Russell Beattie

I'm really enjoying our NetFlix account which we've had for the past couple months. It was one of the first things I did once we got our apartment here. I've been reading about NetFlix for years now, but never been able to enjoy it while living abroad. Finally I get to create my own queue and enjoy having sooooo many more choices than what's in the local video place.

At first we were a bit uncomfortable with the system, used to being slaves to Blockbuster's extortionary business model. We either watched the three DVDs immediately, or we ignored them for weeks. Now, though, we're starting to get the idea and spacing the movies out, making sure to either watch them or return them to get the next in the queue.

And the queue is so great. If I'm in the office and we talk about a movie I haven't seen in a long time (or ever) - I just immediately go and add it to the queue. We just watched Ang Lee's Eat, Drink, Man, Woman last night and it was as fantastic as it was when I last saw it, oh, 7 years ago? It was so great to be able to tell Ana about it before and now being able to show it to her. We'd never be able to find it at Blockbuster, which has what seems to be only the worst movies ever created on the shelf. We've got Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and Amelie sitting on the counter waiting as well (I was on a "foreign" film trip - foreign being relative since "Women" is a Spanish film and Ana is Spanish...).

Anyways, I understand that over time my Queue will start to get wacky. But I'm not using NetFlix for just released movies - I'm more interested in catching up on the movies I haven't seen in a long time, or ones that I missed over the past few years in Spain. NetFlix also has television DVDs and since I've never seen 24, this is a great opportunity as well to see what everyone else has been talking about for the past couple years.

Very cool. NetFlix will, of course, be someday be taken over by on-demand internet movies (I was at one point seriously considering signing up for MovieLink, but decided that I couldn't dedicate a machine to spending 5 hours downloading a movie everytime I wanted to see one...) But for now, it's a really great resource and I am a very happy customer.

Any suggestions on good movies?

-Russ