What's your philosophy of film and show consumption?

I dunno I can get pretty tired. But even if it's true, I'd still be getting less out of them than if I watched them wide awake and energized, in which case I'd be doing them a disservice and/or I'd have to watch them again.

There are a few films I kind of want to see just to "keep up" with this or that aspect of the culture, or to find out something firsthand, but otherwise am not that interested in. Those I can sort of half-watch. But I hate doing that and it's rare.

I'm okay watching a significantly smaller number of films a year (even less than 100). I have too many obligations and commitments built into the structure of my life to watch a movie every day or even every other day. I'm trying to train myself out of FOMO and become more selective, anyway. I have no hope of feeling like I've watched everything interesting, so I'm not going to try, especially because even if I could I'd just transfer that feeling onto all the books I'm not reading, games I'm not playing, or my own writing that I'm not finishing, et cetera.

Sure, but it's marginal. And it varies a lot from person to person. Maybe it's because I'm older, or maybe it's because we're just different people. Or maybe it's because what you're proposing comes at the cost of half a dozen other things that I'm not willing to sacrifice for this.

Regardless, I have learned about myself, over the years, that when I can really focus on something I can notice a lot of stuff about it. A lot of themes, connections to other things (intentional or not), nooks and crannies and implications. But it takes a lot out of me. It is difficult to know this about myself and then dial it down and be content with some half-measure. It ends up feeling pretty all-or-nothing.

My philosophy here is that there's no free lunch. You can maybe improve things around the margin, but I don't think there's a way to deeply focus for much longer periods of time. It's like sprinting: by definition, it's you running as fast as you can. You can get a little better at it but if you think you're sprinting MUCH longer, it inevitably means you're not running as fast, trading intensity for endurance.

If we do this, we're basically saying there is zero value to films that take time to unpack or themes and hidden things that are not immediately evident. I don't believe that, and in fact I really value those things. To me, that's kind of the whole point of moviemaking compared to TV: you're taking way longer to make films than episodes of TV shows, on a per-minute screen time basis, so what's that time going towards if not increased depth? And how is it possible to have a deeper work of art that still immediately reveals all of itself?

All that said, immediate impact matters, because it's not fair to say "oh, you can't appreciate this until you've seen it a few times." It's a balance. The same way an episode of TV has to be a self-contained unit and service a larger world or story.

All this really nets out to, then, is that the idea of a "rating" is fundamentally flawed to begin with, because it can't account for all this, especially if it's unalterable.

I don't remember any specific film off the top of my head. And to be fair I don't think this during films. Once I'm watching something the length is less of an issue...usually.

I can't respond without knowing what shows you're talking about, but I don't think the best shows do this (or don't do it much).

It's just a different art form, what would be a waste in a film isn't a waste in a series. The whole point of a series is to be able to spend more time on things that aren't just constantly driving towards a single resolution. More character-based, more fleshed-out worlds. And of course the concentric narrative challenge I mentioned earlier.

I'm confused, just above you say they spend too much time away from the main plot, but here you're saying most are too focused on story?

I agree with the comparisons to novels. In fact, a lot of classic novels were released a chapter at a time.

It's the other way around for me. I have too many movies to watch every day to sacrifice more time for other commitments and obligations. This has been waning a little bit in the past two or so years as I've been trying to get into other things, including developing opinions on some social issues, but that mostly felt like homework. I might know more now but I feel like I'm even farther away from the real answers. I was much happier when I was ignorant. I think this is the core difference between us: you love reason, I love feeling. You want to analyze films long after you watched them. I'm fine with only analyzing them while watching them. I love how films make me feel and so I don't care if a movie has nothing to say as long as it's effective in making me feel interesting things.

Agreed. But I also think you can simply prefer to run a marathon. Like, there's always going to be a trade-off. You can decrease the number of films you watch, maybe throw out all the filler and trash - maybe it's even better in the end, but to be honest, I just really love the process of watching movies. I enjoy watching trash movies, too. And I enjoy watching films and not thinking while watching them.

I don't think this is true. If we do this, we merely state that the initial reaction to the film is more important than the long-term one. We can still think about it long after and keep unpacking its themes but this might have no impact on our rating of the film or the perceived quality of it. Just ask yourself a question: Can bad movies make you think about them/their themes at length? Absolutely. But does it make them good movies? Not really!

Sure, that's why I rate films on a whim based on how much I enjoyed them because I know that a rating is a very imperfect thing anyway and there's no way you can develop a rating scale that works well after you've seen many thousand films.

Yeah, I guess I'm not that interested in character studies.

Ideally, there should be no story, no characters, etc. But that's rarely possible. So the very least they can do is eliminate the distracting substories, and then they can eliminate the annoying story, or at least simplify it. A story is a thing from literature - I think films don't necessarily need them (or at least don't need conventional stories told in conventional ways).

Yes, I'm not sure this is so good, though. I believe all arts should strive to be as different and independent from each other as possible.

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

I'm a feels over thought person too, but sometimes what we realize about a film after we've finished watching it, actually deepens its emotional impact.


I've watched movies that have had little affect on me while watching, but as time goes on, and I find my mind returning to it, it takes on a power it didnt initially have. And then when I eventually return to it (which I try to do with as many movies as possible) I'm primed to understand the films emotional core and it ends up being a profound viewing.

I can't think of a movie I liked more after I understood it better. Sometimes the opposite is true. I love the mystery and once it's gone, the film seems like a trifle, bereft of what initially made me love it.

But there are some details in films that took a while for me to get, and getting them made me love the film even more. Those are usually dialogue-related details that might easily get lost in translation. So, in such cases, I already loved those films a lot in the first place and was moved by them and whatnot, but that little detail can add even more to them.

@mrminio 100 films in a year is a lot lmao

It's at least three times too few for a cinephile.

When I first started "studying" movies, I picked movies blindly, but started to notice a trend. Although I was born in the 80s, my tastes are 60s (foreign esp.) and 70s (American especially). I do like the stuff before, but I need some independence now, like the 30s, "Grand Illusion". I go months without seeing a movie (for many reasons), but I try to. Unless I wake up at 2am (like this morning), I won't even entertain the idea of a movie, but otherwise, I always try. However, if I see a good one, I seemed to be able to see 3 in one day, and a couple the next. Polish and Czech b&w which always seem independent without the boredom. I've seen enough "classics", 3-acts, saccharine music.. I always try to watch something I've never seen before, unless I'm intoxicated, then I'll put a movie I've seen many times like "Citizen Kane" yesterday, but the only thing I care about in life is movies, music, and stand-up, so I'm constantly looking. If I see a great movie, I try to find the director's filmography and go chronologically. I also love interviews, and if my favorite director Vittorio De Sica tells his Top 10 list, I'll give them a chance.



If you ever want a recommendation, let me know. I do this in "real life" for free anyway, even if there's only a 5% chance they'll see it. There's nothing else.

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https://www.youtube.com/c/LoyalOpposition

Walking is great and literally free, plus it's a good opportunity to listen to music or just contemplate the silent freeways. I love walking but quit a couple of months ago because of the neighbors aggressive dogs. But I was given a near new treadmill and like that too.



Doing the 'other' method of acquiring movies isn't for everyone. If you have Criterion Channel you have a lot! But just for a FYI you wouldn't need a new computer for a VPN, just sayin.




Have you seen H-8 (1958) a Yugoslav film? I'm not saying you'd love it but you might find it interesting.

Partly i see how one should go for supplemental material, to enhance the experience, where boutique labels excel in, another part sees how Jane Shattuc offhandedly says in a commentary for a Fassbinder film, that he wouldn't have approved of commentary tracks, which is also like composer John Tavener in supplemental material for Ikon of Eros says to not take away the mystery by knowing it too well, which someone in this thread made a point of. These dichotomies seem to crop up the more i think of the theoretical presuppositional expression of one's approach.

Yeah, at some point y'all need an intervention. "I haven't seen sunlight in seven years of watching seven thousand films! Do I get a cookie?" No, you get a psychiatric referral. Touch grass. Visit a relative. Rob a bank. Do something. Embark on a story in which you are a character. Make the world, or some small part of it, better.

Each time i try for VPN it takes me to the google play store to install something and i can't because my computer is permanently in guest mode and i don't know the password to get it the way it should. I'm happy with the selection and the odd movie can be rented if need be, i did that for Nothing Bad Can Happen, one aggresively bleak film!

No i've not seen that, my Yugoslav exposure is pretty much Makavejev, the liner notes to one of his referred to a eastern european cinema wave i forget the name of, black something, i just never saw anything on the physical release side then, but if there's any Mubi might be where some exists for me to discover.

Well said I watched mainstream till 2004, Herzog was my gateway drug to arthouse.

I coulda swore I saw it, but I don't see any IMDB score. I'll try to check it out soon. Thanks!


Found it on YT with embedded English subtitles

Yep. I love movies, but I love being OUT of the theater too. Given that most people who see movies are in and out in a couple hours, and given that film makers need to initially capture your attention and engagement and then wrap it up before the next showing, probably two hours or less, if a movie requires a lot of thought and cogitation, you might argue that it's not doing it's job.

Shoot from the hip in reviews and comments.....keeping it compact is something that leads to engagement. Our on-line world has done nothing to encourage lengthy exegesis and detail analysis, and we live in this world, not the world of an 800 page Dickens novel.

Yeah, I guess this explains it. I definitely gather that a lot of people here care about movies at the expense of most other art forms. And that's cool. This is the place for them. But I'm not a cinephile to that degree, I just get too curious about stuff and therefore inevitably end up throwing myself into something else now and then. I like to flit around.

Yup, all true. I don't think 100% focus is possible anyway so to some degree we're basically all trying to strike some balance depending on which things are more important to us: depth or breadth of viewing.


I think it must be true, logically. If we say that a rating must never change, we are by definition saying a film cannot contain anything of significant value which we do not immediately notice when we first watch it. You say it "might" have no impact on our rating or perceived quality, and that's true. You might even say it's rare. But either it can happen, or it can't. If it can ever happen, then I can't think of why we'd have/need a rule not to change our rating.

I think maybe a reasonable position is that the initial rating should occupy a sort of settled position that requires something really compelling to change. But even that is, ultimately, going to be both idiosyncratic and axiomatic: a base decision that initial impressions matter far more than those over time, which is just something that's either going to make sense (or not!) to each person intuitively, I suppose.

Correct! I am not arguing that making you think about it makes a movie good. Just that there is a lot of value in a lot of films that simply will not be noticed on the first viewing.

That's fine, of course, but this seems like a very dramatic, sweeping thing to say! It might be worth teasing out its implications and/or probing its source.

Anyway, there's some quote about how films are about plot and shows are about characters. It's a little simplistic (especially as shows ape films more and more), but I think there's some genuine insight there.

Ah, interesting. So you're saying films should be primarily visuals/vibe/atmosphere?

This is an interesting thought. I wonder how viable it is, or how we would measure it, but it's interesting to think about. For example, it would imply that TV shows maybe shouldn't exist? If they're episodic they resemble old-time novels. If they're not, they resemble films, or modern novels. And films maybe shouldn't have scores, because that makes the more like music?

I take an approach that is slightly different but still, I think, very much in the spirit of what you're saying: I think art is generally better (exceptions always exist) when it exploits the things unique to its form. This kind of solves a lot of the prickly questions in the paragraph before this. In the case of film, though the score/music is not unique to film, the synthesis of music and image is, so film is generally better when it takes advantage of this. It differs from still photography via movement, so it's good when things, ya' know, move, even though films can obviously have periods (even prolonged periods) of still images in them.

There's a similar discussion centered around video games, where people derisively use the term "walking simulator" to describe a game where your interaction on the story and world is perfunctory and you're basically going around hitting buttons to advance a predefined story. Some people get mad at this term, but I think it's getting at (whether the people using it always realize it or not) the same kind of idea: that games are selling themselves short when they don't do thinks that only games can do.

This seems like an important distinction: films can have value that is not immediately evident, but that value cannot be the majority of the film's total value. IE: it cannot make you love a film you did not already love. How's that sound?

my philosophy is argue first and argue often

i only watch things that make my cold soul come alive. i ain’t got time for anything else.