Cinephemera

If you’re like me, you love movies but you don’t have a lot of money to spend on them and with theater’s charging around $10 a pop, going to the movies often can leave your wallet feeling empty and little to show for it. Fortunately, there are a few ways that you can see a lot of movies cheaply or completely free (and legally for the most part) if you don’t mind waiting a couple months for newer releases.

Everyone knows Netflix. The Blockbuster killer (potentially) is a great way of getting a lot of movies and TV shows for little money. For just $9 a month you can get one DVD and unlimited watch instantly movies. With over 100,000 DVDs and more than 12,000 available for instant streaming, you aren’t going to run out of movies or TV to watch anytime soon. I always have 100+ titles in my respective queues because I just keep finding new movies that I want to see. My instant queue currently has 250 titles and fluctuates constantly. Maybe someday I’ll get my queue down but at this rate, it doesn’t seem likely.

These aren’t shabby titles either. Looking at the watch instantly page they have a variety of titles ranging from popular to obscure and older to newer. A few examples are His Girl Friday, Animal House, Bottle Rocket, Barton Fink, Let The Right One In, Man On Wire, Ratatouille, Casablanca, Ghostbusters, No Country For Old Men, Eraserhead, Blade Runner, and Maniac Cop.

Again, for the price of one movie at a regular theater you could potentially watch all of those movies in a week. My current record stands at six movies in one day.

Good ol’ standby Blockbuster hasn’t been doing so well lately. They’re a household name in movie rental but did you also know that they sell used DVDs for pretty dang cheap? If you go in store they usually have stacks of recently released DVDs available to buy. The newer ones generally run for $15 but you can get two of those for $20 and their older (but not old) titles go for anywhere between $10 and $3 and you can get four of those for a mere $20.

I tend to visit the store next door to my work at least once a week to see what new DVDs I can score and I usually walk out with a stack of new DVDs. On my latest trip I got The Bank Job, El Dorado, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Ruins, The Forbidden Kingdom, Doomsday, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Lars and the Real Girl for just over $40.

For the most part I’ve had few problems with the DVDs themselves and have only had to return one because it had some skip inducing scratches on it but they replaced it straight away without asking for a receipt. Perhaps we’re just gotten to the recognition stage of our relationship.

Hulu is well known as a streaming TV provider but they also host a wide variety of movies as well and like their TV service, it is completely free. Most of the provided titles tend to be older or pretty obscure but with a decently sized collection and relatively frequent additions, you’re likely to find something that you may have glossed over or that sounds interesting. Also like the TV shows, the movies are interrupted about six times for a commercial but they break at appropriate times and it’s a small price to pay for a completely free movie.

Specialty Theaters

If you live in or near a place like Los Angeles there are plenty of small specialty theaters that are often cheaper and/or offer double features. In L.A. there’s the New Beverly and The Silent Movie Theater (which shows more than just silent films) where you can see themed double features for less than $10. These places also usually have special guests such as the directors and stars of the films they’re showing. Last Halloween night I went to the New Bev to see Shaun of the Dead and Riki-Oh with SotD director Edgar Wright and it was enormous fun. The theaters are small and the staff all very personable and obviously have a great love of cinema. Anyone who claims to love movies should go out and support these small theaters.

The Internet Archive is a tremendous source for all things free. They have an extensive music library of copyright free songs and concert bootlegs and a large database of free movies. The only downside to this site is that the movies are either incredibly old or incredibly bad or both. Look hard enough and you can find some gems such as Night of the Living Dead. Most videos also come in a wide variety of formats to download in.

This is a more shady method of movie watching and it’s difficult to find a particular movie without randomly stumbling across it. Google video allows for movies to be uploaded in their entirety but YouTube is confined to 15 minute chunks so it makes watching spotty at best. It’s also usually not great quality and sometimes downright awful but there are a few gems out there if you look hard enough. It’s also generally a good source for films who’s copyright has expired. A friend of mine tells me that someone has uploaded Twilight onto YouTube so if you want to get your angsty teen vampire out of your system, go for it.

Now I’m not about to condone piracy and I certainly do not condone downloading movies illegally but in the name of completeness I’m going to list this option as well. Though I will say that in general I agree with this guy.

So there you have it. Happy watching.

Were there any movie sources that I missed? How do you watch your movies?

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