The Experience of Seeing Movies

Monday is Movies. Today it's all about the Big Screen, Yo!

People saying, “is it on Netflix?” whenever you mention seeing a good new movie…

Get in the fucking sea! This is playing into the droning, groaning zombie-land where they want you to be. Point, click, consume, don’t seek outside the parameters. Just spoon in the food and go straight to the Netflix page and watch whatever you fell asleep during the previous night. There’s even a random button on Netflix now – saying “surprise me”. You go to that category and the algorithm chooses for you.

Yes, yes, I know the algorithm has – on some if not every level – always been choosing for us, and it always will. But the way Netflix has won, even as we read that it’s losing stock and customers, is that people use it as a standalone term, like “Google”. They Netflix something. It is the verb and the noun. And they have the mildly crestfallen shrug when they can’t Netflix something – mention a show or movie you saw elsewhere and the other person in the conversion seems genuinely baffled that their TV couldn’t do that; couldn’t give them what you somehow got. Why, they just might one day write a letter to Netflix! Except they know, even before you do, that they never will.

We have a subscription to Netflix.

We weren’t quite early adopters, but not far off it. We probably joined Netflix to catch up with that great show, House of Cards. So, there you go – there’s the era. Back when House of Cards was thought of as a very fine show, with that wonderful actor at the head of the cast, Mr. Kevin Spacey. You loved him in America Beauty, Seven, and The Usual Suspects, and, well, so many things. And then, slowly but surely, the headlines revealed the insider news that he was a creep and predator and Mr. Kevin Spacey decided that if chose the occasion of his termination from Hollywood to come out as gay all would be forgiven. And it wasn’t. So, um, yeah, that was a different era.

We probably won’t ever ditch our Netflix account, because we are also caught in the sway of allegedly easy living. The convenience of having money removed from our account every month regardless of whether we’re really watching (the screen, or the bank account for that matter) is the magic trick that we are so here for in 2022. Have been here for since about 2014.

We also have the Disney+ and sometimes Neon (we’re on a break right now), sometimes Amazon Prime (I don’t really know why) and Apple TV (which I really must ditch, I’ve seen all seven of its shows). We have Tubi (it’s free and charmingly bonkers) and Masterclass (indulgent) oh, and a monthly sub to the local and last-standing video store. So, I drop in there a few times a week to fill my quota of unlimited rentals.

This fool’s paradise is filled with movies. And yet, his conversations with co-workers, family and friends sometimes ends right after sentence two: Is that on Netflix?

As if my Netflix account might contain the secrets to the universe and, just behind them, another category with Everything Else To Watch…

People can know the answer to anything straight away and always, a touch of a screen that they carry with them always, and yet they need to know if one TV provider does indeed carry every single movie or show ever mentioned and always.

To combat this, I have returned to the true palace of wisdom, to the one place where I know I will always be able to see what is on and advertised, I will turn my phone off so I will be concentrating on what is said and not doom-scrolling so as to miss the salient points and have to shrug and wonder if the rest of the conversation that I missed is maybe, I dunno, on Netflix…??

Yes, dear reader, if you’re still here and not offended by the fact that this newsletter is on Substack and in your email but not in fact available for you to stream on Netflix, I have returned to the movie theatre!

Going to the movies has been a part of my life since I was about eight or nine. Well, before that too, but at the age of eight or nine or ten I was regularly going to the movies in the school holidays or weekends with mates. My parents took me to things fairly often when I was younger, although we weren’t bombarded with choice. Less so, living in the sticks. It wasn’t just an annual event, but it was always a big deal. Being dropped off to see Labyrinth or Karate Kid 3, being picked up later after loving Footloose or Top Gun or Dark Crystal or, whatever…

At high school age, I started going to the movies by myself sometimes. (Got no mates?) I never quite understood – once you were old enough to drive or find your way to the theatre – why you needed to have someone with you. Fine, if you did, but aren’t you just going to sit there and watch the film and not talk while it’s on. Why do you need someone beside you to not talk with you?

Going to the movies on a date, with some mates, with a big gang, brings its own reward. We danced the twist in the aisles at a late-night (drunken) screening of Pulp Fiction (my fourth time seeing it, and it had only been out about two weeks). But going to the movies alone has some special magic too. Like you’re first in the queue.

For a few years there, I would only go to animated films with my son. He was four when he could first sit through a film, but it really clicked when he was at school. We have been to loads together, and it’s been mostly fun. And sometimes I’ve had an enjoyable rest while watching a turkey (Trolls, Storks, Boss Baby).

But now, thanks in particular, to The Roxy, with its huge effort to make the movies fun again with anniversary screenings, themed events, and special showcases, I am back at the cinema just as often as I can be.

In the last ten days I have been to the movies four times. Three of those screenings were alone.

I checked out The Northman, and mostly loved it. I went to Top Gun: Maverick and LOVED it on a level I really wasn’t expecting. I took Osc to the Dr. Strange sequel. Which was fun enough – I’m not a big Marvel guy, but I’ve seen most of them and don’t really hate them either. And this was one of the better ones. And then, last night, I went to the 40th Anniversary screening of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. Gloriously good fun. What a strange and wonderful movie that continues to be. Brutal and efficient, as with the first in the Max series.

Arrive at the cinema with enough time to not be rushed, get a coffee or whatever, find my seat. Check my messages a final time – post up on the Insta and the Twitter that I’m seeing what I’m seeing (because newish old habits are gonna die hard) but then turn the phone off. And just escape.

The convenience of watching “everything” at home is sometimes very inconvenient. You never quite feel the magic of true escapism. You’re not pulled right into the world. And that might be handy – if you need to put on a load of washing or make a cuppa – but it is also not what movies were made for. They were designed to take you away from that, to give you an experience that sits separately from working or living in your house; that gives you a temporary reprieve from the ongoing chore/s and recovery of both.

I’ve seen far too many movies in my life. And some of them I’m watching again on the big screen. Some of them are actually on Netflix, but I’d never bother with them there would I…and if I did I’d be having a whole other experience (it wouldn’t ever be as good).