Minimizing the credits on Disney+

It took me more than a quarter of a century to finally see Rushmore a second time ...

... and all I have to tell you about is a silly phenomenon regarding its end credits on Disney+.

Actually, I will get into Rushmore a bit. But I'm starting with the credits.

As the movie ended on Sunday night, I noticed, not for the first time, that Disney+ does not let you get back into the credits once it minimizes them. Disney+ isn't the only service to minimize the credits of the movie you're watching, of course -- I think they all do it at this point -- but it's the only one I've noticed that physically does not provide the option to maximize them again.

In what seemed like a particularly galling movie, Disney+ decided that if I liked Rushmore, I might want to watch Life With Mikey. That's right, a random lesser Michael J. Fox movie from 1993. I've never seen it. Maybe they're right.

But the point is, after maybe 15 seconds of the credits of Wes Anderson's film, they popped down into the lower right corner and ceded the majority of the screen to an ad for this movie, which, however good it may be, is probably not actually a correct fit for Rushmore. But that's not the point either.

The point is, my AppleTV remote would only allow me to toggle between two choices, one of which was to see details for Life With Mikey and one of which was to actually play Life With Mikey. I can't use a button, because then the remote just takes me out of the situation altogether and back to the previous menu.

This, of course, is not the fault of the AppleTV remote. It's Disney that presents that remote with the possible options. 

This is not only minimizing the credits in a literal sense. It's minimizing their importance. It's minimizing the work of all those artists who made that movie.

In our fast-paced, "give me the next thing" society, I think the option to skip ahead should exist for anyone who wants to avail themselves of it. It's the equivalent of choosing the moment you want to walk out of the movie theater. No one's talking about prying your eyes open, Alex DeLarge-style, and forcing you to take in the names of the second unit assistant director and the craft services company. 

But when you literally have no way to get back in to watch them full screen? That's something else.

When I first noticed this happening, sometime late last year, I really wanted to see something in the credits -- a song, I think it was. So I tried to exit the movie, start back over and forward it to the end. The same thing happened, and I was equally unable to get back into it.

I'm not sure why it's so difficult to get these things right.

Only a few weeks ago I had a similar problem with the credits of Killers of the Flower Moon on AppleTV+. Had I made the right moves quickly enough, I think I would have been able to get those credits back. But in this case, Apple was quick to push me onward to a trailer for Ted Lasso -- two seasons of which I've already seen, thank you very much. So much for the idea that the streaming service is supposed to know me, what my preferences are -- and what I've already seen. 

As for Rushmore, when Anderson's Asteroid City made its way into my top ten in 2023, it reminded me that this was the highest an Anderson film had finished in my rankings since Rushmore finished #4 in 1998. You know how you have a list of movies you're embarrassed to say you've never seen? Rushmore tops my list of movies I'm embarrassed to say I've seen only once -- especially considering that high finish more than 25 years ago.

The chance to correct this had been well within my grasp for ages, and I finally decided to grasp it. Had it not been available on any streaming service, I probably wouldn't have purchased a rental for a second straight night after Dual, which I wrote about yesterday. But at least Disney+ complied in that regard.

I've considered Rushmore my default favorite Anderson movie for those entire 25 years. Others have challenged it -- I have the most fondness for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, which I've seen three times, none of which were in the year it was released so I didn't rank it -- but I've always considered Rushmore to be in its own tier, based on that one indelible viewing that for some reason I did not see it fit to repeat.

Now that I've finally repeated it, I still love the same things about Rushmore that I loved in 1998, though I'd say the intensity of those feelings is a little muted by having seen all the Anderson movies that have come after, and not feeling quite as surprised by the aesthetic choices as I did then. 

It was interesting to note the origins of ideas he would return to later, which I'd say were not really present in his debut feature, Bottle Rocket, which also made my top ten of its year. One of these relates specifically to Steve Zissou, as it is a quote from Jacques Cousteau written into the margins of a library book that first leads Max Fischer to find Miss Cross. Then there are the things that are not particular to Anderson but that he employs a lot, like the fact that both of the characters from the previous sentence have a loved one who has died whom they miss terribly. 

I was also surprised at how many moments I remembered from the movie, even though some of the small details may have shifted in my memory. I think the kind of scene that allowed Rushmore, and indeed Anderson's whole perspective, to resonate with me is that one where a depressed and chain-smoking Bill Murray as Herman Blume is just randomly throwing golf balls into his swimming pool as he watches his wife flirt with another man. When a kid gets too close to him, he changes the angle of flight of one of the golf balls so it's like a mini attack on this kid -- though it's not an aggressive attack, as the ball follows the same harmless parabolic path toward the kid as it did toward the swimming pool.

Another thing I remember thinking about Rushmore at the time was that although Jason Schwartzman brings a particular energy to Max and I can't imagine anyone else playing him, I did wonder whether he was really talented enough to have this size role in the movie, or whether nepotism played a part in his casting, given that he's part of the Coppola family. Today, I see no nepotism, only Max Fischer played exactly as Anderson wanted him to be played. 

If I were ranking Anderson's films again -- a project I did nearly ten years ago, timed to the release of The Grand Budapest Hotel -- would I still rank Rushmore #1? *

It's hard to say, and I'd probably need a good excuse to actually do the project again, beyond Anderson having made three more movies since then. But let's at least say that this viewing wouldn't cause Rushmore to be ejected from that spot. 

A final thought about Anderson, about the interesting love-hate relationship I have with him. I have easily liked more of Anderson's movies than I haven't liked, which is especially the case given that my revisit of The Royal Tenenbaums tipped that movie from a mild dislike and even a mild disdain to a very strong like. Yet because he revisits the same well, aesthetically, over and over again, I think of myself as wary of him as an artist, and his failures -- as I see them -- take on a much larger role in my perception of him than his successes.

For example, after loathing The French Dispatch (is that too strong a word?), I felt like I might be ready to give up on him altogether -- to the extent that any person who calls himself a film critic could ever give up on an artist of Anderson's stature. Asteroid City and the shorts he made in 2023 changed the trajectory of my feelings toward him, of course, but those feelings were strong, on the backs of only two movies that really made me feel this way, the other being The Darjeeling Limited. Although I liked The Royal Tenenbaums significantly better than either of those movies, that made three until my last Tenenbaums viewing turned me all around on that subject.

Whenever an artist constantly verges on self-parody, you are always waiting for the other shoe to drop and for the man to finally be out of ideas, or to be out of slightly different ways of exploring the same idea. But Anderson's 2023 reminded me he's still got it, and the second film he ever made did nothing to dissuade me from that notion. 

* NOTE - Only several hours after posting this did I look back at my previous Anderson rankings and note that not only was Rushmore not #1, it wasn't even #2. Bottle Rocket and Steve Zissou both finished ahead of it. I guess I will just leave the error as is. 

One-timers I worry won't hold up

The movie Juno came up for discussion on Filmspotting in a recent episode -- an episode I was listening to on my way in to work on Wednesday -- where they were talking about great father-daughter pairings at the movies. (I'm actually wondering about the wisdom of mentioning Juno in this context nowadays, considering that Elliot Page was clearly playing a daughter in that movie, but identifies as a man now.)

They played a clip that reminded me how much I liked that movie, having named it my #3 movie of 2007. And also how the writing was specifically one of the things I liked about it, something it's easy to forget since we all turned on Diablo Cody rather quickly.

But I haven't gone back to watch Juno again, in part because I'm worried that when Rainn Wilson calls Page "home skillet," it'll seem pretty cringey. Is that reason enough not to rewatch a movie that once made my top three for a year? Almost certainly not.

So I decided to go through my Flickchart and identify other favorite movies I've seen only once to see if fears like this are holding me back there as well. For the purposes of this exercise, a "one-timer" is just as simple as it sounds: a movie I've seen only once. I'm clarifying because sometimes we use that term to describe a movie we can bear to see only once because it's so confronting or triggering, even though it may be excellent.

I'll do ten, and I'll list them in order of where they appear on my Flickchart, with the number serving as the number this movie is ranked out of 6182 films. And just to make the project slightly easier, I won't exclude Juno from the group.

173. Rushmore (1998, Wes Anderson) - This remains one of the movies it's weirdest that I've never rewatched. It took what I thought I had discovered with Wes Anderson in Bottle Rocket and absolutely crystallized it. I still think of it as one of my top few Anderson movies. However, I've also turned on Anderson enough over the years -- specifically his last film, The French Dispatch -- that I'm worried some of his later fussy quirks might spoil my so-far pristine feelings about Rushmore, since I'll be confronted with the fact that they were there all along. There's still no excuse for not watching this again, though, so I probably will. I should be further encouraged by the fact that a recent rewatch of The Royal Tenenbaums actually turned me from a Tenenbaums hater (or disliker, at least) to a Tenenbaums lover.

353. Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005, George Clooney) - This ranked even higher than Juno, ending its year as my #2 movie, behind only Hustle & Flow. I'm not so much worried that this has aged poorly as that my affection for it was inflated to begin with. The fact that it feels like a chore to potentially watch it again is a good indication of how my thoughts may have changed on it -- though it's not like I'm always stumbling across it on streaming and choosing not to watch it. 

372. Face/Off (1997, John Woo) - This is another case, as with Rushmore, of later-developed feelings about a director likely ruining a film for which I had uncomplicated affection the first time around. When I think of John Woo today, I think "That's that hack who puts doves into scenes of slow-motion gunplay, no matter how ridiculous." Yes, there are incongruous doves in the climax of the Ben Affleck vehicle Paycheck -- even though that scene takes place underground. 

378. Oldboy (2003, Park Chan-wook) - I think I really like Oldboy -- at least I'm ranking it that way on Flickchart -- but am I sure? I am not sure. I think I may have constructed a narrative here. I do remember that when I was watching it a friend's house, we were into it, but we did find some things confusing. I also remember that another friend was in the room but was not reading the subtitles, and then complained that he didn't know what was going on -- which is sort of hilarious, because obviously. I worry that if I watch this again, the fact that Park has been more hit than miss for me in the past ten years -- The Handmaiden being the exception -- will make me realize we were right to be confused about the poor storytelling the first time.

381. Juno (2007, Jason Reitman) - Home skillet. As discussed. 

422. Mr. Nobody (2009, Jaco van Dormeal) - The extremity of my positive reaction to this the first time around -- I gave it five stars on Letterboxd -- is more why I'm including it here than me secretly thinking it might not be good, and avoiding it for that reason. I'm actually not avoiding this movie per se, and have a couple times considered watching it again. But I think it slips in and out of availability on streaming, and the fact that I'm not willing to pony up to rent a movie I gave five stars suggests I think there was some excess positivity in my response. 

434. A Beautiful Mind (2001, Ron Howard) - I ranked this movie in my top ten of 2001 and remember being genuinely moved by its climax. I'm now more ashamed of the type of movie it is, and having this reaction to a movie that seemed so pointed at Oscar glory, than I am doubting that I'd tear up again at the end of a second watch. A Beautiful Mind is not in the same category of regrettable Oscar winner as Crash or Green Book, but it's not something people regularly talk about today, and there's probably a reason for that. 

485. Erin Brockovich (2000, Steven Soderbergh) - Erin Brockovich was, until recently, my highest ranked Soderbergh film -- but you also know from this post that I don't tend to rewatch any Soderbergh. Out of Sight has now gone ahead of it, Traffic is just behind it, and I've also now rewatched both Side Effects and Full Frontal, the former confirming my affection for it, the latter dropping it significantly in my estimation. When I first discovered that Brockovich was my highest ranked Soderbergh, I instantly doubted it, because (like A Beautiful Mind) of the type of film it is -- a legal drama about an unlikely crusader. Does not seem as worthy as his other output, and I haven't checked again to confirm whether it actually is. 

494. Argo (2012, Ben Affleck) - Another questionable best picture winner that made my top ten in the year of its release. I assume I would still actually like Argo, but it feels like a strange best picture winner in retrospect -- not a film anyone hates, but a film we all kind of forgot won. If you were recounting the best picture winners from the 2010's, this is the one you would forget. (You wouldn't forget Green Book, even though it's a worse movie, just because of how mad it made you when it won. Argo didn't make anybody mad. In fact, I'm not sure it inspired great love or great hatred in anybody.)

503. Away We Go (2009, Sam Mendes) - A friend of mine was the one who gave me doubts about this one. I really embraced this movie, again ranking it in my top ten for the year, but a friend had a wildly different reaction to it at the time, as I wrote about here. Apparently I have secretly wondered since then if he was always right. 

That's ten.

And yet an argument can be made that if I am ranking a movie in my top 500 on Flickchart -- Away We Go is the only one of these that (narrowly) misses that cutoff -- it's something I do really like. Or at worst, I should watch it again to ensure it deserves its lofty ranking. If it doesn't, I should begin busting it down to where it really belongs in my rankings. (A fate that befell the aforementioned Full Frontal, among other that spring to mind, such as Igby Goes Down.)

Given then I've already identified ten and it would be easy enough to come up with two more, it might make for a good monthly series one of these years -- except that I've already done something like this with what was then a weekly series in 2010, conducted over a couple months, called Double Jeopardy. At that time I subjected such films as Disney's The Kid, Click, U-Turn, Alpha Dog and Bedazzled to a new viewing to confirm my previous affection. But in none of those cases were the films ranked as highly as these are. (However, the series also helped boost two others into this rarefied air, as it made me realize my love for The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou and The Story of Us were intense enough to call them legitimate personal favorites.)

For now it's useful just to have identified this list. That way, if I have a random night where I can't figure out what to watch, and one of these titles appears before me on Netflix or Amazon, I'll remember I have this unfinished business.