During 2018 I watched a lot of films. A lot. The aim was 365 new films by the end of the year.

In doing this I used a number of different services and platforms for accessing films, from going to the cinema through to buying DVDs into Amazon channels. In doing so I found out the different platforms that were better for different options, and which could be most useful for finding hidden gems. I’m going to give an overview of each, and then summarise with which I would recommend depending on what you are after.

Sky Cinema

I’m going to work down in order of content, so we start with ‘the biggest’. I suspect the back catalogue for the next two services is bigger, but in terms of the refresh rate, the speed with which newer films are added, and overall experience I think Sky Cinema is the best. Every single day there is one new film added to the service that has never been there, and is usually at most 18 months old.

The Friday film is almost always a more major Hollywood release – superheroes, Oscar winners, and other notable releases. Saturday usually is a children’s or family-friendly film. During the week there are independent and foreign films, so there’s definitely a selection for everyone.

On Friday they also circulate in some ‘returning favourites’. These are 4-7 films that have been on the service.

Sky themselves always tout ‘over 1000 HD films’ on their channels. So you always get new films, things that were recently the cinema or are difficult to get in the UK. You can download it direct to the Sky box, with some packages you can download to devices, and in fact the new premieres are automatically downloaded (at least partially) so you can start watching straight away.

Of course this all comes with a very literal cost. This is the most expensive single service, at the moment the minimum package that includes films (not HD, not on multiple devices, no TV box sets available) would be £32, which includes an £8 discount for 18 months. So it’s several orders of magnitude more than any other service. That said, it does include a number of other channels, and there are many layers you can pay to add to the service.

Amazon Prime Video

It was a debate whether to go with Netflix or Amazon Prime Video (APV) next. I watched each equally during the year, but there are two elements that make APV the better service. First is the other elements outside of the video – free one day delivery, music, online storage, ebooks – that if you’re interested in using them potentially make it worth it already.

The second is the quality of the films available. During the year APV added a number of very good films before they came to any other service, and on a subjective level the ratings for films I watched on APV during 2018 came out demonstrably better than any other streaming service. The Big Sick, Paddington 2, Miss Sloane… all these were added to APV first and are films I was very pleased to watch. There are some Amazon originals they have made or paid to distribute coming through as well.

As a service there are some very good points – a lot of films are downloadable, you can use many devices, and there are ways of sharing your account with others so they have access as well. The main video page has many categories to help discover what you might want to watch. The search function and filters are probably the best, and as this is Amazon you can generally find what you want even if it’s not available as part of Prime, so you have other options (channels and renting).

I was surprised to find a number of worthwhile films are somewhat buried. For example, the Three Colours Trilogy is available but I only found it when going through many pages of films in a particular category, it was never recommended or highlighted. There are a number like that, so it’s worth putting some time in but there are a lot of films recommended constantly instead that perhaps could be pushed a bit less.

The cost for Amazon Prime Video is also incredibly competitive. £5.99 a month for just the video, or £7.99 a month / £79 a year for all the benefits including deliveries, music, and photos. It is worth noting that only the primary account holder can download films, so as my wife is the main Prime subscriber I have to log in as her on my iPad to get the downloads.

APV Channels

The extra factor for APV that makes it a good option is the access to channels. These are other services like MGM, BFI, and MUBI that have their own selection of films not generally available elsewhere. They cost something like £5-£8 a month to subscribe, although you typically get a week free if you want to try them out.

The channels are also usually available as their own service / site as well, but having them grouped together with the Prime videos means your selection suddenly gets much bigger and better. It was incredible to suddenly find there was a channel on which I could watch 8 1/2, Suspiria, The Red Shoes, and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, as well as many other films featuring actors like Tilda Swinton or Sigourney Weaver that I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to see.

All the channels together would be incredibly expensive, but I would recommend having a look at the range of them and seeing if one has a good range of films you might enjoy and treating yourself to a month or two of quality cinema.

Netflix

Netflix is a slightly unusual player in this market. Not only have they become a major service for distributing films and TV shows, they have become a major producer of content as well. Some of this is Netflix’s own films and shows, some of it is something they’re doing in conjunction with others, some is where they’re paying for distribution. In all cases the content is often unique and of interest to a lot of people, spread across a range of genres and styles.

The issue I found with Netflix is the catalogue for films is not as strong as the TV selection. Once I’d gone through the initial selection of films I wanted to watch on the service there were then only a handful each month added or available that I was interested in. APV and Sky very quickly became the go to places when searching something out.

However the quality of TV cannot be ignored for Netflix. Bojack Horseman, The Good Place, Star Trek Discovery, Orange is the New Black… these are all exceptional shows that I could only see on Netflix, and I’m pleased to have been able to do so. This is on top of a great range of TV shows available (such as every live action Star Trek series) that mean you can consume a lot of content in one place.

The price is also pitched just right so that although I considered unsubscribing at times, it isn’t expensive enough to make it feel like it’s a huge impact to maintain my access. £5.99 a month to access SD content on one screen at a time is pretty good. But £7.99 for HD films and TV, two screens at a time, unlimited devices is pretty great, and means it’s very worthwhile for our household. You can even go to £9.99 which goes to Ultra HD and 4 screens at once – perfect for households with older children or a group living together. The ability to have separate accounts so that your watch history, lists etc. are all kept separate cannot be overlooked.

One final point to add – Sky and Netflix now do a joined subscription service, which is potentially cheaper than the two separately and means you can add Netflix as an app to your Sky Q box. Consolidating two services onto one primary device which starts up quickly is always nice.

TV

This is a tough category to write about because it covers so much. There are a lot of TV channels available as part of freeview in the UK (BBC, ITV, 4, 5, etc.) that show films pretty regularly. Some even have download and streaming services to access for a short period after airing – iPlayer really helped out on a couple of films I wanted to watch last year.

There are then more dedicated film channels available through Freeview, Sky, Virgin etc. These are channels such as Sony Movies, Film 4, Horror, Talking Pictures, and several Christmas specific channels. For the most part these do not offer downloads, and you must record the films as they air – including adverts!

I’ve had two tactics for watching the upcoming films, and I did watch about 7% of the films in 2018 through these channels. Mostly I opened up the Sky app and went to the guide, then looked at the week ahead for each channel. There was maybe 1 film a week that interested me, but often these are films not available elsewhere ever so it’s useful.

The other was using tvguide.co.uk. It allows you to filter the guide by only films, and this shows every film on any channel on the day specified. So it does include the Sky channels, but it shows you the BBC channels, the non-Sky movie channels, and all the random places that might show a film. There’s not the number compared to Sky, APV, or Netflix, but they are completely free. So with a bit of effort you can easily find a few films a week that you might want to see. With services like BBC iPlayer you can even watch some at your leisure and download to your device.

DVD / BluRay

Physical media might seem passe when talking about streaming services, and if you have a decent internet connection and data allowance Netflix or Amazon really should be the first places you go. But not everyone has those things, and not every film is available. But even so it’s hard to justify spending £10 or more on a single film in 2019 when there is so much good entertainment available for less.

So the physical formats should be treated as the go to for movies that are not the newest, but also possibly harder to find. I’m a fan of a perambulate along a high street looking in charity shops for films. You can usually get some interesting options for £1 a time.

I’m also lucky in that I can go to CEX stores in a few towns. Here you can usually find a selection of secondhand films at very good prices. This weekend we bought 8 films (5 of them foreign films) for £5. Two of those were also films that I wanted to see but that never came on TV or streaming. Once I’ve watched them I’ll usually donate to a charity shop to keep them in circulation, but it really is an excellent way to hunt down something you might want to see. My recommendation is to keep a watchlist of films you particularly want to see on Letterboxd (or similar) and then look for those when in the shop. It helps avoid being overwhelmed!

Cinema

If I’m talking about access to films we must mention the primary method for distribution, the cinema. I don’t think there have ever been as many cinemas in the UK as there are right now. Several chains dominate, but aside from that there are smaller groups like Everyman, as well as independent cinemas. Alongside that, many towns have film clubs or societies, and screening events run by the council or other organisations in a town hall or theatre.

Focussing on the chains, Cineworld and Odeon both have unlimited membership schemes, giving you the option for seeing as many films as you want for about £20 a month. There are a few differences between them – Film Stories magazine did a great article about them in issue 1 – but it comes down to whether you have decent access to one or the other chain, and if you will go enough to justify the cost.

If you want to try to reduce the cost of single visits it’s worth looking at the Taste Card, which gives about 40% off tickets for most chains (as well as other discounts on food and days out). There are also often offers with credit cards, energy suppliers, and other membership schemes like Nectar.

Others

There are a few services I’ve not written about because of the similarities between them. Particularly I’m thinking iTunes, YouTube, Google Play, and other digital rental or purchase services. The films are often exactly the same cost between them, and you’ll find the range available to be the same (because if you’re making it available in one place you might as well make it available in the rest). I used these only a few times, because Amazon also has films available for rental, again at the same sort of price and I prefer to keep the accounts together if possible. But if you have access to one platform you’re not generally missing out, only the offers are different.

Overall

There are a lot of features and elements I’ve not commented on. Almost every digital service is accessible on phones, tablets, games consoles, streaming devices, TVs, and more. They all feature search functions and filters, although some are better than others. They also have categories and other ways of making films discoverable, again to greater or lesser degrees.

For me Amazon is the best of all of these, since it does a range of interesting categories and makes searching and filtering easy through the web interface. It is worth noting that Amazon is the only service with a ‘classics’ category which is a shame.

Netflix is less easy, but does return similar results when searching. If you click on a cast or crew member’s name in the film details pages you will see only the films featuring that person which I’ve found very useful.

Sky Cinema does specific channels each month – musicals, sci fi, superheroes etc. You can also go through the system to see all films by certain actors, genres and so on, although it’s a very mainstream list.

As noted above, all the digital services make an assumption of a decent broadband internet connection plus a good data allowance, if not uncapped.

Keeping abreast of changes to the platforms is also easier than it once was. Netflix releases details to media sites of the content coming to and leaving the service each month, typically at the very start of the month. Amazon does the same but typically it’s more spread out over the month. I recommend Vodzilla to find these lists. The two services also have ‘recently added’ and ‘limited time’ categories which are worth going through regularly.

Summary

If you’re looking for a great range of films to watch throughout a year, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video are both great options. If you’re looking for the most recent films as soon as possible then Sky Cinema is the place to go, and it also gives you a terrific catalogue to work through.

If you’re on a budget, free to view TV channels will always have something, and with a bit of effort you can keep apprised a week ahead of what’s coming.

If you’re looking for classic films that are hard to find, specific services like BFI and MGM should help you, and by accessing through APV you’ll be able to access them through most devices.

In short, there has probably never been a better time to watch films whenever and wherever. Whether you’re making a note of the time something is airing or scrolling through Netflix categories you’d be hard-pressed not to find something you would enjoy watching.