By James David Patrick Continued from Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7 / Part 8 THE FINAL FRONTIER Disney shocked the world – okay, maybe not the world, but at least the author of this column – when they announced Blu-ray and 4K releases of the Disney+ series The Mandalorian, WandaVision, and Loki. This marks the first time that any of the platform’s content will be making its way to a retail disc. Coming on the (relative) heels of the 2020 announcement that they would cease to release their live action films on 4K (with exceptions for Star Wars, Marvel, and James ..read more

By Raquel Stecher As the saying goes, “nothing good lasts forever.” We are in the final season of DVD Netflix and while goodbyes are hard, it’s important to enjoy these last days and treasure the moments with the service before it is gone. The following is a list of movies which follow main characters in their final days. Let’s have one last hurrah with these movies available to rent on DVD Netflix.   Swan Song (2021) “Who could forget the Liberace of Sandusky?” Not to be confused with Benjamin Cleary’s science-fiction movie by the same name, Swan Song (2021) was directed and produced b ..read more

By David Raether You know, Viola Davis is one of those people who seems—unfairly—to have it all. She’s a remarkable actress on both stage and screen and, in my humble opinion, one of the most beautiful women in the world. She has parlayed her talent into an EGOT, meaning she has won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony. She is a glamorous figure on the red carpets at the Oscars and at Cannes. (By the way, how about that dress she wore at Cannes? Wow!) So, yes, Viola Davis has arrived. But it was a very long journey. She was born and raised in what she has called “abject poverty and dysfun ..read more

By David Raether The late 1960s through the very early 1980s are often heralded as the best period in American movies. These years showcased a dazzling variety of new directors, story-telling techniques, and unconventional leading characters.  Don’t believe me? Consider this lineup: Taxi Driver (1976), The Exorcist (1973), Chinatown (1974), Star Wars (1977), A Clockwork Orange (1971), The Godfather Parts I (1972) and II (1974), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Raging Bull (1980), and on and on. That said, I would offer this thesis: the past ten years or so have been an equally ..read more

By Jessica Pickens Viewing films is a journey. We watch films, diving into a new story or exploring the filmography of our favorite actors or directors. Sometimes, a movie hits at the right time in our life. Other times, we have to revisit a film at a different time to appreciate it more. DVD Netflix has allowed us to swim through a vast sea of films of all genres that date back to the silent era to today. I’m passionate about physical media, including purchasing films. There have been many times I’ve purchased a movie on DVD or Blu-ray without seeing it before, but other times, I wouldn’t w ..read more

By David Raether I probably arrived at Ingmar Bergman movies the wrong way.  In 1972, the movie Harold and Maude opened a run at the Westgate Theater in South Minneapolis. It had bombed at a downtown theater, but the tiny Westgate gave it a run. And it stayed and stayed and stayed. It developed a cult following among high school and college-age kids in Minneapolis. One of the things you did, if you wanted to be cool, was to go see Harold and Maude at the Westgate Theater. I was about 600 miles away from cool, so I was willing to give anything a try.  Harold and Maude was the third ..read more

By Raquel Stecher Truth is stranger than fiction. And this can be seen in countless documentaries in which real stories often take shocking turns that leave audiences speechless. Here are three such documentaries. Make sure you move these to the top of your queue. They need to be seen to be believed!   Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (2008) Kurt Kuenne’s documentary Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father leaves an indelible mark on anyone who watches it. The documentary begins as the title suggests—a love letter to Zachary about his father in the form of a mov ..read more

By Meaghan Walsh Gerard It’s kind of incredible how much of my life is woven with certain movies.  When I was a kid, we didn’t have cable. It existed, but not in the rural area where we lived. So when a movie played on a network station we did what every red-blooded American in the 1990s did – we taped it. We had hundreds of hours of movies taped off TV and some we watched so much we could recite the commercials on them too. Clue was one of those. We watched it over and over and over, cackling every time. We perfected our “Flames on the side of my face” impressions and memorized the “Tw ..read more

For our last monthly email, let’s take a trip down memory lane. We hope to see you on Twitter at Thursday, September 7th for the final official #DVDchat, where fans of DVD Netflix come together to talk movies and memories! The host has chosen the fitting theme of DVD Memories, and will ask questions about your first rental, your favorite red envelope design, what disc you kept the longest, and more. Big swag giveaway at the end. Starts at 3pm PT/6pm ET on Thursday. See you there!   Our Drone 2 Home video got quite a lot of press coverage in early 2014 and was always a hit when we reposte ..read more

By David Raether “Tell Mike, it was only business” – Sal Tessio, The Godfather As you probably know by now, Netflix announced a few months ago that they would be closing down their DVD division at the end of September. From the management perspective of a large publicly-traded company, the decision makes business sense, I guess. After all, fewer and fewer people are watching movies on DVD. Streaming has come to dominate the way we watch movies and TV now. So, yeah, shutting down a dwindling business that is based on renting DVDs is certainly a reasonable decision.  Sometimes, business ..read more