Hey there, movie fans. Summer movie season is now officially over. Overall, we had a good run (“Spider-Man 2,” “The Bourne Supremacy,” “Collateral”), but when the blockbuster of the moment is “Alien Vs. Predator,” it’s enough to make a self-respecting film geek throw in the towel.
Now that summer’s a thing of the past, studios slow down for a few weeks before they gear up for the big end-of-year Oscar push, and in the meantime, we’re left with “Exorcist: The Beginning” and “Yu-Gi-Oh!” to tide us over. Movie-hungry audiences get only one release per weekend, and if you don’t want to see this week’s would-be blockbuster then you’ve got no other options. What’s a deprived cine-phile to do?!
Never fear, movie geeks and geek-ettes. Starkville has several video stores to keep your needs covered when you can’t get a football ticket and you’re bored by the bar scene. Whether you’ve got a jones for something old, something new, something sweet, sour or downright naughty, one of these stores has got it and I can help you find it.
Closest to campus is Video USA, the most humble of Starkville’s video outlets and perhaps its most under-appreciated. It’s a small store, not the best place in town to catch up on new releases, but it’s the only place in Starkville that has a good permanent rental deal on older releases.
For $5.99 you can rent five older movies and keep them for five days, and the selection’s pretty good, especially if you’re into martial arts movies or stand-up comedy. Video USA is also the only place in town that offers a good selection of African-American-themed films, with titles as diverse as “A Raisin in the Sun,” “To Sleep with Anger,” “One Week” and “Medea’s Class Reunion.”
What the store lacks in polish and notoriety, it makes up for with personality. It’s the type of place where the manager gets to know you by name and may even cut you a deal every now and then just for being a good customer.
Further west on Highway 12, you’ll find Movie Gallery. Movie Gallery used to be Starkville’s best rental outlet, but it’s recently lost points in my book first by eliminating a rental deal similar to Video USA’s and then by liquidating nearly two-thirds of its inventory of older, harder-to-find
titles to make room for more traditional, popular titles on DVD.
What remains the store’s best selling point, rather unsurprisingly, is its great selection of previously-viewed titles for sale. You can always find recent releases for sale on the previously-viewed shelves at a good price (the deal is buy two, get one free) with a good selection on both VHS and DVD, andhalf of the store’s floor-space is dedicated to the blowout VHS sale with old, eclectic video titles flying off the shelves at dirt-cheap prices (six movies for $25… for 25 bucks I got “Some Like It Hot!,” “The Defiant Ones,” “The Lion in Winter,” “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, “The Manchurian Candidate,” and “Rebel Without a Cause”… grab ’em while you can!).
This store also has by far the widest selection of new release art-house fare in Starkville, especially foreign films and documentaries, or if you’ve got a mind for the devil’s business, it’s got a well-stocked mature section that doesn’t make you feel dirty when you browse in it.
And then there’s Blockbuster Video, the tried-and-true national mega-chain known for both quality and quantity on the rental shelves. Starkville’s Blockbuster outlet lives up to the standards you’d expect, and it’s probably our little college town’s best overall video/DVD store. It’s got it all: deals on games, cokes, and cotton candy, a wide variety of older titles, and promotional gimmicks that are actually worth a second glance (right now, if you spend $16 you can rent as many movies in the space of a month as you want to… no kidding!). Blockbuster doesn’t get as many art-house new releases as it could, but it gets more quality straight-to-video titles than anywhere else and always has more copies of mainstream new releases on its shelves than any other store in town. The store is a class-act, from the shelves to the service to pictures of celebrities perched high on the walls (my personal favorite is Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka looming large and in charge over the family section).
It may be a dull couple of weeks at Hollywood Premier Cinemas, but you can keep your empty hours full with film after film from Starkville’s trio of quality video stores.
So get a move on, folks! Fill out a membership form, rent as many videos as you can carry without giving yourself a hernia, grab some microwavable popcorn on your way out of the store and let the movie marathons begin!
Gabe,
Your friendly campus movie critic