This is the final part of a 12-part series on my experience re-building my physical film collection in response to streaming fatigue. I gave myself a $30/month budget for curating a new personal movie collection from thrift stores. Read the introductory post and catch up on previous posts here on Retro Chronicle.
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We have arrived at the final scene of this strange movie-hoarding odyssey. While I was hoping to end the experiment with a wide-spanning haul that’d include some heavy-hitters and rarities, it is perhaps more appropriate that we end on a rather average (in a good way!) month overall. After one garage sale, a trip to my local thrift store, and two eBay orders, I took home 19 movies and one FYC screener to bring this 12-month journey to a satisfying conclusion. To stay focused on this month’s finds, I’ll summarize my thoughts on the full year-long series with a bookend post coming soon. For now, let’s talk April’s movie finds.
Sherman Oaks garage sale: Six DVDs – $10.00
- Marie Antoinette
- Paris, Texas
- The Darjeeling Limited
- Coffee and Cigarettes
- Paris, Je T’Aime
- A Charlie Brown Christmas
My partner and I grabbed a coffee the second Saturday in April and headed out to a Sherman Oaks garage sale, where I found a stack of about 30 DVDs. This collection had some impressive titles, so I was bummed when the seller explained that they were $2 each. Like with previous garage sale hauls, I grabbed one extra film and asked if the seller would take $10 for six titles. Through the course of the last 12 months, my success with haggling at garage sales resulted in an additional 15 or so films being added to the collection.
“Marie Antoinette” and “Paris, Texas” were the highlights of this batch. “Paris, Texas” has been on my to-watch list for nearly a decade. The 1984 neo-Western drama road film is frequently listed among my favorite filmmakers’ most influential films. With the first month of this experiment netting me three Criterion editions, it felt like a full-circle moment for my first purchase of the last month of this experiment to include my fourth and final Criterion DVD. I mentioned wanting “Marie Antoinette” just last month, after I picked up a copy of “Lost In Translation,” also from a garage sale in the San Fernando Valley.
“A Charlie Brown Christmas” is the only Peanuts film added to the collection during this experiment, which was rather surprising given how prolific the series was to me as a child. Prior to this series, I had already begun rebuilding my Charlie Brown collection to include most of the feature-length classics. I was hoping to find this one on Blu-ray, but given the low fidelity, I’m happy to add the remastered DVD to the collection. This film will come together with the likes of “Recess Christmas: Miracle on Third Street,” “The Simpsons: Christmas,” and “Frosty The Snowman” from previous months to kickstart a new Christmas collection.
“The Darjeeling Limited,” “Coffee and Cigarettes,” and “Paris, Je T’Aime” were all films that I knew little about but looked fascinating. “Paris, Je T’Aime” and “Coffee and Cigarettes” are both anthology films that unified under common themes and motifs: the city of Paris and coffee/cigarettes respectively. “The Darjeeling Limited” will join my Wes Anderson film collection, with “Coffee and Cigarettes” kickstarting the Jim Jarmusch filmography. “Paris, Je T’Aime” was directed by various filmmakers including some of my favorites (Alexander Payne, Wes Craven, The Cohen Bros, and Gus Van Sant), making its inclusion in a director filmography tricky.
eBay: “Spike Lee Joint Collection,” “Poetic Justice,” and “Medicine for Melancholy” – $10.87
Last month was Black History Month, and I had planned to try to spend my entire month’s budget on films by Black filmmakers. But with all of the chaos of the start of 2025, I forgot about those plans until February was almost over. Instead, I committed a third of my final month’s budget kickstarting the filmographies of three Black directors.
This has been a recurring theme of this series: multi-film boxsets remain one of the best cost-effective and fun ways to build your film collection. This Spike Lee Joint Collection was listed for only $3.91 and includes five films by the iconic filmmaker:
- “Clockers”
- “Jungle Fever”
- “Do the Right Thing”
- “Mo` Better Blues”
- “Crooklyn”
I have seen a shamefully low number of Lee joints and was stoked at the quality of the box set. I ordered “Poetic Justice” (directed by John Singleton), because I wasn’t able to find the filmmaker’s previous film “Boyz n the Hood” for the right price. I’ve never seen any film by Singleton except 2005’s “Four Brothers,” which I didn’t enjoy at all. But I’ve long wanted to check out the LA-based filmmaker’s earlier work, particularly within the context of his exploration of Black masculinity, trauma, and identity in Southern California. Singleton famously cast musical artists in leading roles, with Janet Jackson starring opposite Tupac Shakur in “Poetic Justice.” I mentioned “Medicine for Melancholy” back in December, when I started my mumblecore collection and singled out “Medicine for Melancholy” as one of my most wanted. Barry Jenkin’s directorial debut follows a young Black couple following a one-night stand and explores its male lead’s struggle to reconcile his black identity with the predominantly white world of the San Francisco hipster scene.
The “Spike Lee Joint Collection,” “Poetic Justice,” and “Medicine for Melancholy” will kickstart my Spike Lee, John Singleton, and Barry Jenkins filmographies respectively.
eBay: “The Magic School Bus: Holiday Special,” “I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown,” and “The Snowman” – $9.00
I realized back in December of last year that many of the Christmas flicks that I tend to reach for every holiday weren’t available via streaming, so I decided to start a physical collection that I could pull out at the beginning of the holiday season and put away by New Year. But I noticed that Christmas films tended to sell for marginally higher around the holiday season. So I decided to be patient and wait until the off-season to pick up festive flicks when they’re less in demand.
With this haul, I ordered some nostalgic childhood favorites, marking my final eBay purchase from the heavily-discounted eBay seller I discovered from month one. “The Magic School Bus: Holiday Special” is similar to the Simpsons and Recess episode compilation DVDs, containing three holiday themed episodes. “I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown” is the only other Christmas film released physically in the Charlie Brown series. Each of the Charlie Brown Christmas DVDs also contain bonus Christmas shorts that were too minor to include in their own set, “It’s Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown” as well as “I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown!”
One evening last Christmas season, I smoked a lot of bud and came upon an airing of the 1982 British animated television film, “The Snowman,” and found it to be a surreal ride. The film is structured as a symphonic poem, which is a continuous piece of orchestral music that illustrates or evokes the content of a story. This was an impactful way to bring the wordless children’s book to life on the big screen.
The other Christmas films towards the top of my wanted list include:
- “A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas”
- “The Night Before”
- “Black Christmas” (1974)
- “Muppet Christmas Carol”
- “The Holdovers”
Thrift store: 4 movies – $1.00
- “Lake Placid”
- “Fargo”
- “Capote”
- “Promising Young Woman” (FYC screener)
With a single dollar remaining in my budget, I made one final stop at my local thrift store and walked out with the final four finds of the journey. This store sells films for 25 cents each or five for a dollar; this was my first experience not finding a fifth film worth bringing home (even free of charge). “Lake Placid” is one of the few horror films that I’ve added to the collection the last 12 months (one of the only disappointments of this experiment) and a title that had intrigued me for years. The 1999 horror comedy follows attacks by giant crocodile in a small town in Maine. The film inspired five terribly-reviewed television sequels, including one crossover with the “Anaconda” franchise, another series of monster films featuring giant, man-eating animals. The series reminds me of “Tremors,” another monster movie franchise that started out relatively strong before receiving six direct-to-video, poorly-reviewed follow-ups.
“Fargo” is somehow my first Coen Brothers film discovered during this experiment, although I had been searching diligently for “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” the entire 12 months. I was thrilled to find “Capote” after finding a FYC screener for the film just last month, when I also noted the peculiar pattern I experienced with finding FYC screeners and normal copies of the same film within months of each other. This will mark the fifth such instance, as I’ve already acquired both FYC screener and standard release of: “Monster,” “The Martian,” “The Terminal,” and “Adaptation.” I’d never seen “Capote” despite adoring its lead, Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Speaking of FYC screeners, “Promising Young Woman” marks the final FYC screener, and a fun one at that as Emerald Fennell is one of my favorite current filmmakers. “Promising Young Woman” was Fennell’s debut film before moving on to the incredible and underrated “Saltburn” from 2023. These screeners played a bigger role in my 12-month collecting experience than I’d anticipated, a fun treasure hunt that’s come to an exciting end.
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Stay tuned for my final post in this series, where I’ll go over the top 10 things I learned from the experience, with recommendations for those looking to build their DVD collection. One final note: I’ve decided to take some films that I had previously set aside due to them being sealed and move them to the filmographies section. These include: Steven Soderbergh’s “Erin Brockovich,” Oliver Stone’s “Platoon,” and Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket.” With this experiment complete, my final collection is composed of these mini collections:
- General DVDs
- General Blu-ray
- Family/Children
- Marvel
- Horror
- Found Footage
- Mumblecore
- Christmas (new)
- Documentary
- Stand-up Comedy
- Music/Concert
- Director filmographies
- Paul Thomas Anderson
- Wes Anderson
- Noah Baumbach
- Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini
- Sophia Coppola
- Cameron Crowe
- David Fincher
- Michel Gondry
- John Hughes
- Jim Jarmusch (new)
- Barry Jenkins (new)
- Spike Jonze
- Bong Joon-ho
- Ang Lee
- Spike Lee (new)
- Richard Linklater
- James Mangold
- Christopher Nolan
- Ruben Östlund
- Alexander Payne
- Lynne Ramsay
- Martin Scorsese
- Ridley Scott
- John Singleton (new)
- Kevin Smith
- M. Night Shyamalan
- Steven Spielberg
- Quentin Tarantino
- Lars von Trier
- Gus Van Sant
- Robert Zemeckis
- Superbit DVDs
- Boutique labels
- Criterion
- Slumber Party Multi-Film Collections
- Television
- Children/Family Television
- For Your Consideration (Special Collection)
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This has been a 12-part series on my experience re-building my physical film collection in response to streaming fatigue. I gave myself a $30/month budget for curating a new personal movie collection from thrift stores. Thank you for following along and long live DVDs!