I realized during a pre-Endgame re-watch that I liked a lot of the marvel movies better at home than I had in the theater, and after some reflection figured out that it’s because when I get really bored in the middle of one of their not-very-good 20-minute fight scenes, or awkward too-long exposition, I can just screw around on my phone.

On further reflection it occurred to me that this kinda replicates the experience of watching a mediocre movie with a close friend group and just talking over a bunch of it. Lots of movies are better when half-ignored!

Of course, there are plenty of movies where you’ll have trouble following them or miss cool, interesting, very-good, or important elements if you don’t give them your full attention. But I do think there may be a case for phone-in-hand film-watching. Some might argue that you should just skip any movie that gets better if you partially-ignore it, but I’m not on that boat.