Living-Room Film Fest

[April 6th, 2005] Sometimes I feel like I've seen all the movies there are to see. I know that's not true, but take, for example, a recent trip to my neighborhood video store. There were 120 films on the New Release shelves-I counted-that I had seen. Every time I picked up a box for some foreign or indie film that looked interesting, it turned out I had already seen it. I wandered over to the Employee Picks shelf, where I had seen 90 percent of the films they had selected. Finally, after wandering for almost an hour, I found something that seemed like it would be good. The movie sucked. I held on for 30 minutes before turning it off, and then I was tardy in returning it, acquiring a healthy late charge for something I didn't even watch.

Let's face it, watching movies can be a crapshoot at best. This is especially true of home video. Studios spend millions of dollars on marketing campaigns to trick you into watching garbage that can make your eyes bleed. Meanwhile, who wants to take a chance on some small film they've never heard of, with actors whose names strike no responsive chord?

And don't get me started on employee recommendations. "The Chronicles of Riddick is the best movie I've seen in my life," a video-store clerk told me.

"So what you're telling me is that either you've never seen a movie before, or somehow you're only about five hours old?" was my response.

Now that my cynicism has been duly noted, let me say that I have renewed hope. Thanks to a New York-based company called Film Movement, I feel like there's a fighting chance for movie fans to see quality films on DVD.

Film Movement was founded three years ago by Larry Meistrich, whose company The Shooting Gallery had produced such films as You Can Count on Me, Croupier and Sling Blade. It's a unique model in the world of film distribution, operating much like a book-of-the-month club in releasing one DVD title to its subscribers per month. Unlike Netflix, which offers mail-order rentals, you get to keep the titles Film Movement sends each month (you can also purchase releases from past months). And these aren't just any films: Each Film Movement release is selected by an advisory board made up of directors and curators of some of the top film festivals. That may not seem like the best qualifications, but give me a film selected by a curator from the Toronto Film Festival over some mouth-breathing spazz at Blockbuster who's got a boner for Jennifer Garner in Elektra any day.

As anyone who has attended film festivals can tell you, some of the best movies fail to secure distribution, not even a direct-to-video deal, which makes them difficult to see outside the festival circuit. It's even worse when festival films are released on DVD but distributors aren't able to get the film into video stores, where big-budget blockbusters claim most of the valuable shelf space. That's what makes Film Movement's subscription model so smart: The company bypasses the cutthroat world of video stores, instead shipping titles straight to discerning film lovers who pay $19.95 monthly or $199 annually.

During last month's Longbaugh Film Festival in Portland, three of Film Movement's more recent titles screened (in addition to DVD releases, the company also shows films at select festivals and in certain cities). As the creative director of Longbaugh, my goals are similar to that of Film Movement-connect audiences with quality films they might otherwise not see. Working with them to show Alexandra's Project, Falling Angels and Wilby Wonderful helped to fulfill both our missions.

But more importantly, it was through Longbaugh that I discovered Film Movement, and in the process, was reminded that watching movies can amount to more than press screenings of Miss Congeniality 2 or mistakenly renting something like Hit Me.