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While decent in concept, I would rather hear from directors rather than critics because it all just kind of sounds like semi pretentious ramblings from a critic, heck I can get more nuanced thoughts from YouTuber film fans.

This has 5 entirely different episodes done by 5 different people on 5 different film topics. A montage. Oh - they are shorts in the literal term. Around 17 minutes each, so easy to watch.

Some are thoughtful and thorough. Others seem to thing you need to be bombarded with titles and clips. And their opinions. Well, they all give you their opinions, but some do it more forcefully than others.

Some I likes a lot, some better than others and one - not at all because I needed Dramamine to watch it. BUT - that's me.

You need to watch and listen and decide for yourself. No matter what you decided, I bet you will learn something from this quick study.

Billed rather grandly as a series of video essays some offer genuine insite into movies and some are just an axe grinding excercise or a requiem for disfunctional childhoods. Skip the first episode. My favourites were episode 2 which examines revenge movies, episode 3 which looks at unlikeable protagonists and episode 5, a discussion of the difference between movies and TV. Episode 4 is about animation, so kid's stuff.

There was a time when to discover any thoughts on film you had to go to a book store and find a book by a director or actor or writer. Maybe you'd go to the nearest shop that sold movie mags and bought every single one, every month, religiously. Maybe you spent every single piece of currency you earned, or were given, on VHS rentals and later on DVD sales. Sometimes your choices of what to watch came from total chance, fate and luck. Maybe it was late night tv. You'd stumble upon something you loved, it spoke to you in a way that you felt nobody else understood and you realised you couldn't articulate those feelings. Now you could point at that film and say "That, that's how I feel". I realise that I am showing my age, for me this series was incredibly nostalgic. I understand that there is a lot of information that flys by. Use the pause button. Write down every single film and watch them all. Use the privilege of the internet and digital media. Before you criticize a few people's opinions on movies form your own opinions on them and learn to accept the differences there in. I'd imagine that's what the intention of the film makers was. Inspire the love they have for films in others. For me they succeeded.

This isn't a "celebration" of movies - no fluff, no catering to those who watch a film to entertainingly kill a couple of hours. This series is for those who like to look deeply into the crystal ball that is modern cinema. Best of the six episodes in my opinion is "But I Don't Like Him," hosted by Drew McWeeny, a look at the film antihero, in which are combined hero and villain using elements from the protagonist's own psyche. The other episodes are good too, and well worth seeing as they investigate aspects of film that are often overlooked. Each episode is basically a short, lasting from seventeen to twenty-three minutes each, so they're easy to fit into your viewlist.