MoviePassed
Hello everyone, we're going to do a cost-benefit analysis! What fun! But first, a brief timeline:
Saturday, July 28: I discover on my MoviePass app that, for some reason, Mission: Impossible - Fallout is the single movie grayed out and inaccessible for checking in. This is the one movie I was going to see that day, and I totally expected to use MoviePass to see it. The hell? So I go online: "Moviepass Blocked Customers From Seeing ‘Mission: Impossible – Fallout’ This Weekend. It was not until I went searching for a reason for this that I learned MoviePass had just taken out a $6.2 million loan to keep paying for tickets. Because that's how this hairbrained model always worked: MoviePass functioned as a credit card, which, once customers checked in, the company added cash to in order to pay for the value of tickets. This is great for customers who have cold hard cash on hand so theatre chains and distribution companies have no sway to impose limits or restrictions. Of course, until this transparently unsustainable business model begins to come crashing down in a blaze of glory.
I wound up paying for the movie tickets without using MoviePass. Granted, Shobhit and I went to a screening that was before noon at an AMC theatre, so it basically worked out to two tickets for the price of one. Had MoviePass been working, I merely would have paid $6.92 for Shobhit's ticket.
Monday, July 30: Apparently, a lot went down. First, I went to my MoviePass app, figuring that even though they blocked me from using it to see Mission: Impossible - Fallout, surely I'd be able to see Blindspotting with it on a Monday evening. No such luck: I opened the app and it said There are no more screenings at this... as a message under every single theatre. So: back to Google and Twitter.
I checked Twitter first. Lots of other people posting screenshots of the same shit on their apps. Then, to Google News: "MoviePass Parent Sees Stock Collapse Amid Outages." We're talking a 60% dive in one day. That . . . uh, doesn't seem like a good sign.
I found this Forbes article that I also texted to Shobhit: "The End Is Near For MoviePass
I was a little annoyed, but not excessively so. As I posted to social media:
Oh well: the annual pass I got at a discount last December started paying for itself in March, so I got 4 months of free movies. It was fun while it lasted -- and I never expected that company to last. What monkey-brain thought they had a viable business model, anyway?
— It's Matthew (@fcakenterprises) July 30, 2018
Correction: I remembered wrong on the timing of when I bought my annual MoviePass -- something that was only available for a limited time. It had started being on sale in December for the holiday season, but I checked my budget history last night and I actually paid for mine in February -- at a 10% discount through Costco. So it was already a better deal than the monthly fee of $10 when offered for the year at $100 (that works out to $8.33 per month), but at the Costco discount I got it for roughly $90 -- or, $7.50 per month. Still, at $90 on one fell swoop, even if I had seen exclusively AMC shows that otherwise cost $6.92 a pop on weekends before noon, I'd only have had to see 13 movies before the pass began to pay for itself. But of course seeing movies at that specific time is rare, so if I saw them all at the regular price of roughly $13, then I needed only to see seven movies before it began to pay for itself. I do that within a month by default. My MoviePass was paying for itself by the end of March. Which, of course, is why that company will never last -- at least, not in the way it started with me, with benefits that were clearly too good to be true.
So as of yesterday I was thinking: What now, then? I guess you could say I took a calculated risk. Should I finally give in to that $20 monthly subscription to AMC Stubbs A-List that not long ago was unveiled as a competitor MoviePass, or should I just pay full price for this one movie (again, $13) and wait until MoviePass starts functioning again? After being forced to pay for tickets without MoviePass the last two times in a row that I went to see a movie, I decided to go for the AMC Stubbs A-List membership. There are in my opinion many good reasons to do that at this point, not least of which is that I get three more AMC movies per week at no extra cost (I almost never see more than 3 movies in a given week anyway) for the next month, and at a cost only 60% more than paying for the single ticket would have been. MoviePass aside (and "aside" is quite clearly where MoviePass is headed), how could that not be worth it?
Furthermore, the AMC membership offers many benefits MoviePass not only doesn't but never has:
*Advanced ticketing (MoviePass only allowed for checking in up to 30 minutes before showtime)
*Online reserved seating, where applicable (this does not apply to Pacific Place but whatever)
*No surcharge for 3D or IMAX screenings (you always had to pay more for this using MoviePass)
There is also no "peak pricing" surcharge using AMC, which MoviePass just recently implemented, although it never happened to me. And that's not even to mention the news yesterday that the CEO of MoviePass had announced they will no longer allow access to major releases when they open. This is yet another restriction not imposed by AMC.
Tuesday, July 31: So what's the news today, then? Shobhit came to me getting ready in the bathroom this morning and said, "MoviePass is raising their prices." What he didn't tell me then -- and this is very relevant -- is that their $10 monthly fee is going up to $15. With the aforementioned limitations still in place! Paying another six bucks to eliminate those restrictions seems well worth it to me. MoviePass may theoretically be better in the context of its use at any theatre chain, but I have no interest in being forced to wait two weeks to see new major releases, especially when pretty much all those kinds of movies can be found at Pacific Place (an AMC theatre) as it is.
I immediate replied to Shobhit that I had bought the AMC Stubbs A-List membership, and he immediately pushed back. For once, although it took a little while, I pretty much convinced him it was cost-effective to do so: a) I'd have had to pay full price for the movie I saw last night otherwise; b) I easily see more movies at AMC just by default than would be the value of the membership if I paid for tickets in other ways, including discounted tickets via Costco (which only discounts their value to $9 each) or even seeing movies before noon on weekends ($6.92 each), and I see plenty of movies at AMC during the week. In fact, this morning I checked my Google Calendar history, and I already saw an average of one AMC movie per week for the past three months straight -- that’s without going out of my way to stick with AMC because of this membership. And in that time span, how many of those tickets were even discounted weekend morning tickets? Two. Again: assuming a lack of access to movies using MoviePass, the AMC membership more than makes sense, and is a huge savings in its own right. It's not nearly the savings that MoviePass once was, but it also makes sense to go with a model that is more sustainable.
Shobhit is also paranoid about Disney because of the chatter about them pulling their titles from the likes of Netflix or Amazon streaming services in favor of their own: "What if Disney doesn't let you see their movies?" he asked. I think he's confusing the streaming services for movie theatre subscription services, but I wouldn't put it past that company to do the same kind of thing there. But, as I said to Shobhit, this is simply a monthly service; I haven't paid for a year. If the benefits stop outweighing the cost, I simply won't renew. It's that simple.
I haven't destroyed my MoviePass card just yet, mind you. And how their price increase will affect my membership when I bought one meant to last a year remains to be seen. Either way, with access denied to major releases for their first two weeks -- most of which I am not willing to wait that long to see, even for the sake of a discount -- I'll obviously be forced to find other ways to pay for those movies anyway, multiple times a month. Getting the membership yesterday and using it to pay for my ticket to Blindspotting (which was excellent, the second solid A I've given this year) was clearly a sound financial decision.
End of cost benefit analysis!
As a semi-aside, a lot of pretty fun hot takes on the recent succession of MoviePass debacles have been on offer:
with moviepass i once saw 11 movies in a single month and now because of that some rich assholes are about to lose a ton of money, what an all around great experience
— julia (@juliaraneyj) July 28, 2018
That lady's got a fair point, I suppose!
What else can I tell you about last night? I rode my bike home and Shobhit had done something very sweet: he had made dinner, and even waited for me to come home before making any himself. He used up most of the leftover vegetable dishes from Friday's birthday dinner for Morgan, in three bowls: the last of the okra (yuck); the last of the garbanzo beans (yum!); about half the rest of the eggplant (yum yum!). Most impressive was the flatbreads he had made with lentil stuffed in them -- they were so impressive, so thick and soft, I honestly thought he'd opened a package of naan.
He had an episode of M*A*S*H on as we ate.
Then I went to the bedroom to write the movie review. I'm now wondering if maybe I gushed a little too much over Blindspotting, but whatever: I stand by the solid A I gave it. Even though it's kind of easy to see how my whiteness informs the extent to which I loved it. (You may need to read my review to understand why I say that.) I actually think even Shobhit would have been engaged by it, and he's not typically interested in movies that explore American race relations so directly.
In other movie news, I only recently discovered that the upcoming A Star Is Born starring Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga is the third remake of the original film. It's the fourth one. How many movies have been remade more times, I wonder? Also, I just discovered this morning: some would argue it's been remade four times, although the 1932 film What Price Hollywood? is the only one that wasn't called A Star Is Born. I guess the 1937 "original" A Star Is Born was threatened with a lawsuit because it was so similar to What Price Hollywood? I had decided to watch all the films in chronological order of release before seeing the new one. So now the question is, should I start with What Price Hollywood? or not? Hmmm . . .
. . . Oh, well, never mind: it doesn't appear to be available anywhere, not even on DVD. So, so much for that. We'll start with the 1937 A Star Is Born starring Janet Gaynor and Frederic March, which is streaming on Amazon Prime Video; then see the 1954 version starring Judy Garland and James Mason on DVD from Netflix; then see the 1976 version starring Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson streaming on Netflix; and then see the 2018 version starring Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga in theatres in October.
[posted 12:17 pm]