Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Crappy film

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

I saw this little pearl of documentary, which is about the revolution with VHS in the 80s and how it all changed the movie market completely. It's nostalgia for all the money, which is also the reason why the VHS format i still loved by fans around the world. The documentary discusses both good and bad things about the format, as well as many can relate and have recognition, cover design - which was just better at that time than what it is today with all the photoshopped posters. After I finished with the documentary, I totally got an desire to own old horror movies on VHS again.

Josh Johnson's "Rewind This!" is a look at the rise of home video and the effect that it had on entertainment. As a member of the first generation that never knew a world without video cassettes, I could relate to some of the stuff that the interviewees say. I of course started out by watching Bugs Bunny cartoons on the newly released videos, and I always liked watching them over and over again.Part of the pleasure in the documentary is watching the scenes from some of the movies that the featured video stores carry, such as disemboweled bodies. Sometimes my friends and I would watch scenes in slasher flicks over and over again (namely the tent scene in "Jason Goes to Hell"). Thanks to Movie Madness, I've seen some pretty obscure flicks."Rewind This!" prompts me to ask another question: why aren't certain movies available for home viewing? My mom often tells me about "The Gravy Train" (about some friends who hatch a robbery scheme to get rich) and Michael Apted's "Stardust" (about the rise and fall of a rock star; not to be confused with a 2007 movie with the same title). She saw both movies in the theater when they got released, but neither ever got released on VHS, and neither has gotten released on DVD. One would think that since the studios could make money by releasing them, so that would be enough of a motivation. Meanwhile, they release every stupid Tom Cruise movie.Anyway, it's fun to watch the documentary and learn all this stuff about the medium. Truly fun stuff.

Oh the good ol' days of VHS. Yes, I wore my Disney videos down til they were just a fuzzy haze of grainy musical colours like everyone else, but my real relationship with cassettes comes from recorded movies from the TV guides. When I was first getting into film, I began my catchup with a big list of modern essentials such as Fight Club, Goodfellas, Full Metal Jacket, American Beauty, Pulp Fiction, all of which I watched and rewatched on video tape until I knew exactly where the advert breaks would come. That's essentially why I do what I do today. I never collected VHS like the subjects of this documentary, but ever since I got into DVD collecting, I've been manic. Blu-rays, books, vinyls, I collect 'em all. Although VHS is more or less useless these days (I remember the moment my player just decided to stop working, it was very irritating), I can definitely relate to the people in the film who scourer car boot sales obsessively for rarities.Rewind This! is a nostalgic reminder of why VHS deserved to be the best of their kind at the time. It's the same reason I like vinyl. They have a 'lived-in' quality we can't get from the polish of blu-ray. Little imperfections that are part of its unique identity where they've been over- paused and subsequently scarred with snowy lines of distortion. Although there's an almost Not Quite Hollywood focus on horror and porn as far as the 'hidden gems' go, it's a very interesting documentary. The film itself is well done, but admittedly, the industry professionals are far more interesting than the caricature hipsters who just really like videos. Definitely some colourful characters there on both sides. It does lack structure and its 8-bit music gives it an unwarranted sense of urgency that can be distracting, but it makes great use of cutaway footage from the video footage the subjects talk about. There's a great charm about its flaws and that kind of reflects its points about the authenticity and naivety on VHS. Worth watching.7/10

"Rewind This!" is a documentary about VCRs, VHS tapes and the people who collect them. The story begins with the war between the Betamax and VCR formats, which of course the latter won despite the fact that Betamax was a far superior technology – but it could only play tapes of an hour or less, so any movie would need to be on more than one tape, a design flaw that killed it fairly quickly. Once VCR had won, people started discovering the joys of being able to watch movies at home, at the time of one's choosing – or at least they did once the price of the machine and the tapes (originally priced at $99!) came down. The film interviews a plethora of modern-day fans of the format (my personal favourite was a woman who organizes her tapes by the dominant colour of the box) as they describe falling in love with video, making home movies themselves and searching for old tapes at flea markets and the like – some collectors have over 100,000 of the clunky boxes! And, of course, the film includes a variety of scenes from videotapes, especially that genre of straight-to-video creations, which are a hoot to see. Definitely made me want to hunt up our old VHS tapes that are slowly rotting somewhere in the basement!