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.