already established video store mechanism. Now you don\u2019t even have to leave the house. You can snuggle on the couch with your lover and your Roku box and browse what\u2019s currently streaming (and I suspect, in a decade or so, everything will be). I love movies. I love that they exist and that Netflix has a little of everything to offer, from new releases to obscure documentaries to the original King Kong<\/a>.\u00a0 But, in short rebut to a fellow smugster\u2019s article<\/a>, I will quickly say I think it’s insane<\/i> to finish most movies.\u00a0 Movies were not made to be finished, they were made to be watched, and if they aren’t good enough to be watched, then you’re doing yourself an excruciating disservice by finishing them. \u00a0On a given night, I’ll turn off ten movies on Netflix.<\/p>\n Some bad movies are<\/em> worth watching though, to laugh at and stare in utter disbelief at. \u00a0They can be a fun endurance test. \u00a0A few years ago, my old roommate Patrick and I actually made up a game for watching bad movies on Netflix.\u00a0 You type in a random phrase like “fish pike bakery” and then have to watch the first thing available for streaming that comes up.\u00a0 This rendered some really fun viewings of some of the worst movies ever made.\u00a0 There was Wendy and Lucy<\/a>, the Michelle Williams buddy movie where she drearily meanders around a small town with her dog.\u00a0 We particularly loved the scene in the beginning where she\u2019s at a campfire and a guy says \u201cdon\u2019t tell Old Man Brutus that I\u2019m here\u201d. \u00a0We never see that guy, or Old Man Brutus, for the entire rest of the movie, making the line 100% meaningless and useless.\u00a0 There was Love Conquers Paul<\/a>, Freezer Burn<\/a>, and some movie I forget the name of where a girl that doesn\u2019t know how to drive steals a car in Manhattan with a skinny guy and they drive it to Boston\u2014and that\u2019s it. \u00a0Oh, and it opened with a ping pong scene.<\/p>\n My favorite discovery was a director named Henry Jaglom, who apparently is somewhat well-regarded\u2014at least enough to warrant a self-congratulatory, pompous, and boring documentary heralding his \u2018genius\u2019.\u00a0 I stumbled upon a movie of his called Irene in Time<\/a>, one of the worst, most inept movies I’ve ever seen.\u00a0 Not just bad, weird<\/i> bad.\u00a0 It’s not bad like a silly horror movie or Plan 9 From Outer Space<\/a>, but more in the way that all the shots are framed oddly, and the camera moves oddly, and the main character acts oddly.\u00a0 She sings a really annoying song called “I’m Dancing With My Father” and a really weird one about Starbucks.\u00a0 The whole movie is just this woman, Irene, acting weird and talking, annoyingly, about her daddy.\u00a0 And this isn’t some shot on shitty video, handheld, bullshit thing.\u00a0 It’s a clean 35mm print by a guy who’s supposed to be something.\u00a0 His other movies suck just as bad. I know because I saw them\u2014on Netflix!<\/p>\n
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\nNetflix is what video stores used to be when they were at their best.\u00a0 It’s hard to believe, but video stores used to actually have a wide variety of movies to rent.\u00a0 Nowadays it\u2019s just new releases, video games, TV shows, and a pathetic shelf of shitty horror films and \u201cclassics\u201d like In Her Shoes<\/a>.\u00a0 The classics section used to mean classics<\/i>\u2014movies from before 1970 or so.\u00a0 And there used to be a documentary section where you could actually rent documentaries, not a \u2018special interest\u2019 rack inexplicably filled with both workout videos and March of the Penguins<\/a>.\u00a0 Netflix has eagerly picked up where video stores left off, and they’re providing young cinephiles the opportunity to explore the way we used to be able to\u2014and you no longer need a drivers license or a bike, to boot!<\/p>\n