Lisa Schwarzbaum on the Good and the Bad of How We Watch Movies Now

In the beginning, we went to the movies. We went to multiplexes. We went to art houses. We went to weird neighborhood duo-plexes where the sound bled through the walls, but we kept going anyway, because the tickets were cheap. And it was good. 

Now the movies come to us. Over the years, maybe we found a favorite video store. (Be kind, rewind.) Then we collected DVDs. We subscribed to Netflix, we programmed our TiVOs, we scheduled our DVRs, we learned what streaming meant, we streamed. Maybe we threw out our VHS tapes, too. (Did you? I did. I'd feel worse about missing my well-loved tape ofEyes Without a Face if I still had something on which to play videos, but I junked that technology with the arrival of my Blu-ray player.) 

These days we watch movies on giant screens in our own home theaters. And we also watch them on the go: on laptops, tablets, and smartphones, in planes, trains, and automobiles. Wherever we are, there is a way to way to see a movie when we want it, how we want it. 

And it is … a new kind of good. Certainly it's a new kind of different: often wonderful, sometimes disorienting, occasionally horrifying. (Did you really watch Lord of the Ringson a smartphone?) But we are not here to talk about how you like to watch your movies. (Seriously, Rings on a smartphone? Are you nuts?) We are here on this site because we love movies. And built into a love of movies is a love for the way a movie uses time to tell a story. 

READ MORE

https://www.yahoo.com/movies/lisa-schwarzbaum-on-the-good-and-the-bad-of-how-we-85160076702.html