No More Netflix

Netflix, the online DVD rental service, looks like a complete winner on paper and has gained popularity in the last few years. The disks arrive is small red envelopes and can be kept for as long as required or returned the next day with no monthly maximum on most plans. With free shipping it makes sense to turn those babies around and maximize your disks per dollar. Recently we’ve been getting a little behind and so I decided to cancel - or at least put the account on hold. Despite sending most disks back the next day the stats are quite suprising. We signed up almost two years ago and rented 222 movies at a total cost of $457.54 or $2.06 per disk. I hate to think how much it would work out as if you casually kept them for days at a time. For my own posterity, here is the list of rented films - nearly all were worth watching - but a few of my hidden gems are highlighted.

• Vertigo
• Dial M for Murder
• The Long Kiss Goodnight
• The Opposite of Sex
• Howards End
• The Crying Game: Collector’s Edition
• Fast, Cheap & Out of Control
• The Celebration
• Ben-Hur: Collector’s Edition: Disc 2
• Ben-Hur: Collector’s Edition
• Yi Yi
• Out of Africa
• What’s Eating Gilbert Grape
• Corpse Bride
• Battlestar Galactica: Season 2.0: Disc 3 (3-Disc Series)
• The Aristocrats
• A Passage to India
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• Battlestar Galactica: Season 2.0: Disc 2 (3-Disc Series)
• Harold and Maude
• My Own Private Idaho
• My Life as a Dog
• Lovely & Amazing
• Kramer vs. Kramer
• How to Marry a Millionaire
• Spartacus
• Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
• Hannah and Her Sisters
• The Graduate
• Fanny and Alexander (Theatrical Version)
• The Deer Hunter
• All About Eve
• Battlestar Galactica: Season 2.0: Disc 1 (3-Disc Series)
• March of the Penguins
• Farewell My Concubine
• The Cider House Rules
• Living in Oblivion
• You Can Count on Me
• The Polar Express
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
• Shrek (Full-screen)
• The Bourne Identity
• Shrek 2
• Dazed and Confused
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• Shanghai Triad
• Fast Times at Ridgemont High: Special Edition
• Battlestar Galactica: Season 1: Disc 4 (4-Disc Series)
• What the #$**! Do We Know!?
• The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
• The Stepford Wives
• Hotel Rwanda
• The Tin Drum
• Rabbit-Proof Fence
• Crash
• War of the Worlds
• Battlestar Galactica: Season 1: Disc 3 (4-Disc Series)
• Battlestar Galactica: Season 1: Disc 2 (4-Disc Series)
• Battlestar Galactica: The Miniseries
• The Company of Wolves
• The Girl in the Cafe
• Battlestar Galactica: Season 1: Disc 1 (4-Disc Series)
• Sex and Lucia
• Million Dollar Baby
• Rosemary’s Baby
• The Story of Qiuju
• Gandhi
• Midnight Cowboy
• Tron
• To Catch a Thief
• Audition
• Man Bites Dog
• Oldboy
• In the Mood for Love
• Strange Days
• Paycheck
• Adrenaline Drive
• A Better Tomorrow
• **Sin City **
• The City of Lost Children
• Wasabi
• Ghost in the Shell
• Shiri
• Breaking the Waves
• Primer
• Impostor
• Kung Fu Hustle
• A Very Long Engagement
• The Grapes of Wrath
• Au Hasard Balthazar
• Sylvia
• Freaks & Geeks: The Complete Series: Disc 1 (6-Disc Series)
• Jacob’s Ladder
• The Straight Story
• Elephant
• The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
• National Lampoon’s Animal House: Double Secret Probation Edition
• Fahrenheit 451
• Equilibrium
• Scenes from a Marriage
• Silent Running
• Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
• I, Robot
• Iris
• Chungking Express
• Drunken Master
• Wings of Desire
• Lilya 4-Ever
• Hilary and Jackie
• Firefly: Disc 4 (4-Disc Series)
• Firefly: Disc 2 (4-Disc Series)
• Firefly: Disc 3 (4-Disc Series)
• Aguirre: The Wrath of God
• Firefly: Disc 1 (4-Disc Series)
• Naked Lunch
• North by Northwest
• Kinsey
• Old School
• The Five Obstructions
• The Aviator
• Team America: World Police
• House of Flying Daggers
• Gunga Din
• Lawrence of Arabia
• Heavenly Creatures
• Underground
• The Third Man
• Vera Drake
• Short Cuts
• Riding Giants
• Closer
• Dr. Strangelove
• Rear Window
• The Long Goodbye
• Dancer in the Dark
• Dogville
• Sideways
• Elling
• Pleasantville
• American Movie
• Napoleon Dynamite
• Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
• Drugstore Cowboy
• Army of Darkness
• Deliverance
• White
• Pi: Faith in Chaos
• Donnie Darko
• Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter … and Spring
• This Is Spinal Tap
• Garden State
• Shaun of the Dead
• Hero
• GoodFellas: Special Edition
• The Return
• The Bourne Supremacy
• Mean Girls
• He Died with a Felafel in His Hand
• Monsieur Ibrahim
• Dirty Pretty Things
• The Magdalene Sisters
• Election
• Barfly
• Dog Day Afternoon
• Blue
• Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!
• In the Bedroom
• Like Water for Chocolate
• 21 Grams
• Yojimbo
• El Bola
• Swingers
• Glory
• Rashomon
• East/West
• Happenstance
• Monster
• Kalifornia
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
• Seven Samurai
• Casablanca
• Bon Voyage
• Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid
• The Limey
• House of Sand and Fog
• Veronica Guerin
• Burnt by the Sun
• Big Fish
• Titus
• The Last Samurai
• Dark City
• The Duellists
• All About My Mother
• Touching the Void
• Little Otik
• Iron Monkey
• Grand Illusion
• Amadeus
• Babette’s Feast
• Waiting for Guffman
• Sunset Boulevard
• Chinatown
• Miller’s Crossing
• Red
• Barton Fink
• All Quiet on the Western Front
• Citizen Kane
• sex, lies, and videotape
• How to Get Ahead in Advertising
• No Man’s Land
• Girl with a Pearl Earring
• Vanilla Sky
• Ran
• The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
• The Fog of War
• Amores Perros
• The Italian Job
• Cinema Paradiso: Director’s Cut
• L’Auberge Espagnole
• Talk to Her
• Welcome to the Dollhouse
• Happiness