Has anyone seen this documentary? It just came out on digital in December. It is also on BD, but it's quite expensive.

Anyways, I rented it from Amazon a week ago and watched it on Tuesday. It was pretty good for the most part. It gave a history of the Blockbuster video franchise, but it mostly focused on the last store standing in Bend, Oregon.

My only complaint was the group of interviews they had wasn't the strongest selection of people. Kevin Smith was cool, but a lot of the people who talked on camera reflecting on the store were mostly no-names.

It's a worthy watch for some nostalgia. I personally wouldn't buy this movie. I don't think this doc has replay value. If you want to see it, pay the $5 rental. I think it's at least worth that.

It was alright. There are some weird directing and editing choices. Overall, worth a rental.

I ordered the Blu-ray and a T-shirt back in October from the Blockbuster store in Bend, OR to help support it. I'm curious as to how much longer it can remain open. I really liked the documentary and the special features. It's one of the few movies where I watched all the special features and Easter Eggs on it.

Waiting for this on Netflix

This will be on Netflix on March 15th. It’s a bit ironic that a documentary about Blockbuster will be on Netflix....

But from where? (I see what you did there).

Digital.

I know I'm in the minority, but I miss Blockbuster (maybe because we had one literally 2 minutes from my house, so I could pop in there on my way home from work on a Friday night for a rental). I honestly don't watch as many movies now partially because of no Blockbusters, as scanning the selections would catch my eye once in a while. I know many will not believe that, but I was actually more in-tuned with movies because of blockbuster as you would know exactly what is coming out. We live in world now where nobody likes to leave their house (Amazon, Streaming movies, Music Downloads etc), but I miss the days of going to Tower Records, Best Buy and Blockbuster and browsing on a Saturday Afternoon as to what is new. Again, all of those stores were within 5-10 minutes of my house, so I didn't have to make some special trip as I would hit them on my weekend errands.

I never liked them and the people that worked there so I am glad they went under.

This is available to stream on Netflix now.

I watched this today and it was enjoyable. My family didn’t go to Blockbuster often in the 90s, since we had HBO and Showtime on cable.

But I remember being ok with waiting for the videos to hit the 5-day rental. I didn’t always need the “New Releases”.

Always awesome when people lose everything and become unemployed.

Watched it last night pretty good. Nice to see they are still hanging on. I always thought it was dumb to get rid of the late fee...what were they thinking?

I remember a "Mom 'n' Pop" I rented from back in the day; I forgot about a rental that had slid underneath my car seat and they charged me $100.

They were pretty limited in what they could do to attract/keep customers. Just seems like something that wasn't completely thought through.

If you're talking about the video store experience in general, I'm right there with you. But Blockbuster was always so boring and mainstream, hard to find indie and foreign films there, and if there was an R-rated and unrated version of a certain movie, Blockbuster only carried the R. And when they moved in, they usually put the smaller stores that actually carried those films out of business; the money is made on the big budget new releases, so stores that carried a little bit of everything just couldn't compete.

See my above comment; there's no counting how many smaller video stores that Blockbuster put out of business, resulting in yes, people losing everything and becoming unemployed. Blockbuster got what was coming to them.

I can't argue with this point. But I hope you feel this way towards Dicks Sporting Goods, Walmart, Target, Home Depot and Lowes as they killed all of those mom and pop shops across the country . Amazon is essentially killing the Malls (and will eventually take over a good chunk of the economy) as people love to shop online now too.

Very true of course.

The difference is that those large stores you mention have a much larger selection than the little guys; any Home Depot will have 10x more stuff than the local hardware store in the town I grew up in (which by the way, is still in business so they must be doing something right). But with Blockbuster, we got a smaller selection of films. Sure, there was better chance of having Die Hard available when you needed it, unlike the mom-n-pop's video store where you went on a wait list, but if I wanted a Hong Kong action flick, the latest indie film that wowed at Sundance, or the extra gory version of a horror movie I was SOL at Blockbuster.

Blockbuster not only put the little guys out of business, they did it with a worse version, but if you wanted to rent movies you had to suck it up and deal with them anyway.

I agree as Blockbuster's selling point was ironically the 'Blockbuster' movies. No small store could compete with 50 copies ready to rent on a Friday night of Jurassic Park or Independence Day or Saving Private Ryan in the 90's. I can only speak for my area but Blockbuster did not corner the market as we had multiple video store rentals that appealed to each niche. There was one video store across from my local Blockbuster that would sell all of the 'adult' movies, which was a very creepy place to be with all of those dirty old men. There were also other video chain stores like Erol's Video that competed against Blockbuster as they even rented & sold Laserdiscs and appealed to the Quentin Tarantino movie buff.

Amazing how anything will get the nostalgia treatment when its gone. Blockbuster Video sucked. A proper documentary would be to show them as the awful soulless corporate behemoth rotting from the head down that they were. They got what they deserved. It was a real joy to watch them bleed out as affordable DVD took over. Good riddance.

Also available to stream - Netflix vs. the World. Available on... Amazon Prime...

I just got an e-mail from Family Video, -they sell CBD products now.

I watched this last night. As others said, I thought it was just OK. I have a different relationship with Blockbuster. It was my go-to place for movies for a big chunk of my early movie watching days, and it was because it was basically the only game in town. I'm in a small town, so there wasn't that much competing. Unless you wanted porn, no other rental place could compete with overall selection.

But these warm and fuzzy feelings pretty much only apply to VHS days, and even then, I took issue with many of its practices. I barely walked into a rental place after DVD hit. I recall them being a late adopter. If they had been more aggressive in those earlier days of the format, I likely would have stayed renting more than buying.

Will give this a watch over the weekend. Worked at a video store in early 90's and may be a bit nostalgic.

The people running the store in Bend seem decent, but I always hated Blockbuster and feel they deserved to die. When they started getting in trouble though I had a few ideas that might have saved them, but instead they kept going “business as usual” until they went under. I read the ihateblockbuster.com forum and sighed as workers were told to keep annoying their remaining customers with upselling and not doing anything to really save themselves. The worst was wasting the already-limited store space with “As Seen on TV” products that had nothing to do with movies!

Only Lloyd Kaufman had the balls to tell the truth in this documentary. Was disappointed that Kevin Smith was largely sympathetic towards them considering he had to keep his movies from being rated NC-17 because of Blockbuster’s stupid policy of not carrying anything with that rating. The doc didn’t even mention that, other than just saying they didn’t have an “adult section” like the other video stores.

Family Video closed down all their remaining stores bro.