Ever since we got a good-sized television and a Netflix disc subscription, we haven’t been to a movie in the theaters. Not once. Not even for Avengers: Endgame*. But that’s okay, right? Because now it’s out on Blu-Ray and surely Netflix will have bought a zillion copies of it** so that everyone who wants it can see it right away, right?
So recently I watched Shazam!, a documentary about the genesis and production of the classic television comedy Gomer Pyle: USMC. No, just kidding. It’s about Captain Marvel this guy:
Those who have been following this blog for a while (i.e., my parents — hi Mom & Dad!) may remember how, a few years back, my wife and I spent about six months getting caught up on HBO’s Game of Thrones series. Because we didn’t have HBO, we did this by getting the discs from Netflix, and because, the seasons were spread across a lot of discs, we temporarily upped our plan to the “two discs at a time” level. (Otherwise it would have taken us like a year.) Around when we were finishing up Season 7, HBO announced that there would be no Game of Thrones in 2018, and so once the last disc went back to Netflix, we had to wait. And wait. And wait.
So this week we were watching Pacific Rim: Uprising, the sequel to Pacific Rim, Guillermo del Toro‘s film about giant robots (AKA jaegers) battling giant monsters (AKA kaiju) in and around the Pacific Ocean. Guillermo del Toro, sadly, did not return for this film, but the jaegers and kaiju did, oh yeah, you betcha.
So the other day I decided to check out The Umbrella Academy, Netflix’s new show about a (sort-of) super-hero team slash (definitely) dysfunctional family that is reunited by the death of their adoptive father and then has to avert an oncoming apocalypse, which is scheduled to occur in a week or so.
So being one of those curmudgeonly holdout types who still receives discs in the mail from Netflix (or Qwikster or DVD.com or whatever it is these days) means that not only does my wife get to fall asleep during the latest blockbusters, but also during weird indie movies and older movies that I never got around to watching back in the day. For instance, this one: