Love it or hate it, life keeps happening until it doesn’t. But the good news is, you can even enjoy life, especially when you punctuate it with little nonsense activities that make you feel connected to the world and those around you. Here’s how to zhuzh up your time on earth by watching a little movie and having a little opinion on it that you then text to your little friends. Aww!
Pick a movie.
The natural first step is to pick which movie you will be viewing. Presumably you already have some established interest in film, perhaps because your parents exposed you to it at a young age, or you lived near a great indie theater, or you knew someone who was super into film and thought it seemed cool so decided to model your identity on them by just forcing yourself to watch Tarantino and French New Wave until you actually started to like it like a 13-year-old consciously addicting herself to coffee. All of your tastes and the self-image you’ve constructed around them are this mimetic and embarrassing and, actually, that’s okay. Alright; got your movie? Time for step two.
Watch the movie.
Now of course you must watch your little movie. Preferably, you will have picked a recently released film that is “generating discourse” or one of the Greats (a movie that is important because everyone decided it is awesome), but really any title will do. In no time you will be watching a moving picture story that was created through the collaborative effort of so many people because that is just something humans do which is so dumb and so cool. Okay, now you are watching your little made-up story that, incredibly, exists.
Form your opinion.
During or soon after you watch a movie, you may have a feeling about whether or not you liked it, but this feeling is only one of several steps in forming your little opinion. Fill it out with discrete observations. Was the score heavy-handed? How would you describe the strength of the performances? Thoughts on the pacing? You can also go and read the thoughts of some professional opinion-havers, but don’t worry — reading reviews to inform your opinion is no more or less authentic than doing so independently because actually “authenticity” isn’t a real thing!! Plus, the language you use to process and articulate your thoughts about films has already been informed by film criticism, but it’s still nice to form those opinions because it makes you feel like a whole little subjectivity-imbued self, which is nice and wrong and true and fine!
The final step
You’re doing great. It’s finally time to take that little opinion and text it to your little friends. This is the best part, because your friends won’t say, “Why are you telling me this? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t do anything. What the fuck is wrong with you?” Because here’s the thing: They’re all in on it. So they’ll think about what you said like it matters. They’ll respond, maybe even argue, and you’ll communicate so that everyone knows what everyone else thinks about the little movie that was made and watched all because some people needed something to do while they were alive, and that’s very lucky.
So there you have it, that’s how you watch a little movie and have a little opinion on it that you text to your little friends. We recommend Bad Grandpa.
