At The Video Store (2020)
SHOULD I SEE IT?
YES
When it has its focus in place, this is a heartfelt ode to the legacy of the independent video store.
An impressive array of talking heads and video store clerks and owners from around the country provide this micro-budgeted documentary unique perspectives and credibility.
While elegiac at times, the film serves as a testament to the resourcefulness of the Scarecrow Videos and Movie Madness’ of the world, who are surviving and thriving in the era of digital streaming and VOD.
NO
At 72 minutes, the film feels padded and uses strange, on-the-nose, original songs to carry the narrative along.
The film took more than six years to complete, and some have taken issue with the obsolescence of certain individuals and/or stores appearing or being celebrated in the film.
While it does get to the root of what made/makes the independent video store such a wonderful place and community, the movie also seems to not have anything all that profound to say.
OUR REVIEW
Though some still remain, the independent, neighborhood video store is largely a dinosaur, a relic of a time gone by. For many, myself included, the video store became the way people discovered a wide-range of movies for the first time. For more than two decades, the video store became a communal gathering place where people could rent new releases every weekend, talk and give recommendations to friends and/or fellow customers.
If you were lucky to have a store with some depth to its library, you could find everything from obscure dramas to comedies; foreign films and documentaries; those movies kept in the “back room;”; the newest releases and classics and forgotten movies from every genre imaginable.
One of the main reasons I am a film critic comes from the experiences I shared at Flynn’s Video, a family-run video store in my hometown. Hired in my junior year of high school, I worked with people who would become my best and closest friends, had the chance to work alongside my then-girlfriend (and now wife!), and earned the trust of the owner soon after I started. During my senior year of high school, I was organizing a review newsletter for the store, setting up promotional events, and became an assistant buyer for new releases and catalog titles before I graduated high school.
I would have worked there every day if I could.
Every weekend, my friends and I would grab a bunch of genre movies and go to one another’s house and just power through 3-5 movies every weekend. We would each grab things we had never seen and have movie marathons. I saw Ran this way. Citizen Kane. Apocalypse Now and so many more classics. I developed an interest in subtitled movies from other countries. Experienced the splatter gore of Herschell Gordon Lewis’ Blood Feast and sat in stunned silence watching John Waters’ Pink Flamingos. We watched all the new releases we couldn’t go see in theaters and I realized the world of cinema was expansive and global.
Those moments changed my life.
James Westby’s documentary, At the Video Store, is full of stories like this - told from the testimonials of filmmakers like Gus Van Sant and Waters, Bill Hader, Nicole Holofcener, and even famed editor Thelma Schoonmaker makes an appearance. Owners and employees of legendary, nationally recognized video stores talk about the unique world that exists within video store culture, and their stories are gems to discover.
When focused, At the Video Store is a compelling documentary. In a loose and free-wheeling manner, we see the rise and fall of the two major video rental chains - Blockbuster and Hollywood Video. A cringe-worthy employee video from Hollywood Video (“you’re not managers, you’re directors!” “You aren’t employees, you’re cast members!!”) finds its way into the movie (and calls to mind a similar video I showed my new hires when I worked for them for nine months.)
Entertaining as it is, At the Video Store veers away from a winning formula and simply gives into strange indulgences. Original songs by a group known as Wonderly are extremely on-the-nose and prove increasingly distracting, as they not only begin to dominate the background of certain scenes, but even infiltrate the film with one musical sequence that seems completely out of place.
References are made to the arrival of the Redbox kiosks in the mid-2000s, initially funded by McDonald’s no less, which serves as the antithesis to the video store concept. Netflix is mentioned, and similar to the tens of thousands of major chain video store closures in the late 2000’s and early 2010’s, gone also were the countless independent, mom-and-pop, neighborhood movie shops as well.
Westby’s film took more than six years to complete and a few of his featured stores and employees are no longer in business. Frustratingly, At the Video Store could dig so much deeper into the connection between movie and consumer, clerk and customer, and the bond we create when we shop in a video rental store.
If the film focused there, At the Video Store would be a wonderful slice of nostalgia and a moving love letter to the impact these stores and shops had on generations of movie fans. The “talking heads” speak with such reverie on the topic, you cannot help but smile through hearing their stories and recollections.
Struggling to pull everything together, Westby uses kitsch and those meandering songs to add unnecessary eccentricity to his film. Trusting who and what he captures in front of the camera, At the Video Store has everything it needs to be an endearing success.
Sadly, in key moments Westby overcompensates, failing to trust the very thing we love the most about video store culture: The ability to share, discuss, discover, and uncover a really great story.
CAST & CREW
Documentary Featuring: Bill Hader, Gus Van Sant, John Waters, Todd Haynes, Nicole Holofcener, Alex Ross Perry, Thelma Schoonmaker, Lance Bangs, Charles Mudede, Ondi Timoner.
Director: James Westby
Written by: James Westby
Release Date: January 8, 2020
Argot Pictures