From higgins, our NYC-based correspondent…
Let’s face it, there are some movies you should see in the theater — not because of the special effects or the amazing cinematography, but because you can’t fast-forward. You’ve got no choice but to sit through it. The flick isn’t bad enough to walk out, but damn, it drags and is so confusing, you want to skip through the many slow parts.
You could wait until it hit DVD or TiVo and take liberal advantage of skipping features, but the movie is still compelling enough that you want to figure out what was really going on.
A case in point is The Grudge. I unfortunately waited until it hit TiVo, and found it tedious enough to fast forward through the many “walking down the spooky hallway” scenes. As a result, I was confused as to why all these things were going on because — I assumed — I had missed some key piece of dialogue.
Or maybe you just want to catch up on a movie that you have no desire to actually see, but co-workers are chattering about it endlessly (Think Crash).
Well, there’s two good ways to cheat through recent movies. One is The Movie Spoiler. This site LIVES to give away the surprise ending and review every plot point and motivation. Very handy in interpreting odd movies with artsy aspirations, like Dark Water.
Even better are the message boards at the Internet Movie Database. Unlike other broad movie sites, IMDb has a board for each individual movie, so you can get right to the issues most important to you or even ask your own question. For example, in the credits of Hustle & Flow, four people are credited as “dustbusters”. I know what a grip does, I know what a fluffer does, but what’s a dustbuster? Alas, so far, no one’s answered my question, even on IMDb (reg. req.).