Movies
For some people, film is a spectator sport. Others live and breathe it: they quote movies at the dinner table, rewatch favourites on random Tuesday nights, feel actual sorrow when an old favourite receives yet another egregious reboot. Figuring out what to buy that second group of people is a challenge, because only something personal will suffice – otherwise it’ll just feel like proof that you haven’t been listening to them. They’ll notice.
We kept this person in mind when compiling this list. The person who has probably already bought what’s already available. They own a TV, they have opinions about movies they will definitely inflict upon you, and they’ve definitely seen more films than most people. Our challenge was to pick stuff they didn’t already own, or think of first themselves, or wouldn’t feel is geeky to say they wanted. Tough ask when starting from movie-related gifts. Here’s what we came up with.
Most of our best choices here revolve around specificity. Gifts that are less about art house or commercial cinema broadly speaking, and more about very particular aspects of those things. There’s a gap between gifts that’ll say “I know you watch films” and gifts that’ll say “I know you.” The former are nice. The latter are the ones we wanted to find.
We also tried to think about gifts for fans of film as craft. People who care about who directed what, how films looked, why nobody talks about Iranian cinema post-1974? We did our best to cater to cineastes and casual viewers alike. Sometimes, that meant the same gift would work for two different reasons. Other times, we picked things specifically tuned to what each sort of enthusiast would love. We don’t want to ruin the surprises, but know that we considered these people separately.
One more note before you dive in: we didn’t choose anything that comes in a frame from some random Free Prints site. If you want to wallpaper your house with posters there are far worse ways to spend your time and money, but these gifts aren’t meant to hang on your wall. Instead, we tried to go for things that actually feel like objects. Things that you’ll want to use, or catch other people looking at on your shelf or coffee table. Movies are one of humanity’s great passions of the past century. The gifts we’ve selected to talk about here should feel right at home alongside that obsession.
