Give Us a Sign

Closed captioners, please include tempo in your captions.

Your service is helpful and necessary, so, thank you! But captions are capable of more.

If at its deepest communication is the expression of ideas, then the semantic units pieced together to express those ideas are important. Yes, those units can be words and pauses like a period, but aren’t there other rhythms of life?

We feel the rhythms of our mother’s heart, drumming inside our own, before we even breathe air. We speak and write with pause and punctuation and inflection. Sign language, braille—think of a communication that doesn’t use tempo.

So, can our captions better capture all of this? Shouldn’t they?

Acting School

Do actors act?

Or are they being themselves?

Or are they willing to sacrifice their minds and bodies to live someone else’s emotions for our benefit?

Acting is incomprehensible to me.

But when it’s done well, wow oh wow do we feel it.

Trailing

The Problem

The modern movie trailer is a disappointment, lagging far behind its potential.

When we watch a trailer we expect a brief introduction to the sights/sounds/feelings/ideas of a movie. We want to learn just enough to help us consider whether watching the movie would be worth our valuable time. And no spoilers, please.

The problem is that many modern movie trailers fail to help us in those ways, and in fact, destroy our moviewatching experience by oversharing.

Take for example this main trailer from 2023’s worldwide top-grossing box-office movie, Barbie. For almost three minutes we encounter the main characters, the main plot-points, and snippets that the moviemakers think will resonate with us.

Why would we watch this movie now? We already know the players and the actors; we already know the arc of the story and can guess its ending; we can already repeat the movie’s quotable quotes. If we care about keeping current then our job is already done, and if we care about the beauty and wonder of movies, our watch is now spoiled. An overshare like this smacks of desperation and condescension.

A Solution

Tease us.

People quite reasonably want to have an idea about a movie before they start watching it, and trailers can be a great way to establish that idea. But let’s please remember that we can only crave what we don’t have. Trailers should therefore give us less, not more.

Like this teaser.

It’s less than one minute long, but has stirred up much excitement. We don’t learn exactly what the movie is about, but who cares?! We learn enough to know: This movie is going to be scary. It involves a family, and a stranger? And cryptic codes, maybe? We don’t know the plot points, we can’t quote more than a couple garbled sentences. We certainly can’t bake the aesthetic into our minds. Our imagination begins to run wild—and at the same time, begins to crave a resolution. This is a good trailer: A teaser.

Some folks have already understood that our good will has been the engine dragging along the lagging trailer for far too long. In an age of everything, everywhere, all at once, we crave less. We need less.

So, long live the teaser!

Re-Think Genre

There is something obvious about movies that nobody talks about, even though it’s life-changingly important: We watch movies because we want to feel.

This means that we need to re-think genre.

The Feels

First thing’s first, think about this and prove me wrong. When you look for something to watch, don’t you pick something because you guess that it’ll make you feel a certain way? I’m feeling goofy, so let’s keep that going with some slapstick. Or I need to cry right now, I need guaranteed sadness. Or I want to learn more about Westerns, let’s give this one a try.

And similarly, do you skip movies because you imagine they’ll have you feeling upset? No dumb comedies this time; I don’t want to roll my eyes at lazy jokes. Or No dramas this time; I feel defeated and can’t take more negativity in my life right now. And so on.

The Therapy

Because we watch to feel, changing genre to be more descriptive would help us. With more detailed genre, we could get closer to that feeling that we’re trying to feel—or at the very least, we could begin to understand that we are looking for a feeling, which is an immensely valuable realization.

Imagine it. You go to your favorite streamer, and instead of a comedy section, there are sections like: I’ve had a tough day and need some light-hearted laughs, or, I want to feel OK for being clumsy. Instead of drama, there are sections like: I’m still angry at my parent and need catharsis, or, I’m struggling with my evolving sexuality and need to feel seen. What if the next time you go to the theater, there are movie-sommeliers asking you about what you’re searching for, and making a recommendation?

The End is the Beginning

This may sound like an unnavigable maze of movies, but my guess is that it’ll help us. That it’ll be therapeutic.

Watch the Credits

Think of the fridges of your life for one moment. Have they been covered with things? And do we not smile when a child takes its first steps?

Yes and yes. Throughout life, we find it important to recognize and celebrate worthwhile behavior.

So then why oh why do we leave the movie before the credits are over? Why do we skip the introductions and the endings?

If what we’re watching is good enough to pay for and sit through for two hours . . . if what we’re watching is so good that we can’t get enough and we simply need to skip the credits to get more . . . if we’re refusing to go to the bathroom . . . we should recognize that (i) it’s because people worked their asses off to bring this to us and (ii) those people did a great job. Those people deserve recognition and praise.

We put the picture on our fridge. We hug our child in pride. Let’s acknowledge that the movie that moves us is a special thing, too; a miraculous team effort much harder and more impressive to effect than we can imagine.

Let’s give credit where credit is due.

stixpicks reviews are different

I like the movie L’iceberg (2005), so let’s start there.

One (non-stix) review of it begins like this:

“This debut feature by the filmmaking team of Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon and Bruno Romy earns two adjectives that rarely go together: breezy and bold. The film charts one woman’s journey from dronelike suburban mom and fast-food manager to would-be Arctic explorer. It starts when the heroine, Fiona (Ms. Gordon), is trapped in a restaurant freezer overnight and realizes she enjoyed the experience. She subjects herself to increasingly severe endurance tests and becomes obsessed with images of icebergs, even carving one in her freezer at home (like Richard Dreyfuss creating Devils Tower from mashed potatoes in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”).”

— Matt Zoller Seitz, in the New York Times. May 4, 2007.

That snippet teaches us, as a movie review should. But it teaches too much too fast. The first sentence alone includes at least seven pieces of information (the movie (1) is feature-length; (2) is someone’s first; (3) was made by a team ((4) here are there names); (5) was breezy; (6) was bold; and (7) its combination is rare in movies). The rest of the paragraph is similarly swollen. Adjectives thicken nouns and an unrelated movie/actor/scene are referenced.

I don’t know about you, but after reading it I feel more tired and self-conscious than informed. So what’s this movie about? I ask myself. Something about a freezer-person, I answer, because I can’t remember most of the review. What I do remember I am probably confusing. This is why stixpicks exists.

Unlike the currently established conventional review style we see used everywhere else—the one that both overfeeds and desperately tries to condense a movie for us—a stixpicks review selectively shares information. It is written to concisely answer the fundamental question that all moviewatchers ask (and answer) before they watch: Will I like spending my time with this movie?

To visualize the difference, take a look at this stixpicks-style paraphrase of that first snippet:

“What do you do when you’re stuck in a freezer? Fall in love, of course!

Not with someone, but with the experience. Like Fiona in L’iceberg. Her travels through life were painfully dull until being locked in a freezer overnight. Confusingly, hilariously, the experience transformed her.

Mom has a new zest for life now, subjecting herself to increasingly outrageous feats of cold-endurance. What’ll she do next?! I don’t know, but I’d like to find out. Her family remaining oblivious somehow adds humor to the strangeness, and lets us have Fiona all to ourselves.”

— stixpicks (hypothetically)

OK, this time my interest in L’iceberg is piqued. I’ve learned the plot (freezer transforms bored mom into Arctic explorer) and the overall feeling of the movie (strange, funny, adventurey) without unnecessary detail. Already, I have a good sense of whether I’ll want to give this movie a try.

Let’s look at the second paragraph of the non-stix review, though. It’ll crystallize what makes a stixpick.

“The movie is structured as a series of brazenly metaphoric slapstick tableaus, with little music and less dialogue. Relying on static wide shots that pin the characters to their color-coded environments (a style choice that links the film to the work of Buster Keaton, Jacques Tati, Jim Jarmusch and other deadpan fabulists), “L’Iceberg” treats Fiona’s journey as a mythic quest. Its simultaneously silly and grave tone finds humor in the characters’ delusions and obsessions while celebrating their uniqueness.”

— Matt Zoller Seitz, in the New York Times. May 4, 2007.

We’re learning again. The snippet explains how certain of the moviemakers’ choices affect the movie’s vibe. Continuing the effort to connect this movie with others (or to establish the writer’s keen eye and knowledge of cinema?) it proposes links between L’iceberg and other (recognizable, respected) names of movie history. OK. Well, what if I’m not familiar with those names? What if I don’t know what a static tableau is or disagree with the assessment that the movie’s aesthetic is somehow linked to the work of those other moviemakers? To understand whether I’ll enjoy this movie, do I truly need to know where the reviewer thinks it fits into the eternal webbed chart of our dear cinema?

There is nothing wrong with that writer, that writing, or that style. In fact, it’s important that they and others exist because perspectives give perspective. My point is simply that stixpicks aims to provide a new perspective for us to consider, one that elucidates above all else whether we’ll like experiencing a movie. For all the rest of it—info about the production, the inspiration, the analogues, the business, the art, the moviemakers, and so on—we can consult so many other wonderful resources.

So that’s it! Brevity plus helping you is the stuff that makes a stixpicks review. Read a non-stix review from anywhere else and you’ll get the picture.

K.I.S.S.

I’d like you to try something: Watch a movie you know nothing about.

No, don’t check its ratings first. And don’t watch that thing your friend might’ve told you was good. Look for something different. Pick the thing that you are spectacularly ambivalent about—or the one that your internal compass points you away from.

Yes, this exercise might be a boring or repulsive waste of your time. If you do it enough times such a reaction is almost certain. But sometimes, it might open your eyes to a wonderful surprise, one that makes you feel good or that teaches you something.

Remember your first kiss? You knew you wanted to try it; weren’t sure about the details or how it would turn out, but you went for it anyway, hopeful and trusting. Exploring movies is no different.

If that’s not your thing, fine. Read a stixpicks review to get a sense of that movie first. I recommend! ;)

But once in a while, you could do worse than to keep it simple, smartypants, and just go for it.

xoxo,

stix

A Bite-Sized Movie Manifesto

I wish we didn’t call them shorts.

Movies are stories, and good ones leave impressions that are timeless. Referring to a group of them based on runtime is an oversimplification at best, and at worst, using a word that our brains associate with concepts like small, brief, or cursory unfairly colors our perception of a movie before it even begins. Our mindset affects how we experience things, and calling a movie a short can trick us into thinking it’s somehow less than its feature-length siblings.

Of course, the runtime of a movie can be an important fact to know. As few of us have the luxury to play movie roulette, we shouldn’t get rid of a quick way to distinguish between longer and briefer movies. But we should be more thoughtful about how we express that difference.

So I propose the following; if we’re calling these movies anything other than movies, let’s call them bites—a digestible experience giving you all the flavors that something has to offer.

Tasty, no?