Flak Magazine: Review of A Year at the Movies, 10-03-02

The concept is simple, if initially baffling. Send a guy around the world — with a semi-suspicious emphasis on Minneapolis-St. Paul and northwestern Wisconsin — and have him a watch a movie every single day. Have him watch movies at the Cannes Film Festival. Send him up to a giant luxury igloo, to watch a film projected onto ice. Send him to Australia, to visit the smallest and most charming movie theater in the world. And put him on a plane to the Pacific, and to watch movies with the Cook Islanders. "I tasted the Tutti-frutti of the Raratonga," the author, Kevin Murphy, reports.

In the process of researching "A Year at the Movies," Murphy took on an assignment that would make even proud cinephiles tremble: He saw a movie every day for a year, all over the planet, in order to understand why we watch. He rode and evaluated Hollywood's movie theme rides. He went to drive-ins. And he went to a date movie six times with six different women, only one of whom was his wife.

Hot stuff.

Murphy captured the hearts of geeks coast-to-coast with his portrayal of movie-mocking robot Tom Servo in "Mystery Science Theater 3000." So he's probably one of the world's best candidates for the movie-a-day job. He estimates that the MST3K gig entailed viewing about 3,650 films in 10 years, making this book more or less par for the course.

But this is not a book about movies. It's a book about watching movies. With a Dachshund-like enthusiasm for the exhibition of film, Murphy rips through week after week of cinematic exploration, analyzing crowds, concession stands, seats, projectionists and viewer vibes like the moviemaster he most assuredly is.

Murphy's observations are sharp and specific. He meditates on those transcendent moviegoing experiences that come a few times in our lives, if we're lucky — and he watches Corky Romano. In short, "A Year at the Movies" may be the best look we've got into the subtle science of finding the perfect grand cinematic experience.

And although the book is more about the experience than the films themselves, Murphy doesn't hold back on the opinionating. His aesthetic shines through, though it's hard to force it into a stereotype. There are highbrow tours de force that he loves, like Derek Jarman's Blue. But others, with equally pristine reputations, he'll write off as pretentious muck.

Of acclaimed Hong Kong film In the Mood for Love, he writes:

Every critic I looked into had nothing but gushing things to say about the film. And I have to agree, that it is a film so full of mood, so independent of traditional narrative, so evocative of ... and sublime in its nuanced ... so ... slow ...

The film was so friggin' slow, I fell asleep three times.

And while there are Hollywood blockbusters that he enjoys with the visceral enthusiasm of a college freshman, there are others (like Gladiator) that he pans as the cynically crafted, feebleminded junk that they so surely are.

In short: He calls 'em as he sees 'em. And that makes him a good companion to have along for this celluoid odyssey. The book's tight writing and meringue-sweet wit also makes this one of the most enjoyable — and intelligent — bits of movie writing to come along in a while.

"A Year at the Movies" is a quick read, but it's intensely amusing and ultimately satisfying. While its constituent elements are hundreds of little vignettes about watching films, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Reading "A Year at the Movies" will make you excited about foreign films and drive-ins. It will make you excited about attending film festivals in Finland. And — most exciting of all — it will make you proud to be part of the broad, teeming, complicated multitude of people who love to go to the movies.

Vive le cinéma!

— James Norton (jrnorton@flakmag.com)