TL;DR: Watching Movies 2026 - Nothing Matters, So Everything Matters

Back in December pal Howard shared an article from Substack about the changing nature of "the canon" of film appreciation/ studies/ best of/ what-have-you.  It's a review of the publication, Sight & Sound, and their annual poll, with a desire to demonstrate the changing climate of what is considered "the best".  Perhaps the notion is that if you liked a film thirty years ago, now it is less important to the voting body of Sight & Sound while other movies, new and old have made it onto the list, moving around the position of movies thought *the* canon once upon a time.  And so it goes.

The article arrived around the same time I was pondering something quite different.  

In 2025, I turned 50 years old, which gives me roughly 48 year of movie-going experience.  My dad took me to see Star Wars in the theater during the 1977 release - wholly inappropriate for a kid that young, but I suppose my mom needed the afternoon off.*  I went to film school in the 1990's.  I've been discussing movies online without a thought of making a penny off my opinions and bad takes since 2003.  Yeah, 2003, kid.

But here's the thing I was pondering this year:  only genre freaks really care about film in a way that indicates love instead of weird gatekeeping.  

While lists like Sight & Sound's list will be useful as lists of movies that you likely won't regret watching - I am sure each and every film is of value - who is this list for?  

No, really.  Who is it for?  

Is the list for their parents to marvel at what they're doing with their lives?  For their film snobs (I mean that lovingly, but also...) to nod along and also feel quite clever?  Is it for the person who works 9-6 and then has three hours on the weekend that aren't taken up by chores?

Or, is it a bucket list of films to see before you throw off this veil of tears?  Is it to guide one in making movies to see the marvels of the past?  

Will these movies make you a better viewer of movies?  And if so, what does that mean?

I want to be clear - mostly the list is not that crazy.  In the Mood for Love is a fucking great movie. I own a copy.  I do squint a bit that the #1 movie ever made according to the list (which is:  Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles) as it feels like virtue signaling more than anything else.  But whatever, I've never seen it, just read about the movie.  But is it more impactful than Citizen Kane?  Is Vertigo really better than Citizen Kane?  

Who the fuck knows?  No...  Not you.  You do not know.  And neither do I.

It was during a screening of Re-Animator at Austin's Paramount Theatre that some of my thoughts on "what do movies mean to people" crystallized.  

As the be-headed, zombified body of  a mad scientist carried its own still-talking noggin toward a prone, nude Barbara Crampton - I cackled as a few hundred people lost their goddamn minds, screaming and shouting their approval as if their favorite song had been started live by their favorite musician.  

When the movie ended, that same Barbara Crampton walked out onto the stage (celebrating 40 years of this movie existing) into a room that once again exploded, I pondered:  are these the people best at going to the movies?

Then, that same week, I hoofed it back down to the Paramount for a screening of the much reviled Showgirls, this time hosted by the amazing Elizabeth Berkley.  And just as Verhoeven's Robocop was misunderstood by many as just a particularly bloody cops-n-robbers shoot-'em-up when it came out, only to be reconsidered and seen for the satire that it is, Verhoeven's Showgirls absolutely deserves reconsideration as a mirror held up to our obsession with fame and lenses through which we deal with sexuality.

That night there was an audience there that not only got what Verhoeven was doing, they were there to celebrate Berkley - who, in 1995, took the brunt of the critical lambasting as the lead of a film people wanted to revile.  And, God bless her, Berkley has survived all of it and found what it means to be an icon to a rabid fanbase who will turn up for her.  

And that's what I saw that night - a whole lot of love for an insane movie and the woman at the center of that storm.  Is this the best movie-going?

Because this can happen, there's a whole industry where stars of unlikely movies turn out for money their fans are willing to pay.  Some folks do pics at Cons, sign things, etc...  And others are now touring with movies, like Crampton did with Jeffrey Combs.  I've seen Bruce Campbell with Army of Darkness and Cassandra Peterson for Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, among others.

Meanwhile, in Kansas City each Christmas you can go to either of two weekends of The Hallmark fan cons.  Or go on a cruise with Hallmark stars.

And maybe I'm mixing up star power with movie power, but I also know that when the Alamo does its Weird Wednesdays and other events, those things also sell out.  Eddie Muller does okay running the Noir City events around the country.  

What's interesting about the film enthusiast communities is their "yes, and..." approach to the object of their affection.  

Sure, people have things they like and like less and don't like at all.  But if you're in the horror world, it's almost declasse to suggest that it's anything but personal taste to rank movies.  People do it - it's clickbait after all.  But there's more of an energy of folks finding what works for them good, better, best.

Meanwhile, the tone of the Sight & Sound article is much more "step off, Grandma and Grandpa, you were wrong!  Here are the *actual* best movies!"  This is, and always will be, just what people who see themselves as the elite of critical review are going to do.  And whether their work speaks to anyone else but the snobs in the room is usually highly questionable.  And, I'd argue, can start to look a bit self-defeating.  

After all - if someone looks sideways at your list, there goes your credibility.  You're inviting them to think you're just a pretentious asshole.

It *is* interesting when movies begin to no longer speak to younger viewers in the way they did to contemporary audiences.  It can happen because the culture shifts hit what was considered a norm of the time - take blackface in a movie (and, yes, despite what you may see on social media, a *lot* of people were fine with it through the 1970's).  

But, in my experience, the shift begins largely because the cultural and historical cues of the era in which the movie was made, that go unremarked as taken as part of common knowledge, are lost on the current group of viewers.  And that can be inside jokes people of the time would have understood, or the import of, say, the Cuban revolution - and who all was involved.  

I'm convinced It Happened on 5th Avenue hasn't been a more beloved classic of Holiday cinema because 5th Avenue has meant something entirely different to the last 60 or 70 years of people choosing movies, even if the story is largely timeless.

One change I am excited about is a growing diversity in who our gatekeepers conscientious reviewers might be.  I am a boring, middle-aged white guy, and while I won't entirely agree with eye-rolly social media takes that me being a boring guy means my opinion doesn't matter, what I will agree with is more voices equals more things to consider.  Heck, when I was growing up, I don't remember any female movie reviewers on TV.  No women!  That's insane!  Add in our own ethnic diversity in this country, not to mention a variety of socio-economic backgrounds, and maybe moving the pieces around of what makes for a good film makes some sense.

But I am still not sure that a room full of people congratulating themselves at being good at movie-watching and everyone else is dumb is, in any way, useful.

The biggest challenge I think is really the approach to movies.  

Are you looking to "win" movies?  

You can't "win" at movies.  You can't see everything.  And you can't even have an informed or thoughtful opinion on everything if you did lock yourself in a room and watched six movies a day.**

Nor do you get to say "I am the arbiter of what people like".  Even if you are a fancy, long running periodical or magazine (and we all know how well movie magazines have been doing the last two decades).  You just... don't get to.  You never did.  You may have been urbanely chuckling along to Stardust Memories, but someone was watching Maniac Cop and having a great time.  

And while I'm depressed about the management of movies by clicks and algorithms pushing movies in front of people while movie marketing mostly seems non-existent unless you're a Disney franchise tentpole or He-Man, I do think we have more voices and that's fundamentally a *good*.

What a quick glance at social media will inform you is that basic media literacy across all media seems to have fallen off a cliff.  OR - our algorithms, plus easy accessibility to the conversation, have shown us that a huge part of the population can't - and maybe never could - "read" a 2 hour movie if it isn't about people driving fastly and furiously, or with such a familiar, button-pushing narrative arc that it's spelled out like a Disney movie with a call-and-response of the movie's theme(s) uttered aloud.  

And so it is that I think we are in desperate need of courses on media literacy, as much TV and film as literature.  Very few people consume more books than they do TV shows or movies.  And if we're going to do that, we do need a canon so we have a common point from which to discuss the form.  And that's where we would start to run into issues.  Because who is going to decide what that canon is?  Folks who think the best movies are Mulholland Drive and Man With a Movie Camera?  I'm not even debating if those movies are good or not*** - I'm just not sure that's how I'd explain how film and TV work to 15 year olds.  

Honestly, selections from the AFI 100 is maybe the best place to start.

But just give people the tools.  And don't kill that enthusiasm for story as told via moving pictures on a screen and accompanying sound.  Don't look down your nose at the folks lined up for a midnight showing of a 40 year old horror movie or showing up for some camp classic that you don't enjoy.  Heck, is anything more boring in 2026 than making sure you tell people you don't like superhero movies?

And remember the *joy* people get out of movies, and how it can be shared and passed around.  It's okay to nod sagely at your Very Important and Deep Movie, but don't sleep on low-budget zombie movies that toss the rulebook out the window.

There's a wide world of ways to engage with movies/ film/ what-have-you, and either through sheer force of volume consumed or watching the most depressing and convoluted films doesn't make anyone the winner in a contest.  But we can work to improve what people get out of the content they take in, better discern what that movie is saying - and that seems a desperate need we've ignored for way too long in favor of just teaching school like it's 1939 and we're still acting like those moving pictures are a fad.

* one of my earliest memories is having the shit scared out of me by a Tuskan Warrior

** I see this on social media, and all I want to do is call a helpline for these people

*** they are, it's fine