Movies are more than simply storytelling. It’s often tempting to focus exclusively on the story aspect of cinematic storytelling at the expense of the telling. It’s true that popular feature length movies are almost uniformly concerned with the unfolding of a narrative, but part of the pleasure of watching often comes from the familiarity or strangeness of a world we’re being immersed in. Sometimes this is done in beautiful, artful, and understated ways, and that’s great. What’s unfortunate is when equally beautiful and artful work is dismissed as spectacle or shallow entertainment, because the best of this kind of filmmaking exposes us to a way of seeing and experiencing cinema that’s different and interesting.
Pauline Kael famously stated that she would never watch a movie twice for critical purposes, because she “got it” the first time. Either this is why she was a master of film criticism while the rest of us are just schmucks, or her staunchness of opinion was a weakness, its influence on contemporary criticism apparent in the continued presentation of movie reviews as objective, eternal reports rather than evaluations of subjective art appreciation. Probably some combination of both.
This past weekend saw the release of House of Cards, and so, if you’re anything like me, you plan to expend a serious amount of bandwidth on binge-watching Netflix’s slick political thriller. If you’re looking for a break, an alternative, or something to sate your appetite for further on-demand viewing, here are 7 more video on demand movie options that are totally worth your time. Let’s not waste any more words and just get to it.
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” It’s an old saying that summarizes the banality of the vast majority of actual political maneuvering. As titillating as it may be to entertain the thought that a group of world leaders are carrying out sinister plots to enact evil undertakings, the probable explanation is that the failings of government are a result of ignorance, incompetence and dumb greed more often than one of conspiracy and menacing genius. That may be true about real life, but when it comes to TV, delving into hypothetical malice is far more entertaining.
The finale of Breaking Bad was a bit of a bummer, not only because it marked the end of our weekly fix of new developments in the saga of Walt and Jesse, but also because we all knew it would leave a certain void in our entertainment palate. The series had become such an icon of televisual achievement over the course of its five seasons that an heir to its unique cultural status—gaining a significant appeal among both widespread audiences and TV critics—appeared far off, unlikely to emerge for some time due to the seemingly unmatchable quality of Vince Gilligan’s show.
I understand the impulse to be reluctant or even hostile towards movies that require a greater time commitment than most others. I want to state it up front: I get it. I especially understand this when, the more movies I watch, the more I learn about wanting or needing to watch, and the more important it is that I try not to “waste” my time by devoting more than a couple of hours to worthless material.
With age comes experience, and with experience comes wisdom, so they say. Or so Louis CK says: when people get older, they get smarter. You can’t really help it. So like any other vocation, anything else a person would devote the majority of their life to, actors will improve over time. This is of course an obvious point, but one that gets lost in the shuffle of emerging trends and fresh young talent that nudges out some of the more seasoned veterans of the film industry for the sake of appealing to popular demographics. The acting game is also multi-dimensional, reliant on choosing the right projects, working with the right filmmakers, and being represented in the most ideal way in the finished product. In essence, a lot of it comes down to luck. But it’s also a testament to the work of talented players who have not only continued to work over the years, but put in some of their best work in the back 9, seemingly improving as they went along.
Movies often function as mood reflector or a mood hammer. When looking for the perfect movie to watch on a given evening or at any given moment, we tend to try to assess our mood: what do we feel like? Are we happy or bummed? Once that’s determined, the impulse can be to select a title that mirrors our mood back to us, so a happy movie if we’re feeling good about life, and a sad movie if we’re feeling like an outlet for our trapped emotions. In other cases, it’ll be the opposite. We’ll feel like a cheery movie to pick us up, or a downer because we’re in a state where we can actually handle something depressing.
There are a handful of words that, in the context of discussing movies, or art and pop culture in general, tend to be exceptionally gear-grinding, for me at least. “Unfunny” is one word that comes to mind, a term that may indicate that the described item lacks humor, but certainly demonstrates that the subject doing the describing lacks it altogether. “Unnecessary” might be at the top of the list of words that have virtually no meaning when it comes to labelling movies.
Such a strange tension exists between not caring one bit about the Academy Awards and caring so deeply that you are compelled to tweet endlessly about how angry they’ve made you with their various “snubs.” For an awards show that so many insist doesn’t matter, it sure does create a lot of personal animosity. Then again, most of the outrage occurs on Twitter, which is a hyperbolic medium of expression anyhow, so any registered emotion about the nominations for the 86th Annual Academy Awards should be received through a bit of a muted filter.
