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In Praise of Kanopy


When I was 17, I worked at American Video, a small business housed in the Great Northern shopping strip. My time there was short, as was American Video’s lifespan. The days of the mom-and-pop video stores were cycling out. Blockbuster had just opened in my hometown and within a couple years, American Video, as well as the store where I first fell in love with movies, First Run Video, would shutter their doors. What I loved about these indie video stores was the variety of choices and the limited number of copies of movies each store had. Come in looking for Back to the Future and it’s already rented? You strolled the aisles until you found something similar like Innerspace, or something completely different, like And Now for Something Completely Different, Monty Python’s first movie. Blockbuster, and its cousin Hollywood Video, may have offered more copies of movies, but they didn’t always have the quality. Maybe your Blockbuster was different.

 

When Netflix and the streamers finally put the nail in the coffin of all video stores, I had hope that there would be more opportunities to find obscure, hard to find movies. All of the streamers needed “content.” For a short time, it felt like that was possible. In Netflix’s early days, they licensed anything just to get people to become familiar with the idea of streaming. Why else would they have had my movie, King’s Highway, available for a year? It wasn’t because it was a blockbuster, that’s for sure. However, as Netflix and the others started becoming like TV channels, relying on ratings (i.e. number of views) to determine what was going to suck up their hard drive space, the little films by unknowns got pushed aside. Plus, they created their own studios to make “smaller” movies; they didn’t need to license them, unless they were a Sundance hit.

 

For film lovers, the streaming age has made it more difficult to find the classics and niche films. Sure, HBOMax has a channel dedicated to Turner Classic Movies, but it’s just a themed channel, and not the curated wonder that TCM is. Of all the streamers, the Criterion Channel is wonderful. In addition to offering many of the films they’ve released in physical format for decades, they also license classics, arthouse, foreign and plenty of cult films for their monthly themes. I think it’s a dream channel, and at 10.99/month a good deal. Unfortunately, my time is limited, and the pocketbook is tight. I don’t spend as much time as I’d like on Criterion; I doubt I’ll be renewing my membership.

 

Fortunately, there is Kanopy, a free streaming service (with a catch) that not only has real obscurities, but also plenty of blockbusters, award winners, and even some Criterion movies. If you’ve been going to Hulu to see Neon releases, good news, Neon films also show up on Kanopy. If you’ve been holding on the HBOMax because of their deal with A24, good news, A24 films show up on Kanopy. And if you’re looking for something really obscure, there’s a good chance it’s on Kanopy. The app works like this: You get 32 “tickets” each month to watch movies. Most films use 2 “tickets” and you have 48 hours to watch them. That’s 16 movies a month. I don’t know many people who watch that many films in one month. The catch? Kanopy is its free as long as you sign up with a library card. That’s right, a freaking library card.

 

When I first tried Kanopy, I infrequently checked in, but found my way back to one of the major corporation streamers. Then something happened. The more I visited Kanopy’s user friendly site, exploring the vast number of movies they stream, I kept returning. I found things off the beaten path I wouldn’t have ever found if I just wanted to watch Avatar or the latest Star Wars. The joy of exploration and discovering treasures (or duds) had returned. And holy crap, it’s free!

 

If the time comes when my family has to shed streamers, saying goodbye won’t be so bad because I’ll always have Kanopy. It’s the return of the indie video store! For those of you who are my age, you know what I‘m talking about. For those of you too young to even know what a video store was, take my word, Kanopy is the closet we have. Pay it a visit!


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Dw. Dunphy said…
I think I will try this out! Under my current unemployed status, the price is right.
3:25 PM
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