When it comes to entertainment options in Quarantine Times, my wife and I are spoiled for choice. We dont have cable, but we do subscribe to (or have access to passwords for) Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, Disney+, HBO Max and the Criterion Channel, not to mention abundant free streaming services. So… why cant we choose a goddam movie?
Since lockdown beganbut actually, since our relationship beganweve spent more time arguing over what movie we want to watch than actually watching movies. Half the time we end up in a low-key fight over the other persons indifferent mood or terrible taste before weve picked anything; the other half of the time, its too late to watch anything by that point anyway. Youll notice this adds up to 100% percent of the time, and thats only a slight exaggerationbut Ive finally found a solution for our choice paralysis.
It comes via the cinematic power couple of Karina Longworth, creator of the essential film history podcast You Must Remember This, and her husband Rian Johnson, director of Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Knives Out (the latter being a film my wife and I did manage to agree to watch; she didnt like it). It turns out even famous directors and film historians cant agree on what to watch, but Longworth figured out a solution, as revealed on the third episode of her other movie podcast, the quarantine-themed The Pictures That Got Small.
[read more] and I had got into a situation of just passive aggressively being like You choose what we watch, no you choose what we watch. And so I created an innovation in our household: I basically made a list of every movie I could think about that we had talked about, Oh, we should watch that sometime, plus some deep cuts of directors Im trying to get to know better, plus some Criterion Blu-rays we had lying around. We put it in an app that can randomize any list. And so, every night that were going to watch something, we press the random button and it tells us what were going to watch.
Longworth and Johnson have dubbed their solution the Randomizer. To maintain and randomize their list, they use the Random app, which is dubbed as the All Things Generator. Its a greatfree!option that can store and mix up any list and choose one item on it at random; you can also use it to flip a coin, generate a random number, roll a die and more. Its only available for iOS, however, but you can jury-rig the same results with a Google Docs spreadsheet and any random number generator (for ease of use, I like the one at Random.org).
There are other movie-selection schemes built on random chance. In our Slack, Lifehacker tech editor David Murphy recommended Netflix Roulette, which will choose a movie for you at random from the entire Netflix library (and if you create an account, HBO, Prime Video, Hulu and 50+ others). Even though you can narrow down your pool of potential choices by genre and Rotten Tomatoes score, this solution is just a bit too wild west for me. (I mean, what if it tried to make me watch Wild Wild West?)
I prefer the self-curation element of the Randomizer. My wife and I are constantly discussing movies we might like to watch someday, but never in one place; we have options spread across Alexa lists, multiple streaming service watch queues, random texts and ancient emails, and yet for some reason every time we fire up the Roku, we cant think of anything were remotely interested in. Using the Randomizer model, well not only have all of our options in one place, but the hard partthe choosing partis out of our hands.
Now, this is a solution that requires both setupits going to take a while to assemble your what-to-watch list, and youll likely be curating it constantly as streaming services add and drop filmsand buy-ineveryone subject to the Randomizer must agree to abide by the rules of the Randomizer. If you just wind up hitting the random button again if you dont like what youre given, you may as well go back to the Netflix Browse Endlessly plan.
If thats too rigid for the health of your relationships with your co-watchers, consider implementing some house rules. Perhaps you can sort your lists by genre (so you dont end up watching a horror film on Valentines Day) or give each person one veto per viewing sessionwhatever you have to do to keep the peace and finally just watch a fucking movie.
How to Choose a Movie to Watch Without a Family Fight
