What Makes Me Stop a Movie

I view watching a movie for the first time as kind of a sacred ritual.  When I'm seeing it in a theater, I always go ahead of time, not just because I'm picky about where I sit (I like to be a third of the way up, usually Row D or E, toward the edges but not on the aisle, preferably the second seat off of the aisle), but because to me it's almost a religious experience.  I don't text in the theaters, ever, and I put my phone on airplane mode to further deter distractions.  When I'm watching at home, I occasionally have the phone out, but for the most part I don't.  I like it to be dark and quiet and without distraction, and demand the same from those around me; now that I have a house, I even keep the phone or computer on a different level to keep me from veering off-course from what I see in front of me.

Movies are the thing I love most in the world.  Frequently this gets confused with my love of the Oscars, but no year has been more apparent that these things shouldn't be confused than 2018-I love the Oscars because they celebrate the movies, not because I love them by themselves.  Running this blog for nearly seven years now, I have grown further in my appreciation of movies.  I realize that, even as I watch 200 or so films a year (working on a count of this for 2019, so I'll have a real number come December for this), I'll never get to them all and I'd guess 80-90% of the movies I see I'll never get to see again, so this is my one chance to view the combined work of dozens, potentially hundreds, of artists who are creating this tiny little two-hour experiment.  Every movie, if you think about the dedication & hoops one has to get through to make it, is a bit of a miracle, and I treat it with that kind of respect when I see it for the first time, whether I'm watching Call Me By Your Name or Kong: Skull Island.

Which is why I'm always a tad bit thrown off by one of the most common questions I get as a film buff: "how often do you just not see the movie until the end?" because it does feel against my religion not to finish a picture, especially if it's the first time I'm watching it.  I don't, for example, start movies halfway through.  If I'm flipping the channels on a rainy Sunday afternoon and see Temple of Doom or Back to the Future on TNT, I might watch for like five minutes, and then I'll either quit or I'll go downstairs, grab my copy of the movie, and then view it from the beginning so I get the full experience.  There are few joys greater in my life than when I chance upon TCM during a commercial break, knowing that a movie is about to begin, rather than just me finding it halfway through, and after I play "who's the first star you can identify?" I turn away, saving that pleasure for a different day.  The entire concept of starting a movie and not finishing it feels rude and against my core beliefs, but it's clearly something a lot of people do, since it's almost inevitably going to come up when I talk about my movie habits.

But I have to admit-on occasion this does happen, and it happened a few times in 2018 which may be a sign that I'm either loosening my grips on such things or I don't have the patience I once had.  In theory, it should be happening less.  Between another OVP renaissance of viewing (you saw this past week reviews of Marshall & The Lady in the Van for a reason-I'm trying to get through this decade's Oscar nominees and also-rans at a greater speed), theatrical movie passes, FilmStruck (RIP, but Criterion Channel is coming to avenge), and now Saturdays with the Stars, I'm being exposed to more pictures than I have in years, and coming to have a greater respect for where a film comes from in an actor's, director's or artist's journey.  But that doesn't mean that I don't occasionally quit a movie, which is what I did on Sunday.

I Smile Back is not the sort of film I'd ever seek out.  It seemed depressing, droll, and the sort of movie that takes a gifted comedienne, forces her to do drama, and she seems at a loss for how to do it so instead of finding new facets she just drains herself of all personality (the quintessential example of this, for me, is Jennifer Aniston in The Good Girl).  Silverman starts this movie basically with dead eyes, and it's difficult not to see that her life won't get progressively worse as the movie continues.  The plot seems to be "look at this miserable woman...isn't it weird that bubbly Sarah Silverman can be miserable?" and twenty minutes in I had had enough, knowing that this wasn't going to get any more interesting.  Normally, I would have continued, but I don't treat the "precursor near-misses" with the same sort of reverence that I do the OVP (where I see it through even if it's Norbit), and Silverman landed her surprise nomination with SAG, not Oscar, and so I didn't feel like seeing her be sad for 90 minutes.

This feels weird, and there might be a bit of an OCD version of me that eventually buckles and seeks out I Smile Back at some point because I should have given it a shot (Silverman can be a good actress, never better than in Battle of the Sexes), but as I find more and more joy out of cinema by looking at it from all angles like I have since starting this blog, if it brings me no joy (I didn't intend this to segway into Marie Kondo, but if the pop culture phenomenon fits), and it doesn't feel essential, I don't feel the need to continue.  I hope that this doesn't become a trend, and I doubt it will (because almost all films bring me some joy just by existing), but I'm not going to apologize for it and I'm not going to let sticking through a movie I don't like just to say I gave it a chance be a reason to watch a film.