Whatcha watchin’?

During the COVID-19 lockdown in early 2020, my wife and I started a tradition of having a “date night at home” every Friday and watching a different movie. We alternate selections — she chooses one week, I choose the next. We’ve also tried to pick films that neither one of us has seen before.

Some of the movies we’ve selected from sources such as Roger Ebert’s “Great Movies” list, or from Paul Harris’ “Movies You Might Not Know.” Others, we’ve cribbed from the American Film Institute or British Film Institute websites. The more recent ones are based on reviews or trailers we found interesting.

Out of curiosity, I tried to pull a list of all of the movies we’ve watched via Amazon, Hulu and Netflix over the past two years.

Hulu doesn’t seem to give me any easy way to see our movie viewing history. Netflix allows you to “request” your viewing history, but warns it may take up to 30 days to receive the list. Amazon, at least, provides receipts for any movies we’ve rented, so I’m using that list.

Anyway, here’s what we’ve rented from Amazon over the past 24 months. Some of these may be new to you. On others, you may say “wait, you never saw ‘Bridesmaids’ until this year?” No. No, I didn’t. (shrug)

The list is heavily skewed in several ways. Because newer releases tend to show up on Netflix and Hulu for free, we use Amazon Prime Video to rent older and more obscure movies — and that’s what most of these are.

As a result, this list leans toward older films (there are two Hitchcock movies on this list) as well as British films and comedies. I don’t particularly like action movies or superhero films, so there aren’t many of those.

I’m also a bit embarrassed to say how few of these films have Black or minority lead actors — although, again, this is only the list from Amazon, and it doesn’t include movies we watched from Hulu or Netflix (or, in a few cases, borrowed physical DVDs); and since it’s skewed toward older movies, those tended to have all-white casts. It’s not an intentional bias, but it may be something I need personally to work on.