As I say, I used to be a purist. I would watch an entire movie from start to finish, in one sitting, even if I hated the movie. I have only walked out of a theatre once, and that was from a combination of hunger, boredom. and the fact that I'd just seen 27 films that week (film festival). Now, faced with a glut of movies we want to watch and with limited time, we fast-forward through the ones we don't like.
We have an internet movie rental system, you know, the kind where you make a list of movies you want to see and they randomly send them to you. The last bunch of movies that came in the mail were all Alan Rudolph films. All except one we fast-forwarded. The only one that we actually watched was his latest, The Secret Lives of Dentists (2002). I wasn't expecting that much, I guess, but halfway into it, I was surprised by the Denis Leary character, in a good way. The rest of them – Trixie, The Moderns, Choose Me – Joe had seen before and remembered them as being good. Watching them this time, he was appalled. "These are crap!" he said. They were completely artificial, as in theatre. Sets, costumes, lighting, acting. All overdone. We have Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle to watch still, and both of us remember liking it when it came out. But now we're not looking forward to it. We decided to watch The Fountain instead.
Unfortunately, The Fountain was also a fast-forward. I was astounded by Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream, and liked Pi though it was student film-y. But Batman Begins was a disappointment, failing to translate the spirit of the Dark Knight. The Fountain felt like it was made by a 12 year old kid with lots of money.
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