Sorry I’ve been MIA lately. (“I fly like paper…” Wait. Never mind.) It’s just that, for my 30th birthday last month, I received the gift that keeps on giving.
A Netflix subscription.
I’m not sure I could love this any more than I already do. Movies I can watch instantly? Yes, please! Others I can receive in the mail very quickly? Uh huh!
And to think when I signed up for my gift subscription they “encouraged” me to put at least 6 films in my queue and I was daunted by the task.
I now have 76 in my DVD queue and 55 in my instant one.
I’ve been watching movies I’d heard of over and over but never watched (“Nine to Five,” “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”); TV shows I love and had missed some episodes of (“The State”); and others based on what Netflix told me I would like (“The Aviator,” “Julie & Julia”).
A lot of the movies I’ve picked have had a common theme: trying to break out of a rut of a life. Examples include “Clockwatchers” and “Waitress” (the latter of which made me fall hopelessly in love with Nathan Fillion). But what’s interesting with these movies is my reaction to how each protagonist gets out of that rut.
One of the most interesting movies I’ve seen so far through Netflix Instant is “Year of the Dog.” I wanted to watch this because I adore Mike White, who wrote and directed it. I also like Peter Skarsgaard, and I’d never even heard of this movie until I wiki’d him after seeing “An Education,” which I also loved. I wasn’t as big a fan of Molly Shannon’s (her SNL characters just grated on your nerves) but she surprised me in this movie.
I’m not going to go into the plot because you can find that anywhere, but the path her character took at the end surprised me when I first saw it. Only later did it make sense and I really appreciated it. I don’t want to give it away, but I’ll just say that the phrase “Do what you gotta do” applies, and I think it even taught me that.
There are times when I’m at my job and I think, why am I doing this? I’d rather be doing a million other things, but different reasons stop me. “I need to work,” is one of them. “I need money. I need insurance. I’ve put in 5 or so years at this company and now I get more vacation time.”
But if I’m not happy, then what good is any of this? Life is kind of like a movie — what you do with your opportunities affects the outcome. And you can’t be afraid of getting rid of all the things that keep you from growing, because what kind of ending would that be?
That’s what Netflix has taught me so far, anyway.
I love you, Netflix.
And Nathan Fillion.
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