I’m finally learning
how to watch films kids’ films, mostly. Watching movies with my daughter has been one of the joys of a trying 2020. We live in New Mexico, where, as of this writing, the majority of museums are still closed, and quarantine is still crucial. The only art I’m able to fully engage with right now is art that’s made for the screen, so… I’ve been watching a lot.
Now that the television is no longer a mere pacifier for my kid and she invests in stories, what we watch together has really opened up. (That, and we spent a few months in the early Covid-19 closures working on stop-motion animations and claymations together, so she has a newfound meta-view about how animations are made.) Both Stevie and my connectedness to the movies we are watching now is reminiscent of theater critic Ben Brantley’s admonition to watch plays as though you were a reviewer: “I’ve learned that nothing is boring if you really focus on it.” (Please go read his full op-ed,