ADVENTURES IN THE BUDGET BIN: When Does Collecting Become Hoarding?

REPORTED BY MR. BISCUITS🐈

So my most recent budget bin bonanza pushed my movie collection past the 2000 mark. If you count the boxed sets with multiple titles, that number is probably more like 2100.

At this point, I could watch a different movie every day for nearly six years. Not that I actually would. 

At this point, there are some titles I've seen so many times that I can’t imagine ever feeling the urge to revisit them. For every movie that never gets old (like Jaws), there are scores of others (like Escape from New York) that have exhausted my interest (as much as I still like them). 

At this point, there are probably a few hundred titles that, if I had it to do all over again, I probably wouldn’t have purchased in the first place because they don’t hold up to repeated viewings as well as I thought. 

At this point, I’ve probably been sent roughly 1,000 of those titles by various studios and PR groups to review for this site. Once reviewed, I give-away or trade some of them. Still-others I bag-up for infrequent Goodwill trips. The good ones earn a space on the Dave Cave shelf. But a lot of ‘em are taking-up garage space in boxes, never to be seen again.

At this point, there are a few dozen discs that still have the shrink-wrap on ‘em. I simply haven’t gotten around to watching them yet.

At this point, when I am out shopping for movies, I sometimes have to pause to recall whether-or-not the disc in my hand is already in my collection. 

At this point, I have to ask myself if I’ve graduated from collector to hoarder.

Still, that didn’t stop me from grabbing three more treasures during a recent trip with the wife to Big Lots, even though I haven’t yet watched all the movies from my last trip to Big Lots:

First up is The Sum of All Fears ($5.00 Blu-ray), the fourth film in the Jack Ryan movie franchise. Right now, it is probably my favorite in the series, partially because I’ve seen The Hunt for Red October so many times that it’s joined my dreaded “not again” list, but also because I think Ben Affleck makes a good Jack Ryan, second only to Alec Baldwin. Not only that, the film has a plot similar to one of my all-time favorites, Black Sunday, but instead of terrorists, we have a batch of disgruntled Nazis trying to stir-up shit between the U.S. and Russia. There’s also a special place in my heart for any movie with scenes of mass destruction, such as Baltimore getting leveled by a nuclear bomb. Too bad the Ravens weren’t in town that day.

With a cast that features such heavyweights as Robert DeNiro, Edward Norton and Marlon Brando (in his last role), I always meant to see The Score ($5.00 Blu-ray) but just never got around to it until now. This one has an interesting back-story. According to numerous accounts, walking dumpster fire Brando apparently made director Frank Oz’s life a living hell, calling him Miss Piggy (don’t forget Oz was a Muppet man long before he started directing) and sometimes refusing to show up on-set. Whether or not the stories are true, it certainly sounds like pure Brando. Speaking of bad boys, Norton’s no stranger to temperamental behavior himself, so it’s kind of ironic that the actor with the most intense and menacing persona, DeNiro, might be the most congenial guy in the cast. When you think about it, it’s a minor miracle the film turned out as good as it did.

Finally, there’s Spy ($3.00 Blu-ray), a Melissa MCarthy vehicle made back before it was hip to hate her. Quite frankly, I don’t understand much of the venom. Sure, she’s appeared in some bad films, but unlike Adam Sandler, they weren’t necessarily bad because of her. While not quite as funny as The Heat, this is an action-comedy that co-stars Jason Statham doing an amusing send-up of himself. The movie also has a dubious history with my family. My wife and I saw this in a theater, taking along our daughter, Lucy, who was 11 at the time. Living with her dad, she was accustomed to foul language, but I was unprepared for the giant dick-pick that appears on the 30-foot screen about halfway through. I couldn’t slap my hand over her eyes fast enough. She’s 17 now and has the sense of humor of a 12 year old boy. Even today, she likes to occasionally say with a shit-eating grin, “Hey, remember when we saw that giant penis?” 

I also grabbed a copy of the Farrelly Brothers’ Kingpin ($3.00 Blu-ray), but after a minute or so, remember I already had it on DVD out in the garage. Since I don’t find the Farrelly Brothers or Bill Murray nearly as funny as I used to, I didn’t think it was worth the Blu-ray upgrade, so back on the shelf it went. For the same money, I finally sated my curiosity over what peanut butter filled Ding Dongs taste like. Trust me, they are awful. You’re welcome.