Buying Clear

I've rented maybe a hundred movies from iTunes by now, but until this past week, I hadn't bought a single one.

What changed that? The right price, I guess.

Remember this post from a year ago -- exactly a year ago, to the day -- in which I bemoaned the high cost of adding Tim's Vermeer and Jodorowsky's Dune to my 2014 viewings in time for my deadline? (Still haven't seen either movie, by the way.) As they were not available for rent, I'd have to pay at least $15.99 to own them if I wanted to see them in time.

Well the same won't be said for Alex Gibney's Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, which I must see as some kind of burden because I've put off watching it about as long as I could while still getting to count it for 2015. Oh, like the two movies above, it isn't available to rent either. But its purchase price was a mere $5.99 -- or a dollar less than what I paid to rent the disappointing I Smile Back.

So while I am still philosophically opposed to buying a movie I haven't seen, since there's not a great likelihood I will want to watch it again (especially with a documentary), at least now the simple math made this one too much of a no-brainer. My conscience is clear -- so to speak.

I can't quite figure out the logic behind pricing Going Clear at $5.99 to own, when you might theoretically make a greater return on renting it for $4.99. Then again, if a person is only going to watch the movie one time, does it really matter whether you rent it to that person or sell it to that person? I have no idea if it is intrinsically more expensive for a movie to be downloaded for purchase than downloaded for rental, but I wouldn't think it would be. The price seems to be set at what the value to the purchaser might be, and if that person has no expected desire to see the movie multiple times, he/she is not going to pay $15.99 or more to own it.

If only iTunes had realized this a year ago.

The other nice thing about owning Going Clear is that when we do get around to watching it, we won't be required to finish it within 24 hours before it expires.

Which could be really helpful in the final six days of my 2015 viewing season, when every viewing is catch as catch can.

However, do you know how this story ends? Take a guess.

When I belatedly reviewed our other two, Australian-based streaming services last night to see what 2015 releases might be available through them, I found Going Clear on Presto. For free.

Can you sell iTunes movies on eBay?

A counterintuitive cost-benefit analysis

There are two 2014 documentaries I've been struggling to get my hands on, and they have very similar titles, both involving a person possessing an object. (Or in one case, not quite possessing it, because his attempts to possess it have been frustrated.)

I've already written about my own frustrated attempts to see Tim's Vermeer, which I thought was a guarantee to land on Netflix streaming. Now it looks like I will also lose my chance to see Jodorowsky's Dune before my deadline next Thursday.

I can actually get both of these movies through iTunes. However, I'd have to buy them, and I just can't do that.

I could own a copy of Jodorowsky's Dune for $15.99. Tim's Vermeer is a little more dear (hey, that rhymes), at $17.99. Neither is available for rent.

But I don't buy movies I haven't seen, just out of general principle. I only want to purchase something if I am intentionally making it a part of my collection.

What's counterintuitive about this way of thinking is that I would pay that same amount, or possibly more, just to watch it one time in the theater.

Sure, I try to see movies on discount movie nights whenever I can, and if all else is equal, I do. But all else is not always equal. There are times when that just won't work, especially when I'm cramming before my ranking deadline. If I'm willing to shell out $20 for a 10:30 a.m. showing of Into the Woods, I'd conceivably pay that same amount for either of the two documentaries listed above. (At least with Into the Woods, I got to sneak into the second half of an illegal double feature: Dumb and Dumber To.)

So buying either of these movies on iTunes would be a savings of at least two dollars, and possibly as many as four. Yet I just ... can't ... do it.

If asked to justify this through some kind of supportable logic, I would probably say that it has to do with an assumption that I am going to watch most movies only one time. If I don't even know whether I like the movie, there's an even greater chance that I'll only watch it once. Increasing the odds of only a single viewing are the fact that both Tim's Vermeer and Jodorowsky's Dune are documentaries. I can count on one hand the documentaries I've watched more than once.

So if there's going to be only one viewing, I'll pay a premium to see it on a big screen, where I have a greater chance of getting the most out of the movie. It's easier to let the movie envelop you, and you can't pause it. So I'll pay the $18, even the $20, for the big screen viewing. To pay that amount just to watch it on my computer ... it doesn't compute.

Then again, it's not like the decisions I make at this time of the year are always financially logical. Let's go back to that Into the Woods screening. I paid $20 for the ticket, and another $15 for a large popcorn and a mango iced tea. (The fact that they don't post the prices of food items at Hoyts concession stands is a longer topic for another time.) If I hadn't snuck into Dumb and Dumber To, I would have paid $35 just to see one movie I didn't even like very much. Sure, the popcorn was a lunch substitute, since I wouldn't be getting out of the second movie until nearly 3 o'clock. But the big outlay of cash for possibly only one movie -- if my attempt to get into the second went belly up -- is not at all justified by any benefit analysis.

If I made the extra effort to get one musical on my slate for 2014, you might say I'd buy either Tim's Vermeer or Jodorowsky's Dune just to add to my lagging total of 2014 documentaries. I've seen six with at least one more to go, but that's a pretty lame total for most years.

But as of right now, the true-to-life documentary Derek's List looks like it will come together without either of those possessive, elusive titles.

The long wait for Tim's Vermeer

Tim's Vermeer has been on my Letterboxd watchlist for longer than all but a couple of 2014 movies.

I use my watchlist as a means of keeping track of which movies from the current release year I'm trying to watch prior to my ranking deadline, which arrives on January 15th (as I have started mentioning in just about every post). I keep adding to that list as I hear of new titles that interest me, so I basically never make a dent in it. It's at 85 films right now, and that's probably about where it's been since April or May.

Tim's Vermeer is sixth from the bottom, meaning that it's been on there since January or February ... and I have yet to get my hands on it.

The reason this surprises me is that I've developed an assumption about which movies will be available for streaming on Netflix sooner than later. Tim's Vermeer seems like exactly the type of title I should have been able to find shortly after its video release.

Yet like its writer-producer-directors, Penn & Teller, Tim's Vermeer remains elusive, the star of its own disappearing act. Or, never-appearing-in-the-first-place act.

I suppose what I really want to talk about is not the rather banal topic of a particular movie not being available for streaming on Netflix, but rather, the underlying assumption of which movies you expect to be available. Which is only slightly less banal, but hey, not every post can be earth-shattering.

I consume probably 90 percent of my documentaries by streaming them on Netflix. Then I probably see five percent in the theater and watch another five percent through some other a la carte rental option.

In fact, Netflix is so good at making the documentaries I want to see available that it's enough to prompt a post like this one, expressing surprise when a particular title does not eventually rear its head.

Since early on in the year I've been periodically checking Netflix for this title, considering it exactly the sort of movie that Netflix has excelled at making available. I have now probably checked a dozen times, and still, it's nowhere to be found. I am starting to think I might have to actually (gasp) pay to rent the movie if I want to see it before January 15th.

Which dovetails well with a discussion of just how much we're willing to spend on particular types of movies ... perhaps the worthiest discussion topic this post will yield.

Call me a philistine, but I don't tend to think of documentaries as the type of movie I want to spend much money on. It's rare that I will go to the theater to see one, though it certainly does happen. Two that I saw in the theater in 2013, though -- Blackfish and 20 Feet From Stardom -- were movies I snuck into as the second half of a double feature. If the doco promises to be a little more distinctive -- say, Stories We Tell or The Act of Killing -- I will pay for it as a single theatrical admission. Let it be noted, though, that I spent only $6 apiece on Stories and Act, since I saw them before 5 p.m. on discount Mondays at Cinema Nova.

It's also worth noting that without my matinee Mondays available to me in 2014, when I've been working nearly the whole year, I haven't seen a single documentary in the theater this year.

Earlier this year I did spend a full iTunes rental price on Mistaken for Strangers, and more recently, Life Itself. But that's rare. And that was in part to make up for the documentaries I'm not seeing in the theater this year, while still trying to see around my usual quotient of non-fiction films.

The weird thing is that documentaries are a much safer bet in terms of quality than fiction films, yet we are much more willing to gamble our money on the latter. Fiction films have higher highs and lower lows, and are also much more likely to benefit from being seen on a big screen. Documentaries, to us, feel barely more cinematic than television. So even if they're good -- which most of the ones we see are -- they don't have that certain oomph that makes us prioritize a theatrical viewing.

So although I'm incredibly eager to learn how an untrained artist can use science to produce a nearly perfect, nearly indistinguishable version of a Johannes Vermeer painting -- so eager that I've specifically sought it out a dozen times -- I'm too cheap to just go purchase the thing from one of the sites where it's available for rental.

I'll give Netflix a couple more weeks to comply. If my hand is forced, we'll see whether I drop the coin on Tim's Vermeer ... or just let it be lost to history, like all the other films I'll never see.