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Video by John Tebbutt Two people see a film. The first one enjoys it; the second one thinks it’s a piece of garbage, and points out a list of the film’s deficiencies in an intelligent, succinct manner. Which of these viewers is smarter? Answer: the first one. He got his 11 bucks worth, while the other guy wasted his money. Well, maybe that’s a tad simplistic. After all, it’s often more fun to rail about a terrible movie than to enthuse about a good one – but you get the idea. I believe it’s possible to enjoy just about any movie if you approach it the right way, and who wouldn’t rather enjoy the flick they just paid hard-earned money to see? The truth is, we’re all a lot more in control over which movies entertain us than many of us might suspect. Given this premise, let me ask another question: what movies are you willing to see? There’s tons and tons of great stuff out there, and some of you probably have lots of very good reasons for not watching it. That’s fine, if you’d rather be right than happy. But, if you secretly want to expand your viewing horizons (and I suspect that as a Video Vulture reader, you probably do) then all you have to do is simply let go of some of your favourite "good reasons" for missing certain flicks. For example: · Good Reason #1: Subtitles "I don’t want to read a movie!" Unless you can’t read subtitles because of dyslexia, illiteracy or eyesight problems, I don’t buy it. Words are all around us – as a society we are constantly reading. Besides, even Star Wars had subtitles. Try something like La Femme Nikita – there’s so much action that you’ll only spend about three minutes reading subtitles. Alternately, watch something emotionally involving, like Jesus of Montreal. You’ll probably forget that you’re reading subtitles, to the point that when they start speaking English during the hospital scene, you won’t even notice. · Good Reason #2: Widescreen Video "I don’t like looking at those black bars!" Yep, videos in the "Letterbox" format have black bars on the top and bottom, to preserve the theatrical aspect ratio. Here’s a thought: don’t look at them. Look at the movie. You might as well say, "I hate watching TV – I just keep staring at the knobs." Those black bars aren’t covering anything up, they’re just there because the film’s true shape is rectangular, not square. Unless your TV is small enough to pick up with one hand, widescreen movies shouldn’t be a problem. · Good Reason #3: Stupid Movies "This movie is going to be incredibly stupid!" That’s no reason not to watch it. Everybody watches stupid movies. We have to – genuinely good ones don’t come along often enough. Fortunately, we tend to forgive some movies for their stupidity if they contain some element we like. As a kid, maybe you thought that any movie was good as long as it had a puppy that saved the day. Today, it’s the same deal, only instead of puppies, you want to see Arnold Schwarzenegger shooting two machine guns at once. When a group of people go to the multiplex, and there’s a good movie playing, they go to that, and everybody’s happy. More often, there’s just six stupid movies to choose from, and they get into an argument about whether to watch the stupid movie with the love story, or the stupid movie with exploding helicopters. · Good Reason #4: Genre Preferences "I can’t stand that kind of movie!" Well as Mom said during dinner, "How do you know you don’t like it if you won’t try it?" You might surprise yourself. For years, I thought only evil people would watch horror movies. Eventually I began to suspect that this perception was wrong, and cautiously sampled a few mild horror flicks. Before long, I was amazed to find myself actually enjoying The Evil Dead – and the biggest revelation was that I was still a nice person! Groovy. Is there a film genre you’ve been neglecting? Westerns? Foreign comedies? Silent? Documentaries? Anime Porn? Maybe it’s time for a change....

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