What I Fear about Reviewing Movies

I love vlogs like Lessons from the Screenplay, Every Frame a Painting, and Movies I love (And so can You). They have such great technical insight. They are able to see and express more aspects of the film when I can only say things like: boring; it works; I like his acting; I don’t like this or that and so on.

Sometimes I fear that watching these vloggers and others tackling the same field, I lose the simple joy of watching a movie; that I’ll lose my blissful ignorance. Add to that the practice of writing a review means I have a tendency than most people to break things down.

I asked myself many times are there a many bad movies this generation or am I just too experienced? All things considered maybe there are really a lot more bad movies as originality is dead.

Lately I find the need to be always in the proper head space before watching movies. 

I need to be well rested which meant preferably I watch a movie at day time. Sometimes I would watch mundane TV series at length.  TV has shorter regular beats across many episodes. There’s no big reveal or elaborate plot twists because producers need to spread the story out across 10-20 episodes.

Watching TV always calms down my instinct to blog. It's like music with short regular beats; I just listen, maybe just watch out for the ending. A bad head space means I’m mentally drafting a blog just as I am watching – insert much feared mental checklist crossing out as it happens what is technically good and bad film making.

But what can I do? It’s not like I can give myself amnesia only as far as movies are concerned. Experience always does that; see something long enough and you’ll see how it all comes together. Watching these vloggers only mean that I know the technical reason why things don’t work in the movies I see. 

Writing or not does not make a difference. Processing; being curious about the why and the how of what I see should be as regular as breathing. 

In fact I think highly of a movie that doesn’t make me think of any technical reason why an aspect of it does not work. When I get bored the first thing I notice is light and color. Maybe now I just notice a little more.

Fun is still possible. There are stories out there that I am still able to get lost in. I just have to find it.