Saved Titles

I’m one of those guys. The people who still have the Netflix DVD/BD program. I know, physical media! Go ahead, make with the jokes, but have you seen the selection on Netflix Instant? Any self-professed lover of movies needs something a little more comprehensive, especially people like me, who get a hankering to do obscure genre marathons, like German Krimi films from the 1950s and 60s or their sister sub-genre, Italian Giallos from the 60s and 70s. I also have Amazon Prime, so I get some movies there too, but as with Netflix Instant, if you’re really hunting down a specific movie (especially an obscure one), you’re generally out of luck (though you may get the option to pay a la carte, which I guess is better than nothing). There are other options, Fandor, iTunes, Hulu, HBOGO, etc… but even combined, most of this stuff pales to the selection provided by Netflix DVD. That being said, Netflix’s DVD selection is not perfect either. I don’t know if it’s “getting worse”, but I did notice that I have 41 movies on the “Saved Titles” list, which is an awful lot. Granted, several of those are movies that are either still in theaters or haven’t come out yet, but several are movies you would expect them to have. Let’s take a look at a few of them.

  • Bullet in the Head – A Hong Kong era John Woo action film that I never managed to catch up with, this one came after The Killer, but before Hard Boiled. Amazon appears to have exactly 1 BD in stock right now, and it’s absurdly expensive, so I guess I can’t really blame Netflix for not stocking this sucker. It does not appear to be availabe on any form of streaming. This isn’t exactly at the top of my list (though, well, alphabetically it’s close, but that’s besides the point), but it would be nice to catch up with this one.
  • A Chinese Ghost Story – I don’t remember adding this one to the list (I suspect it’s been on there for a while), but it’s pretty well regarded and it sounds rather interesting. Like the above, it’s not available on any streaming platform, and the DVD is extremely expensive.
  • Accident – Another movie I don’t remember much about, but the premise sounds great and this one gets at one of the most frustrating things with Netflix’s Instant service – this was available a while back, I distinctly remember seeing it whilst scanning through my queue, but it appears to have gone off streaming. Super. The only other option for this one right now appears to be XBox, which I’m not buying just to get the pleasure of purchasing this movie!
  • Anthony Zimmer – A French thriller that I distinctly remember reading about on Reelviews many moons ago, and this one has been in my Saved Titles list for at least 7 or 8 years at this point. Once again, it appears to be because of abnormally high DVD/BD prices, and no streaming options whatsoever.
  • Bullets Over Broadway – So most of the above are relatively obscure foreign films with limited audiences, so I get that they’re not available. This is a popular Woody Allen movie made within the last 20 years. It’s not available on streaming anywhere, but it is pretty cheap on DVD, so maybe Netflix is just lazy here.

So there you have it. Like I said, I have 41 movies on the list, but I’d be here all night if I talked about each one. Let’s revisit this sometime in the near future. What do you have in your Saved Titles? Oh, right, no one uses physical media anymore….

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