Movies

“Movies, movies, movies!” the voice of a young tot who has just discovered a new and exciting skill of speaking is captioned for an ad to entice all and sundry to tune in for the latest movies a certain TV station airs to capture the attention of viewers. The ad had an impact as it incites the patience lymph nodes in my system to tolerantly sit and wait. As a movie addict I hang on yearningly for the movies which prove to be mediocre and frivolous much to my disappointment every time the movies are scheduled on the pay TV channel.

Auto tuning of the ‘best’ movies is something that I have been hooked to. I must confess that I have a penchant for being glued on the box for hours when idle and this gives me the insight of what really happens that I need to know and I don’t know. 

Movies are the best thing to have ever been made after sliced bread. The last time I went to a cinema to watch a movie was when I was invited by a friend and given two tickets for free. I never watched the movie. 

There are different types of movies. I can’t name all of them for fear of running out of ken. However, movies are created with a particular audience in mind. The famous movies are those from Hollywood that have captured the attention of the masses as they are produced and launched every other day. If you are a movie lover your Rota is full. 

Bollywood movies are generally drab and the pace in which they develop their plot is far much more lackadaisical and lackluster. The tempo of events is also low and the characters sometimes offer nothing to expect in terms of bringing out the personality of the character they are to portray. If you are a person who loves pace, then you won’t be glued to Indian movies for long.

Perhaps the longest you can stand these movies is roughly 30 minutes since it is full of emotions which are undeserved.  Songs and dances break out in almost every scene. When the lead actor is alone, the next thing he mulls over is the main actress who coincidentally has the same thoughts and alas, their thoughts decompose into a frenzy of song and dance.

Nollywood movies are reserved for the semi-illiterate and bland personality individuals who don’t want to scheme out of nostalgic reality full of no adventure and lack pace. Nigerians have however failed to capture the attention of most cinemas. They usually have dragging movies that are generally plausible and makes one think, alright so things are never different.

If it is not about black magic, witchcraft and cult worship, it is either about penury that is synonymous to the African continent. When scenes are about opulence, the characters fail to truly come out and depict the picture of those who have lived a life of abundance. There is too much too much repetition and scenes that take too long making it hard to like some Nollywood and Bongowood movies. It’s easy to predict the end of the movie and what happens next. Such movies are seasonal and have no durability.

I want to indulge all the movie lovers whose antics while in front of the screens have usually caught my attention. There are certain individuals who never cease narrating what will happen next in the movie. They never let others have seamless continuity of view of what will happen next. As such they will try to depict different scenarios through unending narration much to the chagrin of others who equally want to see the turn of events since movie producers and directors avoid the notion of predictability of what happens in the successive scene in their movies.

Then there are those who are restless while watching movies. These individuals will never take more than thirty minutes glued to the screens. They usually have something burning in their bottoms which make them want to take an exit each time a scene fails to excite their nerves and when there is generally no suspense in the movie. This kind of attitude is usually distracting and they are the individuals who will be hell bent on inquiry of what had happened while they were briefly away.

Another bunch of boring individuals are those who sleep in the middle of the movie. They can turn anything to a mattress. It’s like movies are meant to be sleeping pills. When one becomes slumberous while watching a movie, then there is a possibility the culprit suffers from attention deficit disorder a malady that has no medication and while also having potency of inducing one to systemic failure if not checked.

Again there are movie maniacs who like movies and will concentrate as if they understand and are following the movie and you may think they have apt gen of what is happening. When later you ask what the plot was or how events were unfolding, you will be surprised that they were just looking at moving pictures without knowledge of what the movie was all about. Ideally these are the individuals I consider to be fallaciously daft only that I don’t have proper diction to out rightly give an accurate picture of their erratic mien and character while watching a movie.

The worst are those who leave a movie halfway and never watch it again or those who start watching and when the movie does not augur well with what they expected, then they switch on to other stuff. 

Indeed watching a movie is an art. It requires patience. While some of the most prolific and exciting Hollywood movies take years before they are officially released to the cinemas. Most of the local movies some producers shoot and direct are made within a week or two. This means the script is weak on grammar, effective use of stylistic devices and the characters don’t get enough time to internalize the content to cleverly execute the intent.

While I may not know what happens behind the scenes in most movies as they are usually edited to bring out the watchable parts only, I know when a movie is good. A quick look at rotten tomatoes, IMDb, YouTube and Wikipedia will give a glimpse of what to expect. The brief summary given of the plot, actors and the themes plus the orientation of the movies is enough to tell one whether to watch the movie or not.

SIYUONANE.