“With a month before curtain up on cinemas, streaming platforms have been trying extra hard to give us the most “cinematic” experience they can,” writes NICK OVERALL.

LET me unlock a memory for you: it’s a Friday afternoon, you’ve headed down to your local video rental store. Four weekly hires for $10 and a sneaky overnight new release of a blockbuster you’ve been hanging out for over the weekend. Ah, the days!

Streaming has made such stores near extinct, with access to all the new films available at your fingertips for not even a quarter of what you used to pay.

With just one month to go until we can get back to the movies, platforms have been trying extra hard to give us the most “cinematic” experience they can, with blockbuster films being taken off those virtual shelves in abundance.

Foxtel Binge has snapped up a bunch of hits. This includes much of the gargantuan works of Chris Nolan, infamous director behind “The Dark Knight”, “Inception” and “Dunkirk”. These are all up in the charts now as his new film “Tenet” is set to hit theatres when they’re back in business. 

Perhaps on the back of the most recent “Space X” launch led by that alien-like creature, Elon Musk, (in the headlines for recently naming his child X Æ A-12), Netflix, too, is going to space. 

“First Man”, the biopic about Neil Armstrong is trending and it’s crazy to think that the very device you watch “First Man” on is hundreds of times more powerful than the computers on board Apollo 11.

Stan is back down on Earth clinging tightly to the “Fast and Furious” franchise, with the seventh instalment just hitting that platform. There seems to be no exhaustion for the high-octane “F&F”, as even with the zillion entries into the series the streaming demand for them remains supercharged.

As we step further away from our lives of lockdown and cinemas reopen, it will be interesting to see whether the spike in streaming we’ve seen drops off. 

The convenience of blockbusters such as these being just a few button presses away could jeopardise the cinema industry like it did with the video hire one. We’ll soon find out.

In these times of sweeping social change and political tensions, we’re also seeing a lot of productions dealing with such relevant matters at the top of the charts. 

Netflix just released “Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich”, a disturbing and illuminating documentary series about the multi millionaire’s exploits and scandals. It’s been in Netflix’s top 10 for a few weeks now.

Netflix also added “Moonlight” to its library. It might ring a bell for you as “second-Best Picture” of 2017 at the Oscars – well, at least according to the hosts who announced “La La Land” for the top prize. Turns out that was wrong, and the statue was grabbed back and handed over to “Moonlight”. Awkward but hilarious. 

This shouldn’t overshadow the brilliance of the rightful winner either, a story in three chapters on the life of a gay African-American man living in Miami. It’s seen a big resurgence of interest since its addition at the beginning of the month.

Like what we saw with “Contagion”, it is fascinating that given all we see in the brutal daily bulletins, you’d think we’d jump on our streaming service to escape the real world for a few hours. Instead, it’s quite the opposite. We’re still so drawn to these very dark and very real inside looks at the events that unfold in the real world. 

In the end, it’s all about balance. The platform that can provide both the blockbuster action as well as the real-world insights into the things that matter to us will come out on top. 

Netflix has done this best to date with its continued evolution and adaptation. 

Video didn’t quite kill the radio star, but more so make it wake up to itself. If cinemas are to survive against streaming, they too will need to find ways to keep things fresh. Who dares wins.