7 New Year’s Resolutions to Improve Your Movie Watching

I’ve never understood the hate for New Year’s Resolutions. Sure, it’s better to start good habits and end bad ones all year ‘round and some people treat them more as fads for clout, but I appreciate the idea of a holiday that creates collective momentum and solidarity around self-improvement. Sharing your goals and aspirations, and oftentimes honestly assessing your flaws, is a great way to apply a little healthy pressure, garner support, and bond with others on similar journeys. So if you aren’t already, why not hop on the New Year’s Resolution bandwagon this year?  

While we tend to focus our resolutions on serious topics, starting with fun, simple ones can make the whole process feel less daunting while still making major improvements to our lives. For example, I know a couple who’s made a simple resolution to go on a 15-minute walk after dinner every night, and without sharing details as to why, it’s done wonders for their relationship. On a personal note, I resolved to schedule more monthly or quarterly check-ins (dinners, lunches, phone calls, etc) with friends, and even though it’s a little awkward to send a Calendly link to the homies, it’s made us feel secure in our friendship when we aren’t in communication. So if you’re not ready to tackle your major life problems this January, maybe just start with something fun. Maybe just start with…movies!

If you’re a movie lover and you haven’t finalized your resolutions yet, add one that can help you enjoy the movies you watch even more than you already do. And if you’re not sure how to do that, ReSee is here to help 🫡

Here are seven potential New Year’s resolutions that could help you squeeze a little more enjoyment out of life, one juicy film at a time.

1. Turn Your Phone Off & Limit Pauses While Streaming

Y’all know me. I’m a purist when it comes to my movie watching. I wanna watch them in the most pristine environment possible. Ideally, that’s at a cinema and uninterrupted – the way they were intended to be seen. However, with my torrid movie-watching pace (or, at least that was true before I started ReSee 🥲) and a taste for a variety of films too wide for theaters to satisfy, I end up streaming far more movies than I see in theaters. But one thing I’ve borrowed from the theatrical experience that’s helped me enjoy streaming more is to keep pauses to a minimum, only pause the film at strategic moments, and, above all else, KEEP MY PHONE OFF from beginning to end 📵

Don’t get me wrong; pausing a movie to pee or to get another glass of wine is absolutely one of the best perks of streaming at home, and I’d never deny myself those. Yet at the same time, every time you pause a movie, you run the risk of shattering the illusion, altering the mood, and disrupting the pacing that the filmmaker broke their backs to achieve. Not to be dramatic, but each and every pause compounds the risk that you won’t like the movie as much as you would have had you watched it in one continuous play-through!

Personally, I try to balance these trade-offs with four itty-bitty rules (y’all know I also love rules):

1. Turn your phone off before the movie, and keep it off (including during pauses!): Movies aside, I think we all might be a little happier if we turned our phones off more often. In fact, that is another New Year’s Resolution of mine that I’ve been trying (and failing) at since 2023. Watching movies is a perfect opportunity to disconnect from life and reality for a bit. Not only turning your phone off helps your brain, it’ll help you focus on the incredible film you’re watching.
2. Limit pauses to 2-3 per film: Pause when you must, but only when you must.
3. Don’t pause in the middle of a scene: This one can be a little tricky, but most of the time, it’s pretty obvious when one scene ends and the next begins. Giving each scene an opportunity to play out uninterrupted is a great way to preserve continuity.
4. No pauses during the first and last 30 minutes: With the exception of pausing to explain something that someone may have missed, the first and last 30 minutes of a film are where it’s most critical to let the movie establish its pacing, immerse you into its world, and, in the end, release all of that tightly wound tension in the blink of an eye. As a result, pauses at the beginning and end have higher risks of destroying the vibe.

2. Discover a New Favorite Filmmaker

Let’s do a little exercise: stop reading this captivating blog post for a second, and jot down a little list of your favorite filmmakers. Do a Top 3, 5, or 10.

Now, who’s the newest entry on that list, and how many years ago did they become a favorite?

If you haven’t added a new favorite filmmaker recently, whether it’s a rising star like Greta Gerwig, an underrated titan of film like Robert Altman, or a legend from another part of the world like Park Chan-wook, burst your own nostalgic bubble and make an active effort to find a new love. Don’t worry, those old favorites of yours aren’t going anywhere.

3. Watch a Film Between Seasons of a Series

This one goes out to those series lovers out there. Even though I’m a renowned series-hater (I’m tired of being hurt, okay!?), I respect that most people who love movies also love TV series. In this era of streaming, the line between them is blurrier than ever, anyhow.

Also blurrier than ever is the line between seasons. Due to the autoplay feature on streaming services and our binge-watching culture, it’s super easy to just blow right through the stop sign of a series finale, barreling straight into a what is effectively a new project. If you sometimes find yourself unsettled by a weird tonal shift, a strange new storyline, or some other unpleasant surprise in a new season, consider taking a breather between them.

The biggest challenge for a series is to finish as strong as it starts. Because of the pressure on TV creatives to keep stories going as long as they’re profitable, plus the difficulty of keeping a cast and crew together over years of filming, a lot of those unpleasant twists and turns are due to the real-world constraints of making a series. But many of them are also intentional changes, choices, and risks taken by the creatives. In my opinion, it’s easier to appreciate those choices if you let things settle a bit after each season. And one great way to do that is to cleanse your palette by watching a film in between.

Wine enthusiasts know that when doing a wine tasting, the best way to appreciate each and every wine on its own merit is to have a little salty or acidic snack between glasses. It doesn’t have to be much, just an olive here and a cracker there to prime your taste buds for the next sip. Well, breaking up your binge with a film is a great way to prime yourself for another enthralling season of television, too! Bonus points if you change genres or eras to really switch things up.

4. Watch More Short Films

Just like wine and snacks, recommendations 3 and 4 are also a great pairing. Because if you’re more of a series person and you rarely find the time to watch feature length films, short films should be your new best friend!

I plan to expand on this topic more in the future, but one could make the case that short films are the most underrated genre of film out there. Because they’re hard to distribute and not common enough to be integrated into our routines, they often slip between the cracks, only to surface if nominated for an Oscar and included in the theatrical release of the combined Oscar shorts (which you should definitely go see in cinemas whenever possible!)

If you want to cleanse your palette between episodes, seasons, or films, short films are an easy and time-efficient way to do so. They also tend to be available for free on platforms like Vimeo and YouTube, making them even more accessible! In the era of streaming bundles and price gouging, we could all use a little more free stuff in 2025.

5. Rewatch Your Favorite Movies with People Who’ve Never Seen Them

If you’re the nostalgic type who has “comfort films” that you revisit over and over again, then you’re probably already hip to this one. But if you seldom tend to rewatch films, you may not have discovered the joy of introducing someone to one of your favorite movies. Of course, this resolution comes with the risk of you becoming a little salty when whoever you’re showing your favorite film to doesn’t enjoy it, but trust me, the joy of a successful fave-share is totally worth the risk. I’ve still only watched Parasite once, holding out hope that I’ll come across someone who hasn’t set seen it 🤞🏽

6. Diversify Your Film Watching

Someone once described my Letterboxd diary as “frighteningly random”, and I take a degree of pride in that. I make it a point to seesaw from a psychological thriller to romantic comedy, or from heartfelt drama to harrowing horror film. And the reason I do that is because, at least for me, the genre shift helps me appreciate each film on its own merit, sidestepping the trap of comparing the film to the last one I watched. You can also diversify your film watching by adding new genres, filmmakers, or countries of origin into the mix.

7. Find Your Film Community

Despite the popularity of watching movies, most people tend to only have a couple of friends that they go to the cinema with. And while solo moviegoing is low-key awesome, there’s no denying that attending a film with someone you care about, then enjoying a slice of pie (IYKYK) and an inspired discussion afterwards is the true pinnacle of the moviegoing experience. So our last and perhaps most strongly recommended resolution is to take more of your friends to the cinema…or make new ones there!

This gets down to the very core of what ReSee Movies is trying to accomplish; we want to help movie lovers connect to the broader cinema community, so there’s always a familiar face, fun activity, or interesting discussion happening at your local theater or online. We believe that cinemas have loads of untapped potential as community spaces where we can come together to share experiences that make it worth the trip to the movies.

We’ll continue to build ReSee into a community platform that helps moviegoers find their film fam, and supports cinemas in planning unique community-based events.  If you’ve ever felt like you wished you had more people to attend or discuss movies with, make signing up for a free ReSee Movies profile your top New Year’s Resolution this year. We’ll do what we can to make you get the most out of every movie you watch.

Happy New Year, everyone. On behalf of ReSee, I wish you all a year of peace, prosperity, and delicious salty popcorn 🍿