We’ve never been huge movie watchers, but we see most of the “hit” stuff… once it’s a rental, that is. We very rarely go to the theater. In fact, I think the last movie we saw at the theater was on 1/1/10 (it was Sherlock Holmes). So, yeah, it’s been a while. I don’t know–I guess we would rather curl up on our own couch under some blankets with glasses of wine or bottles of beer, with snacks readily available in our kitchen cupboards. That’s just how we roll. And it also saves us mucho dinero, so {shrug} WIN-WIN.
A few years ago, we had Blockbuster Online for several months, but we came to realize that we normally didn’t watch enough movies to make the subscription worth having, so we cancelled it. We have a Blockbuster within walking distance of our house, so it was never an issue. In the mood for a movie? We’d go pick one up. In the spring/summer/fall, when the weather was favorable, it was especially nice because we’d actually walk over there. We would even take Tessa with us, and the Blockbuster employees were always cool about us bringing her inside with us (we carried her, of course).
Back around Christmas time, I really wanted to watch Season 1 of Modern Family so I could catch up. Unfortunately, our local Blockbuster stores didn’t carry it (why? I have no idea), but we discovered that if we signed up for a free trial of Netflix, we could rent it through there. So we did, but we soon let our trial expire, again thinking that we don’t watch enough movies to make it worth it.
Oddly enough, a few weeks later, we were driving by our Blockbuster when we saw a huge banner hanging across the front: STORE CLOSING.
Well, damn.
After a few days of debate, we went ahead and signed up for Netflix. Now, we have a subscription and we are doing everything we can to watch more movies. Of course, having the instant streaming is pretty awesome, though I do wish they had more of a selection available (especially more recent stuff). We’re in our first month of the subscription and we have already watched enough movies to compensate for the fee. And although we have plenty of things in our Bluray queue, I would love to have recommendations for things to put in our instant queue. Older stuff that maybe we haven’t seen or should see again.
We’ve browsed, but for those of you who have Netflix, what have been your favorite instant movies? Anything obscure that ended up being good? Any old movies that you’ve rediscovered?
And while we’re at it, let’s just give recommendations for recent movies as well. What have you seen? What have you loved?
Annnnnd… GO! :)
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About
I'm Heather. I'm 33 and have been married to Michael for seven years. Together, we have two beautiful little girls we love more than anything, and a miniature dachshund who drives us crazy. I'm a full-time working mom who has very little time for my own "stuff" these days, like home improvement, cooking/baking, cake decorating, and photography. Despite the team not making the playoffs since 1999, I'm STILL a Buffalo Bills fan, which I think speaks to my loyalty AND sense of humor. I can't wait to pick up the pace with travel again some day... you know, when we're done being ruled by tiny fists. Welcome to my blog.
We use our instant queue mainly for older seasons of tv shows – we’ve caught up on 30 Rock, Bones, Grey’s Anatomy, etc that way. As for movies I think I have mainly older stuff in there right now, but I just noticed that Eat, Pray, Love is on instant which I haven’t seen yet, so I just added that! We cancelled cable a couple of years ago and work with netflix, hulu and over the air channels. Works quite well and is WAY cheaper!
There is a documentary on there called Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father. It is so good! I loved it! It’s chilling! I think it is a must see!
Right now our favorites on instant are “Monk”, “Psych”, “The Cosby Show”, “The Dick Van Dyke Show”, “Bones”, “Arrested Development”. My husband also introduced me to “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, and the follow up show “Angel”. Movies are hit and miss on instant in my opinion. I’d say we use netflix about 80% of the time for the instant TV shows. I’ve heard there are a good number of documentaries on instant, I haven’t watched many myself though.
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I love that Netflix has every episode of the recent Doctor Who, I think I’ve watched those enough to compensate for the fee for a year. In fact, I’ve primarily used Netflix for catching up on TV shows I never got a chance to start watching.
TV: Arrested Development, 30 Rock, Weeds, The Office, LOST (!!).
I have a lot in my instant queue to watch… Antichrist, Exit Through the Gift Shop, several seasons of MI-5, The Motorcycle Diaries…but I usually end up watching movies on DVD.
Summary: WATCH LOST. I seriously wish I could have amnesia and forget this show so I can experience it again.
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I’m a teenager so I don’t know how much you’ll like my suggestions but here they are:
TV: Glee -once you get into it is really good!
Raising Hope- me and my mum love this, its similar to modern family but alot funnier.
Movies:
Four Lions- this is a great film and very funny though I haven’t seen all of it, my english raves about it!
Mona Lisa Smile- this is a great film in general.
P.S I love you- really sad but a good watch (you’ll need the tissues!)
The Adams Family- its good but its got a wacky sense of humour about it.
Thats all I can think of at the moment!
DEXTER!!!!
I think the first 3 seasons are streaming now!
If you want to watch shows I totally recommend streaming Dexter on Instant Queue ASAP. Not only is it a great show, but Showtime is going to stop instant streaming soon.
As for movies – last weekend we watched The Fighter – it was fantastic. This weekend we’re getting 127 Hours and I can’t wait to watch it. I put Black Swan on our queue as well but it’ll come in a few weeks.
I love netflix – we love to watch movies at home. So much more convenient than the theaters. Plus, teenagers annoy me and you can’t avoid them at the movie theater by our house.
I agree with the other posts about Dexter! It’s my favorite show ever. I would also add Weeds in, it’s pretty funny most of the time. As for movies, I just watched Exit through the gift shop, which is a documentary about Banksy, the street artist. It was up for an Oscar and was fascinating to me.
Arthur. Beyond a reasonable doubt, us marshals. We also just watch a movie with Edward norten (I think maybe his first movie) it was really good, I don’t remember the name though…you should definatly look it up, it was great!
I agree with other commenters that we usually use the instant for catching up on TV shows. Our favorites here are Lost (which we never watched when it was actually on TV but we watched the whole series on Netflix), Nip/Tuck and Ghost Adventures and Rescue Me.
Some movies I have watched on there that are actually fairly recent and good to watch:
Precious
Brothers
Law Abiding Citizen
The Proposal
Shutter Island
There are a lot of good older movies on there, you just have to be willing to look for them. A couple of really good ones:
Return to Me
Apollo 13
Good Will hunting
Black Hawk Down
(I like to try to find movies that have won past Academy Awards…its fun!)
I love Netflix! I love all the old John Wayne and Clint Eastwood movies. Lately we have been rewatching all of the seasons of X-Files. We just finished Season 2 and I think there are at least 10!
I’ve been trying to discover some good instant movies too. So far I’ve watched Amelie, Kramer versus Kramer and Babies. Amelie and Kramer versus Kramer were sooo good! I have a lot of the documentaries on my list to watch – the lottery, the king of kong, harvard beats Yale and waiting for superman. I’ve heard good things about all of those but haven’t had a chance to watch them yet.
I dint know if this is available on instant movies but I’m pretty sure it’s available through on demand. We saw the crazies in the theater and I thought I was not going to like it but I lived it…Timothy Olyphant is my new favorite actor.
We also typically just use ours for TV shows and I can’t agree more with Weeds and Arrested Development.
A lot of foreign (and GOOD) classics are on Netflix. And a lot of stand-up comedy, if you and Michael are into that sort of thing.
I love Netflix.
The Fighter, Love and other Drugs, Life as we Know It. We just saw those recently. Some more action/drama: The Town, Brooklyn’s Finest, Taken. We watch tons of movies!
Also agree – Lost!!! We watched every season this past summer while I was pregnant.
I ususally watch No Reservations, food policy movies (Food Inc., King Corn, etc), Nat. Geo/ Nova episodes (look great on a nice TV), and tons of documentaries.
He watches Top Gear seasons, Doctor Who (Whhhhy? he’s crazy, clearly), Battlestar Galactica (again, seriously?) and all kinds of other stuff.
We have teh 1DVD thing, and the streaming set up to our TV, so I set up my DVD queue with all the stuff we cant get instantly and then those come and go while we are working our way through the instant stuff. They have lots of TV shows on there
We LOVE the show “Party Down” . Unfortunately, it was cancelled after Season 2. Lame. But, fortunatley, both of those seasons are available instantly!
You guys are great; it’ll take us YEARS to get through all of this stuff. Sounds like a lot of people use it for TV shows… I’ll have to look into them and see what they have! We don’t watch a lot of TV shows since keeping up with series is a big commitment. But it’s also hard to start watching things “in the middle,” so maybe this will help.
Thanks for all of the ideas!