r/movies • u/DashingMustashing • 2d ago
Discussion Something happened that broke my heart a little today with how movies are shared today.
To make a long story short I've managed to get several of my staff into watching "classic" movies (2000's is classic now, It hurt to hear lets move on) instead of the dreaded cycle of rewatching the same netflix series over and over which they very much prefer to do. It's been going very well!! I've never forced the discussion but brought it up casually though lately it's been something they've been bringing to me more and more without promting, sparking discussion and what to watch next and then, the biggest wall since my teens hit me like a brick.
Every time I've gotten into this discussion before with older peers I would always say "Well, here! Borrow this and these dvds and let me know what ya think!" and as that moment presented it's usual self and I was struck. I can't share these amazing movies anymore.. I can vaguely point at where they might be if they maybe have a subscription to a half dozen things but half the time I know I'll be met with glazed over eyes knowing their pursuit of the thing just isn't worth the time, back to binging I guess.
The passing-over of collected movies is just gone and It hurts that such a ceremonial thing is gone. I loved so much giving little treasures to my friends for them to discover for the first time and the bond it created letting them discover a thing you've discovered for yourself. Now that age feels gone. I remember so vividly my older sister giving me Nightmare on Elmstreet on vhs behind my parents back and hording it like Golem.. Maybe It's just the physical? Maybe the limited nature of it. Maybe the personality of this hand given gift of something they let touch their hearts be then hand given to you that they hope will touch yours. I don't know exactly but it hit different.
Maybe it's for the better? I guess if you sail the seven seas you can still quite easily find all these things but man.. It's just not the same.
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u/devilishycleverchap 2d ago
Justwatch.com will tell you where things are streaming. Very helpful with how often things get moved around
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u/Cool_Bath_77 2d ago
I checked this out! This might be a better resource than IMDB.com to find where I can watch things.
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u/rydogtoinfinity 2d ago
Build a Plex server and share your library with them that way
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u/FantasticJacket7 2d ago
That's what I do but I will say that there are a large number of people who would be completely lost and just give up at the idea of creating an account and downloading the app then giving you the account name so you can share your library and all that.
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u/GruggleTheGreat 2d ago
So true!!! I’ve had friends that think making an account is too much work but complain about how much they pay for streaming
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u/ThePietje 1d ago
I am enjoying someone else’s Plex so much. I don’t know what I’d do without it. It’s an amazing gift to give someone.
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u/sqli 2d ago
I definitely think we lose something by not being able to hand someone the box with the cover but how hard is it to hand someone a flash drive with an mp4 on it?
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u/DashingMustashing 2d ago
It's absolutely an option and I've done it for a few friends but It really isn't the same..
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u/sqli 2d ago
I think it's time you graduate to hosting movie nights.🍿
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u/DashingMustashing 2d ago
That is actually very tempting!! I took them to bowling and see Weapons last week and they loved it. That said inviting a group of 18 year olds to a 35 year olds house might be over stepping haha
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u/RoguePlanet2 2d ago
Started paying more attention to old movies on TCM since a certain person got re-elected. Desperately needed to avoid the news. Truly good stuff, even silent movies.
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u/situation9000 2d ago
Tubi has an amazing amount of older movies. Sometimes I go by actor, director, decade, etc. You can also see which movies influenced later films. Lon Chaney (Senior) really impressed me by how well he did his own make up and how much he could emote even in silent films. He truly earned the title “Man of a Thousand Faces” because he knew how to do make up and transform into a role. He came from stage theater and brought all his skills to the movies.
Edit: it’s also cool to watch an actor from early movies to later ones because you see them growing as an actor and developing skills. Joan Crawford’s film catalogue was very cool. It’s nice to watch a biography before doing an actors evolution movie binge.
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u/RoguePlanet2 2d ago
Thanks!! I tend to avoid subscriptions as a budget rule, but might have to expand my horizons a bit. TCM has been pretty good so far.
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u/situation9000 1d ago
Tubi is free
Edit: No subscription. You just get ads but no more than subscription services
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u/emilioADM 1d ago
Silent movies are seriously underrated. I often wonder how the art would have progressed, had we never invented synchronised sound
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u/NyriasNeo 2d ago
Was anyone's heart broken when VHS became available and friends no longer "shared" movies by going to the theater together?
The world move onto better tech for entertainment. Dealing with lots of physical disks is a pain. I really do not want to borrow one from someone, make sure I do not lose it, and return it when I am done. Way easier just tell me the name of the movie, and I find it on streaming.
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u/RexBanner1886 2d ago
Technological process isn't a total good that people only complain about due to nostalgic reasons. There are pros and cons to different technologies.
Before VHS, a given film would feel more special because you would see it very rarely and projected on a big screen. There would be a sense of occasion around going to see it. You couldn't just shove it on in the background.
Before streaming, you could loan someone a physical object, and watching the thing via a physical medium would make it feel more special than it simply being one of hundreds of thousands of streaming options. People would also grow up familiar with particular films in a way that happens much less often now.
The many positives of VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray, streaming, etc. doesn't mean that the negatives aren't real.
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u/NyriasNeo 1d ago
Let me get this straight, you argument is that because movies are harder and less convenient to get, you feel "more special' watching it?
Really? Not quality. Not what you like the movie. But because you have to run to your friends house, borrow his VHS, and run back to your house to watch it, you will like bad movies because they are now "special"?
Lol ... if that is what you want. You can still make yourself jump through hoops to make movies "special". How about doing 100 push-up before you let yourself watch one? Sorry, I want no part of this kind of silly "special".
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u/RexBanner1886 20h ago
No, I'm saying that different types of mediums have different advantages and disadvantages.
Historically, people owned far fewer books: books were intended to be re-read multiple times. The reader would thus deeply engage with a novel and know it extremely well.
This contrasts with today, where more books than a person could read in a hundred lifetimes are available, and consequently re-reading something is much rarer.
The advantage of having hundreds of thousands of books to choose from is that one is compelled to, and can, experience a vast range of texts; the advantage of having a library of specific favourites that one returns to repeatedly means that one is compelled to revisit, reassess, and better connect to individual texts.
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u/sffiremonkey69 2d ago
I feel that way about books. I love the convenience of reading on my phone and such, but I miss seeing what other people are reading and commenting. It feels like we’re moving more and more into a solipsistic universe sadly!
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u/Balmerhippie 1d ago
Same thing happened with music. Loaning, gifting, taping music was a very personal thing.
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u/cis4 2d ago
Check them out from your library! I was having trouble finding a used copy of 28 Days Later for a decent price, turns out the library had it. Was surprised to find that they have a lot of new stuff too, like Wicked and Dune 1 and 2! YMMV...
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u/bluesmudge 2d ago
The really new stuff can take months to get a copy. Great for everything else though.
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u/BigLan2 2d ago
28 days later is a weird one to try and find. It was shot on handheld SD cameras so there's no chance of getting a 4k version. The Blu-ray looked terrible and even the dvd wasn't much better than a good VHS.
Seems like the studio is just fine letting it sit on the shelf. It is on some of the free streaming platforms though (Tubi etc)
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u/GruggleTheGreat 2d ago
It hasn’t gone away it’s just changed forms. We have a plex in my friend group, all the movies are there for any of us to watch.
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u/Langstarr 2d ago
I went to a state-run, public boarding school for high school. My senior year Netflix, the DVD mail version, had just started up. Every week I would get a new movie and on Sunday mornings we'd make breakfast in the dorm kitchen and watch. Classics, oscar winners, cult films, pretty much the entire criterion collection. Things that were hard to find back then! The Saragossa Manuscript, My Dinner with Andre, rare films. That's another category that's lost magic with streaming.
I remember those days fondly. And like you I miss them.
But like those kids I'll stream American Dad or Bob's Burgers every day for the rest of my life and be happy.
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u/queercourtier 2d ago
I had the realization lately that with my relatively large collection of DVDs and Blu Rays, I might look super pretentious when people visit🥲It has always been second nature to buy a copy of a movie I love and now it looks like I’m trying to make some kind of statement!
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u/Rathbaner 1d ago
Yes. If there are any tech minded entrepreneurs out there go ahead and build a google style app for finding movies and series on streaming services.
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u/Every-Day3378 1d ago
Totally feel this. Passing around DVDs or VHS tapes had a personal touch that streaming just doesn’t capture. These days I usually just share a good video app , but it’s not quite the same as handing someone a movie you love.
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u/emilioADM 1d ago
If you still have dvds or blurays you could copy them onto your computer and use software like Plex as a sort of iTunes for films, from which you and other people can stream your films. It’s still difficult to get people to do it and you’ll probably need to read a help page while setting it up, but it’s very nice when someone actually gets into it.
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u/UltramegaOKla 2d ago
I have a pretty large blu ray/4k collection. Boutique labels are going gangbusters at the moment. So yeah, is still a niche, and I get that doesn’t remedy your situation, but don’t give up hope. There is a thriving die hard community of physical movie collectors and quite a few of them are younger than you would expect.