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.
