Are You Having Difficulty Finding Movies to Watch?

I don't know about you, but recently I've been finding it difficult to find suitable movies to watch.

At first, I thought my tastes no longer matched what Hollywood is producing. In fact, this is not the reason for the problem. I also wondered whether this might be an aftermath of COVID.

Why it is difficult to find movies to watch

The number of US movie productions fell by about 40 per cent during the second quarter of 2024 compared to the same period in 2022.

Globally, there was a 20 per cent reduction over the same period. This is why I have been having difficulty finding suitable movies.

Reasons for the decline

For over a decade, production was booming in Hollywood. Then the writers' and actors' strikes, which lasted for months, resulted in employee contracts that offered more money and protection against artificial intelligence. Production hasn't fully recovered.

Part of the boom was caused by Wall Street investing in companies like Netflix who saw record growth. Studios, like Paramount, saw their share prices rocket for starting their own streaming services.

This caused an overheating of the content market. Netflix and all the other companies crashed. Netflix has recovered – but the others are struggling to become profitable again.

How I'm solving this problem

Rewatching old favourites

There must be hundreds of of movies that I would enjoy watching again. So, I'm going to add the best of these to my watchlist.

Reading reviews

There are many places you can read reviews and recommendations, including apps like IMDb. Don't forget to look out for reviews and recommendations by people, such as @katerinaramm and @revolverocelotyt, who write on this platform.

Subscriptions

Streaming services are another reason why it has become more difficult to find movies to watch - unless you are super-rich and can afford to subscribe to every single one of them.

I would be interested in knowing which streaming services you think are the best for finding good movies.

TV series

It might seem strange to include TV series as a replacement for movies. After all, most episodes are only 45 minutes long once the adverts have been removed. Anyway, here are some ideas to try:

Pilots

Many television series have pilot episodes which are feature length.

Feature-length episodes

I was surprised to discover that all of the episodes of some TV series are feature length. Examples are Dalgleish and McDonald and Dodds.

Some TV series, such as Poirot and Miss Marple, have a few episodes which are feature length.

Photo by Monica Silvestre on Pexels
Originally published on LearningPages.org