Photo: AFP
The long weekend's here, the weather's looking decidedly average, it could be the perfect opportunity to get cosy by the fire and watch some classic film.
Luckily you subscribe to the top five streamers in New Zealand, so the cinematic world should be your oyster.
Not so much.
If you have standard subscriptions to Netflix, Neon, Amazon Prime, Disney Plus and Apple TV+ it'll cost you $72 per month. And a search on all five for a selection of films from the BFI critics all-time greatest list yields zilch.
None of the classics Vertigo, Death in Venice, Do the Right Thing, Playtime, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Citizen Kane or Tokyo Story are available.
Hardly obscure art house film buff stuff, and yet the New Zealand film fan has to go hunting to see the kind of films that would have once been readily available in your local video shop.
Sadly streaming has killed the video store - so what are the options?
The situation for film lovers in New Zealand is grim, says Widescreen's Dan Slevin.
"I think that we are now in a world of homogenous new release options.
"If a show or a movie has been paid for by Netflix, it will be on Netflix all over the world. And the same for all of the streamers, if they paid for it, it will be global.
"But, our access to our history, our access to our screen education is getting worse and worse and worse."
Old films matter and are often more entertaining than new releases, he says.
"I hate this idea that we should prioritise novelty over quality."
The streamers' film offerings are very much a mixed bag, he says.
"Disney Plus, that's a very narrow, but a very deep catalogue.
"Netflix comes and goes; if you search '80s or '70s, you'll find that there might be a dozen titles, but they'll probably be quite good. So, somebody is making choices there that are OK, it's just not the depth of catalogue.
"Neon is useless for film, it's rentals and modern stuff they are only interested in what in what is replacing the new releases.
"The Prime catalogue has been cut right back. So that's shrinking. Stuff that used to be streamable on Prime is now a digital rental. So, I think there's been a bit of a bait-and-switch on Prime actually, they used to have a really, really deep catalogue. And now a lot of that stuff is only available as an extra."
The streamers fall down at even the most basic level of curation, he says.
"The lack of history, the lack of understanding that if there's a Laurence Fishburne film now, we might want to watch some other Laurence Fishburne films from his history, but that's almost impossible."
Physical media, AKA renting or buying a DVD, is the only truly reliable way to access classic film, Slevin says.
Only a few New Zealand DVD rental businesses survive. The best-known are Alice in Christchurch and Aro Video in Wellington. Both offer walk-in retail, a mail order service and Aro Video also has a streaming service. Hamilton also has Auteur House.
Between them, their collections nudge 60,000 titles, vastly more than anything the streamers offer.
Film lover Peter Tonks bought Alice three years ago and says the DVD side of the business is a labour of love.
"We always knew it [DVD rental] was a dying business. Obviously, we have a cinema and the cinema works with the video library.
"If we didn't have the cinema we probably wouldn't still be around."
They send DVDs all over the country and have a searchable and well-curated website to boot.
"I consider us more of a film-lovers' place, as a film lover, you want to see as much cinema as possible or you want to see a wide variety, then we're probably that place."
Tonks is still adding to the collection of 30,000 titles, he says, although storage is increasingly a problem.
"For me, I think it's important, the bigger collection. So, I go around second hand-stores and I pick up some quite good stuff that way."
"Yesterday, I was just in Steadfast Books, which is a great little second-hand book slash DVD store in Christchurch, and I picked up three that we didn't have there. So, I watch them and then I put them in the shop. I am always keeping it up to date, and that's old stuff and new stuff."
It is possible to access quality film without paying though the nose; NZ on Film, TVNZ, Māori TV, YouTube and libraries all have collections.
"NZ on Screen has a lot of complete episodes or complete films, where they've got rights," Slevin says.
"The New Zealand Film Commission has a streaming site where it'll rent you New Zealand titles, at a reasonable cost, and they're doing a lot of restorations.
"And so that's great value. Actually, it's cheaper than what an old DVD rental used to be."
Slevin also rates Māori TV's film offering.
"Māori TV's probably got the best library and most interesting curation of any TV station in New Zealand.
"They really are the national broadcaster in terms of that and they have streaming options as well."
There is also a pretty good classic film channel on YouTube here.
Madman Entertainment is one of the few companies still bringing physical media into the country. It maintains a New Zealand warehouse and distribution network.
"The digital market is not quite as strong in New Zealand as it is in Australia, and physical is definitely a lot smaller than it used to be," says Madman's New Zealand marketing manager Andrew Cozens.
"It kind of really dried up when The Warehouse made the decision to exit the category, I think at the beginning of 2021."
Because film rights are constantly shifting, there's no guarantee the film you've clocked on one streamer will still be there next month. Consequently, there remains a strong collectors' market, Cozens says.
"Some of our best sales on physical these days are more aimed at the collector's market.
"There's a label that we distribute on behalf of Via Vision called Imprint films, and they specialise in selecting library titles that haven't had a blu-ray release anywhere in the world and doing a really nice package for mass market.
"The blockbuster DVD titles that you get from the Warehouse for $20, people aren't interested in owning those films. It's more the collector's market which is pretty strong still."
All in all, it's a complicated and expensive exercise to track down a classic film in New Zealand. This feels like a considerable step back from the days when your suburban video store would have a better curated and broader collection than streaming giant Netflix does today.
Which means the great popular art form of the 20th century is increasingly hidden away from a new generation of film enthusiasts.
"Do you remember the days when you could get eight VHS for $8 for eight days?" Slevin asks.
"And you could just go well, whatever, I'll just give that a go. You give it 20 minutes and it's not happening, and you move on?
"Whereas all of a sudden, if it's 40 bucks, you've got to know what you want."
