Until now.
Short version: MoviePass is currently making it impossible to use their service at all.
Now you may be shrugging and saying, "Isn't that what they've been doing the past few months? And are they even still in business?"
Answers to your questions: No. And Yes.
Now, it's possible no one is reporting on this huge scam/scandal ("scamdal"?) because, well, in order to understand how what they're doing this week is worse than usual...you have to understand the truly insane way MoviePass operates.
Give me a minute and I'll give it a shot.
MoviePass limits the number of movies you can find at your local theater to maybe one or two a day, with approximately one daily showtime of each movie available. Usually an evening showtime, circa 7pm. To get your ticket for this 7pm movie, you will have to go to the theater before 5pm (earlier on the west coast) because that's when they usually shut down the app for the day. It's a pretty sweet Kafkaesque racket MoviePass has there, making it impossible to actually get your ticket and see your movie at the same time. The comments section on their Instagram is flooded daily with people flipping out over seeing an evening showtime available on the app and then arriving at the theater to find it gone.
Okay, none of that is good. But at least MoviePass was mixing it up and making a different movie available each day. One day it would be Venom, the next it would be Halloween, and so on. So if you were scrappy and took the initiative to go to the theater over your lunch break, you could check in to a movie and buy a ticket for a movie later in the evening.
Not anymore.
MoviePass has a weekly schedule informing you of the "many" "options" for movies you can "see." There's usually six on display. The first movie on the list would be the reliable one that changes each day and is actually playing at a theater near you. The other five are only playing in New York, L.A., and maybe D.C.
Well, this week, in addition to the usual five impossible-to-see films, they decided for the first time to keep the first movie on the list the same for the entire week.
It's Indivisible.
And zero theaters within 30 miles of my medium-sized city of Charlottesville are playing this film.
The effect? No one in my city can use MoviePass this week.
They finally did it. MoviePass went from making their service "extremely difficult to use" to "impossible to use."
This backs up my previously stated theory: MoviePass wants you to quit.
(And I'm not the only one with this theory.)
They've done some awful things before. And usually been destroyed in the media for it. But the radio silence on this scandal confirms something else I've long suspected: none of the media reporting on MoviePass actually use the service. They just parrot rumors and press releases.
I don't know that MoviePass is going completely down the tubes.
But they're sure acting like it.
*
Also: Since being orphaned by their parent investor, MoviePass created a new website. It is live. And it is a mess.
Bonus: It has been up for about week and this official corporate website STILL has both a spelling and a punctuation error in the main page text: "MoviePass...gives everyone the ability to watch film’s where the director intended; at the movie theater."
I think they meant that as a colon, not a semicolon. I will leave it to you to spot the spelling error.
But in addition to the spelling and punctuation errors, the statement isn't even true. MoviePass isn't letting you see any movie where any director intended.
Unless you're the director of Indivisible.
-B.P. Kasik/Phony McFakename
I wrote the book on MoviePass TWICE, once from a positive perspective, and once from a more realistic perspective. I also wrote a horror book about a sort-of evil MoviePass.
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