Two hundred movies for $330

Another milestone coming at ya.

Friday night I saw If Beale Street Could Talk, which only just opened on Thursday, and which I expect to review in the next day or so. Spoiler alert: I loved it. 9/10.

That marked the 200th movie I've seen for "free" with my critics card from the Australian Film Critics Association, which I acquired in July of 2015. I know this because I keep a running list. (Of course I do.)

The card is not entirely free, as you pay an annual $75 membership that comes due at the end of January each year. Because of some crazy math, in the first year I paid only a pro-rated $30 even though I got my card less than six months after that deadline.

I have since renewed the card four times, each year holding my breath because it seemed too good to be true. I mean, I'm a working critic and this card is designed to provide us relief on the cost of ticket prices, so it's not like I'm getting away with some scam. But it still does feel like an unsustainable scenario, and one major theater chain (Hoyts) has actually pulled out of the deal in the time since I've gotten the card.

But each year a new card arrived in the mail, promptly some years (like this year) and on the eve of the old card expiring other years (like last year).

And I have now seen exactly 200 movies for those $330 since that first screening of Terminator: Genisys way back at the start. That's only $1.65 per theatrical viewing, but even that is misleadingly high. As I only paid the most recent $75 at the end of December, it was at one recent point like 190 movies for $255, which is only $1.34 per movie.

And I rarely go more than once per week, so I could be reaping even more value from this.

Only after I started writing this post did I remember I wrote this other one, celebrating the first 100. (Of course I did.)

On to the next 100.

The first one hundred free movies

You know how I like my milestones, so here's another:

Even though this post doesn't seem all that long ago, in July of 2015, it's not two years later yet and I have now seen 100 movies for "free" on my Australian Film Critics Association (AFCA) card.

You'd know I would keep such a list, and indeed I have. And it's probably a fitting assessment of the state of the movies that my first movie seen with the card (Terminator: Genisys) and my 100th movie seen with the card (John Wick: Chapter 2) are both action movie sequels.

Why I'm only now seeing JWC2 is probably worth touching on for a moment. Like Get Out, The Lego Batman Movie (both of which I also saw on this card) and several other early 2017 releases in the U.S., John Wick: Chapter 2 is a mid-2017 release in Australia, having just hit cinemas last Thursday. It's available for rent from the U.S. iTunes already, I believe, but if I saw it that way I'd have to actually pay for it.

The AFCA card has allowed me to not pay for things, for the most part, for nearly two years now. As I have discussed on a couple occasions, I was accepted into this association by virtue of being a working critic in Australia, having provided clips and links and whatnot. I say "for the most part" and put "free" in inverted commas (which is what they call them down here) in the second paragraph because it's not, of course, 100% free.

But it's dirt cheap, and getting ever dirtier. For the privilege of seeing these 100 movies, I have paid exactly $180 dollars. That's $30 for the first partial year, then an additional $75 each of the past two Januarys. So for those of you quick at math -- or "maths," as they call them down here -- that's $1.80 per movie. And since I don't pay again until next January, that average cost will drop even further by then.

So it's not free free -- the only truly free ones are the ones where I go to critics screenings, and I still do that on the average of about once a month as well -- but it's as close as you can get in today's world. The only movies I pay less for, while still paying something at all, are the 99 cent rentals from iTunes. Though if I'm really diligent in getting out to movies for the rest of 2017, I could bring my per-film cost down close to that by the end of January.

I guess I don't have a lot more to say on this topic, as the primary purpose of this post was indeed to mark the milestone.

Except I guess I can say this to all the readers out there, who may be jealous of my access to movies in the theater:

Na-na na-na boo boo.

Celebrating one year of free movies

On July 21st, 2015, I used my AFCA critics card for the very first time in order to watch Terminator: Genisys.

On July 21st, 2016, I used that same card for the 62nd time to watch Star Trek Beyond.

It's been a good year.

That's 62 movies that didn't cost me a cent. Or rather, only cost me a handful of cents here and there when I bought tickets for 3D or Xtreme screen -- and only when they actually remembered to charge me the surcharge. Or rather, only cost me the 7500 cents of the annual membership fee.

It's been a good year.

I'm leery about discussing this card in terms of it being free access to movies, like I'm getting away with something, because that tends to underemphasize the fact that it has a legitimate use. Probably half of those movies were movies I reviewed, and that's the legitimate reason behind having this card in the first place.

But I can't help it if it fills me with glee over what a great addition it's been to my life. It's not pay, but it's the closest thing to pay that most critics today are likely to get.

And though my editor asked me to attend Star Trek Beyond on Thursday night -- so I could review it, mind you -- I'd been planning to go anyway to mark the one-year anniversary of my first use of the card. And since this was exactly the one-year anniversary, that's also why I waited on Star Trek (which just opened that day) instead of blowing the anniversary celebration earlier in the week on Ghostbusters. (Besides, there seemed something wrong about watching remakes of Poltergeist and Ghostbusters consecutively.)

I was in such a sprightly mood that I even treated myself to a popcorn, something I almost never do these days. I think 62 free movies pays for one $8 popcorn.

I didn't love the movie like I hoped I would -- my review is here -- but it is better than Terminator: Genisys.

And whether movies I see in the theater are good or not is kind of beside the point these days.

Needing a movie to be good is for the suckers who actually have to pay for them.

The original plan for my critics screening card

When I first came into possession of my critics screening card nearly a year ago, I described it as the perfect way to see bad movies without spending a dime on them.

Fifty-three movies later, I have, almost without exception, used the card to see movies I wanted, or at least planned, to see anyway.

Not so with Money Monster, Jodie Foster's new financial crisis hostage thriller that feels like a retread of at least a dozen other movies (even if the one that sounds the most similar, John Q., is something I actually haven't seen). Remember Foster's The Beaver? Well, so much for making interesting directorial choices.

I don't know if I'd even seen a full trailer for Money Monster, but I got enough of a whiff of the trailer to know it was something I could easily avoid.

But my reviews for ReelGood have been a bit scarce lately, a combination of my own busy period and the fact that the guy who runs the site (and is also my friend) has been claiming most of the interesting stuff lately.

So sometimes, just to keep in the rhythm, you have to go for the uninteresting stuff.

I thought Money Monster might at least be an interesting failure, but no so. It's loud and strident and humorless, the last being a particular failure as it actually tries to be funny in certain spots and fails spectacularly. You can read my full review by following the link to the right, which should be up within a couple hours of this posting.

It's especially funny to have to be resorting to cinematic screenings of movies like Money Monster in June, since the summer movie season is in full swing and there should theoretically always be something I need to catch up with, especially since I'm getting out to the theater only about once a week these days. But I'm having trouble summoning the requisite excitement for movies like X-Men: Apocalypse and Now You See Me 2, while I've already decide to continue boycotting the Johnny Depp Alice in Wonderland movies (having successfully boycotted the first to this day). The next new Thursday will bring new potentially interesting choices, I'm sure, but for this week it was Money Monster.

And yes, I sure am glad I didn't spent money on it -- even the $3.50 necessary to rent it from the Hoys kiosk.

Red-handed

In all my years sneaking into the second movie after paying for the first, I haven't had an incident like the one I had last night, though it's the one I've been implicitly dreading:

That moment when the big, gruff security guard drops a hand on your shoulder and stops you dead in your tracks.

As it happened, I was already dead in my tracks (sitting in the third row of the theater) and it was a wiry hipster rather than a big, gruff security guard, but the effect was just as disquieting.

The thing is, I wasn't really even meant to be paying for either movie, though this is where it becomes a bit of a gray area.

You see, I had raced over on my bike after work let out to get to a 5:10 showing of Midnight Special in order to review it. I had meant to go on opening night, which was the night before, but my wife had a conflict. This only underscored how important it was for me to get to the movie the next day, as I was reviewing this and time was a-wasting.

The thing is, I'm not technically entitled to use my AFCA critics card for entry into a movie after 5 p.m. on a Friday or Saturday evening. And this was exactly ten minutes after the 5 p.m. cutoff.

I gambled that the theater staff wouldn't identify my attempt at chicanery, and indeed they did not, though they did puzzle over how to ring it up for three or four minutes before letting me in. It's a routine I've gotten accustomed to. But after racing across town on my bike and covering far more distance than I should have been able to in ten minutes, while also perpetrating an act of chicanery, I was understandably relieved when they let me in with just enough time to pee and get to my seat before the movie started.

I won't give you my thoughts on Midnight Special now. They will be accessible via the link at the right, shortly if not right as you're reading this.

So I had the perfect amount of time afterward to get to a 7:20 screening of Eddie the Eagle, which I had also agreed to review, though it would mean postponing my dinner until after 9:30. It wasn't really enough time to return to the box office to get another ticket, or so I didn't think at the time I made the decision not to. And having evaded detection once on getting to see a movie I wasn't really entitled to be seeing for free, I didn't want to chance it a second time.

All seemed to be fine as I watched some videos of Jake Arrieta, the Cubs pitcher who threw a no-hitter yesterday (and who is on my fantasy team), on my phone. But as the actual movie was getting started, an usher came down to talk to me.

I thought it was just to tell me to turn off my phone, something I was starting to do anyway. But rather, he asked to see my ticket to this session.

Um, what?

Like the proverbial deer in the headlights, I lamely started searching for it in my backpack, knowing that my search was going to yield nothing. I guess I thought it would buy me another second or two to think, but I did not use those seconds productively and rejoined him with, "I can't seem to find it." As though to try to regain my upper hand by turning it back on him, I asked, "What's the problem?"

He told me I needed to have a ticket to the session, and that he needed to make sure I did as I had been seen in an earlier session.

Oops.

My instinct of course was to be annoyed by this. In my experience, movie theaters simply didn't care very much about surveilling their customers to make sure they had paid up for each distinct episode of viewing. If you evaded the lax security standards they had in place -- like breaching the inner sanctum with an initial valid ticket -- you basically had free roam of the place, as long as you proceeded with confidence and looked like you knew what you were doing.

Except this time it didn't work. The only thing I can imagine is that someone saw me move from one wing of the cinema to the other, even though I did it smoothly with only a quick glance upward at the signs that would direct me toward the Eddie the Eagle screening room. What didn't compute was that they had then waited ten minutes to drop the boom on me. I can only conclude that either they spent the remainder of that time vainly searching for me, or that they had a security camera that actually showed them which movie I went into, and were simply waiting for the moment of maximum flabbergast to descend upon me.

Yep, I was flabbergasted and I didn't bluff myself out of the situation very well. But I quickly decided to change tactics to the truth, and that's what allowed me to sit for the second movie.

"Well I'm a critic so I can get in to theses things for free anyway," I said, hearing myself sound like an asshole but not really knowing what to do about it. "But I'll leave."

"You're still meant to get a ticket," he told me. "Just please do that next time."

So I guess the critic thing had either really caused him to retreat, or he wasn't planning to remove me anyway, only scold me. Either way, I felt a bit shaken as only someone who has a righteous finger of guilt pointed in his face feels shaken. If he'd known the rules a bit better he would have known I wasn't entitled to a free ticket to this session anyway, but in all likelihood, his desire for a heated confrontation was just as scant as mine.

I didn't really recover for about five minutes into Eddie, but after that it receded to my personal back burner.

Oh, and my Eddie review should also be up shortly on the right if you want my thoughts on that movie.

So Cinema Nova ultimately gave me a pretty fair shake in this situation, even if their impulse to confront me in the first place felt a bit abrupt and unsavory. So indeed, I won't violate their rules again. I'll see all my movies within the first two weeks of their release (I do that anyway) and I won't try to use my card after 5 p.m. on Friday or Saturday (I don't usually do that anyway).

And if I'm going to a second movie, just take a damn extra two minutes and go downstairs to get a second ticket.

Really putting my AFCA card to the test

Like Tangerine earlier this week, Sicario is too good a movie to "waste" on talking about a phenomenon completely tangential to it, which has only to do with me and my own viewing anecdotes.

Fortunately, I wrote a review of it that should be linked on the right within a couple days, so please, check back.

Now, on with today's anecdote.

It's been a steady process of training Melbourne's cinema box office staffers to recognize my Australian Film Critics Association card without looking at it quizzically, or at first thinking it entitled me only to a $3 discount. I've never been denied entry into a film I've tried to see with it, but a couple managers have been called, and sometimes with reluctance.

I've been a dozen times now, though, and the last five or six times, it's been a breeze. And sometimes I don't even need to sign the little free ticket voucher, which they probably just stick in a drawer and never look at again anyway.

Like Friday night. Friday night, I decided I was really going to push the bounds of the ticket sellers' good humor.

It was my night to make my second attempt at Pan, the movie I had to leave early (very early) on Sunday when my son found it too scary. I was still expected to review it -- by myself, if not my editor, who would have gladly let it pass without a review -- and I wanted to get to it soon after its Thursday opening, so it wouldn't become too stale. (And more later on further discoveries of why he thought it was scary.)

But I thought it would be a waste of a night out only to see the 6:50 showing. I had been expecting to wait until Tuesday night to watch Sicario, which I was also reviewing (as I told you above). But Sicario also opened on Thursday, and the same logic of trying to get it up on the site as soon as possible applied here. So the perfectly timed 9:15 screening at the same cinema was a great option for me.

The trick was that I had never tried to see two movies in the same cinema in the same night using my AFCA card. I'd watched Trainwreck on the back of One Floor Below at this very cinema about six weeks ago, but One Floor Below was a MIFF movie, for which I'd paid my full $19.50. I thought the wrong kind of ticket seller could become grumpy over such an apparent abuse of the system, and there was no option of waiting until after Pan to buy the second ticket, because I didn't want to risk Sicario selling out on its second night open.

Then there was another complicating factor, which was that the 6:50 showing of Pan was in 3D. Some of the cinema chains participating in AFCA strictly forbid the use of the card for 3D, while others just charge you just the additional fee. Palace Cinemas, of which Cinema Kino on Collins is a member, did not seem to specifically forbid 3D, but it could certainly be a source of confusion or calling of managers if I got a squeamish ticket taker who sensed I was trying to get away with something. And given that I was on a pace to arrive only five minutes before the show started, there wasn't particularly time to wade through red tape.

Fortunately, the woman I got couldn't have had a friendlier smile on her face when she rung up both tickets. I didn't need to tell her what the card was, and we didn't have to wrangle over whether it was free or just a discount. I was just handed two tickets and told to enjoy my night.

There was a bit of confusion, I guess, in that somehow the woman thought I had asked to see consecutive showings of Sicario. I couldn't see any logical reason why a person would need to do this -- and that really would be an abuse of the spirit of the system -- but she was only too happy to produce me two tickets for the same movie. "That'll be in the same theater," she told me.

"Really?" I said, unable to imagine why Pan and Sicario would be sharing the same screening space, but only too happy myself to shrug and go along with it. It was then, of course, that I noticed that both tickets said Sicario on them. "Is that okay?" I asked, thinking she was circumventing best practices even more than she was.

The confusion was quickly sorted out, and she produced me two distinct tickets for two different movies.

And once Pan started, I finally learned why my son thought that a pirate was going to kill everyone, as discussed both here and here. It turns out that in the movie's actual foreword, so to speak -- a short bit of female narration that never repeats itself during the movie -- it says as much. In trying to explain to us that we're seeing a prequel to the events in the Peter Pan timeline that we're familiar with, it talks gently and poetically about "the boy who could fly and the pirate who wanted to kill him" starting out as friends. The tone is so gentle, and the images are a bunch of stars in constellations twinkling and taking on shapes, that the word "kill" went in one of my ears and right out the other. Not my son, I guess. It lodged right in there and colored those crucial ten minutes of the movie that made him want to leave.

Wish I could say that this was Pan's only misstep, but I surely cannot tell you that in good conscience. In fact, this was one of my least favorite movies of the year, as the review (which will also be posted in the next few days) on the right will tell you.

How glad I am that my son didn't end up seeing this junk, I can't even tell you.

Next up in testing my AFCA card: three consecutive movies.

In IMAX 3D.