When someone wants to watch a film nowadays, their first instinct – quite naturally – is to check if it might be streaming on one of the many platforms they pay for every month. It makes sense, and I do it too. But as a film lover, I find the idea that a film could disappear at the whim of whoever is in charge of programming these platforms deeply unsettling. It’s the nature of the beast of course; I just hate that beast.

I’ve written in the past for LWL about the joy of owning films on disc, and a big part of that joy is rooted in the fact that once bought, these films aren’t going anywhere. No one can take my DVD of Man on Fire away from me. And my frequently poor Internet connection cannot interrupt my enjoyment of Peter Weir’s Fearless on Blu Ray (I recently tried to watch Up Close and Personal on Disney+ and had to switch to my cropped DVD twice during this very long, tedious film because the connection kept disappearing). But going against the times is not without its logistical challenges.