There was a time we caught two movies a week, sometimes. We did not always need to know from the reviews beforehand if the movie was "worth watching" - it was more about deriving pleasure and a good time out of whatever we watched. Sometimes we suspended disbelief, sometimes we needed to carry empathy as we went in, sometimes we gave in to feeling spooked, and sometimes it was intensely and deeply intellectual.
It was not about 0 or 10 - all movies were certainly not reduced to a binary choice.
"We value our time more" - often heard argument in this context. Really? You'd just catch a movie in the time you spend reading the multitude of reviews and analyses of one. And if you value your time, you'll construct it in different entertaining surprising ways - not just in the mould of one dreary totally expected and conformist superlative.
The movie reviews (and of course those darned multiplex prices) have killed it. Bigtime.
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3 comments:
I think the reviews were there earlier, only there was no google but the Sunday paper that was giving us the gyaan on whether a movie was worth seeing. But, you've hit the nail on the head, it is the pricing that makes people wary. A family of four can easily spend upwards of a thousand bucks on a movie, add to that the parking, overpriced popcorn and no wonder people do not want to waste it on a dud.
Thing is, we extracted more joy out of a lot of movies that get consigned to the "dud" bin too easily now. At this rate we'll end up with a very few kind of movies made, in a specific set of techniques. What a boring - if 'perfect' - world we're trying to create for ourselves.
I've stuck to watching and deciding for myself about movies. I realised (pretty early in life) that my taste in movies was not really aligning with what I read and heard.
But, its the prices of tickets that's really a turn off these days. Missing the Rex night shows at 50bucks balcony and the post midnight chai on the roadside in M.G road!
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