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Re-watching films

Tuesday, 14 August 2007 personal

I love watching films and I’d really love to be able to watch films more than once… There’s just one problem: me

Every so often, like most people I enjoy watching a film. I have a choice of about 400 titles for my unintellectual viewing pleasure but I’ve recently found myself being unable to pick out something to watch.

My issue is when I’m browsing through the names of these films, I have a very fast and annoyingly accurate flashback of the entire film. I’ve got to say that this take some of the pleasure out of the whole endeavour.

This isn’t just for films that I’ve seen recently. Just looking at a stack of dusty DVDs (even VHS cassettes) drowns me a quick succession of storylines. The thought process goes a bit like:

Lethal Weapon 2! Cool film! Has whats-her-face as a South African who dies after getting chased by helicopters and there’s that evil dude with diplomatic immunity and a henchman that looks a little bit like Hitler, the exploding fish tank, the exploding loo, Leo Gets, the scene on the ship at the end where everybody gets shot and Glover revokes his diplomatic status… Yeah it’s pretty good… Aaaw crap!

I can’t just stop at “Cool film…” — my mind, for some unknown reason, feels required to develop it as if I were pitching it to studios to be made.

I seem to have mutated into a human PVR over the course of a few months and I’ve got to say it’s quite distressing! Where’s the fun in watching something when you already know every twist and every other line?

More importantly: how can I fix this without a lobotomy every time I watch a film? Any suggestions?