My Great Netflix Plan

A couple of years ago, I decided I wanted to save a little money so I switched to the 2-Blurays-a-Year plan on Netflix.

It actually costs a surprising amount of money to use two bluray discs as dust-collectors for the better part of a year.

Since I'm in between jobs, I decided to try to watch those two discs Wednesday night.

FIRST DISC

David Cronenberg's "Maps to the Stars"

While I'm certainly a Cronenberg fan, I'm not a fan of this film or his previous "Cosmopolis". I found "Maps" even more suffocating because it rolls around in the mud of L.A. and the entertainment business. It is supposed to be satirical but it is... just hard to watch. And I guess I tried to watch it at some point earlier in the past year and didn't get through it. Having finally gotten through it, it is a malevolent portrait of the entertainment industry, and you (I...?) almost want some larger scale horror to occur to more of the characters by the end. Well, most of the characters don't find a happy end anyway. Reminded me a bit of old Todd Solondz. Remember Todd Solondz? Why isn't he directing superhero movies now?

SECOND DISC

The 2nd disc was an animated film that someone recommended to me called "Ernest & Celestine".

When I popped it in, it wouldn't play. Even after repeated cleanings.

So. I reported that as a "problem" on Netflix and confirmed that they did NOT need to send me a replacement disc.

I was all ready to cancel my disc subscription entirely, in fact... but then I looked at my queue... and looked at some other new discs... and the fact remains that there's still a lot of shit on there that isn't covered by streaming. So... maybe I'll keep it going a little while longer...?

Gotta get these discs into the mail, though!