Why Amoeba Records and the Academy Museum reduced a film geek like me to tears

On my second night visiting Los Angeles, I couldn't resist the allure of Amoeba Records. While others pored over the aisles upon aisles of records, I made a beeline for the back of the store. Here, a plethora of DVDs and Blu-Rays lay in wait. While there, I tittered in glee over all the items the store had for sale. An original hardcover copy of Star Wars: The Clone Wars - The Complete First Season (complete with a booklet) was on a Star Wars media shelf. Another endcap highlighted works from directors like Sean Baker and Mario Brava. Rare obscure B-movies on 4K Blu-Ray, as Roger Corman and William Castle intended, littered various rows.

This expansive selection was a delight to witness, especially given the dearth of modern stores emphasizing physical media. Best Buy and Target are giving up on Blu-Rays, but Amoeba Records is keeping the flame alive. However, I found myself unexpectedly moved seeing so many forms of cinema together in one place. I couldn’t quite pinpoint why tears were forming in my eyes at this location. More likely than not, navigating crowds and crowds of people kept me from uncovering why I was so emotional. However, I finally had an epiphany on what led to this reaction the following day when I visited the Academy Museum.

The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures opened in September 2021 and functions as a dedication to cinema as an artform. Handled by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the organization in charge of the Academy Awards), this multi-floor shrine to cinema already sounded like something I'd love. However, I was unprepared for my deeply emotional reaction upon seeing the very first exhibit in this museum. Located in a closed-off room on the same floor as the entrance, patrons can enter a darkened room. Here, you can witness, on a gigantic screen, an ode to various eras of cinema history. Clips from assorted movies from a certain decade or year play at the same time in various corners of the screen, with one clip getting to play its audio.

As someone who can’t stop rewatching the 90th Academy Awards montage to the history of movies, the very concept of this exhibit was right up my alley. The idea of it plucking at my heartstrings wasn’t an incomprehensible concept. However, I really wasn’t ready for how much it hit me to see Happy Together, Titanic, and Beau Travail on the same screen. These movies couldn’t be more different…yet there they are. Sharing this single space exemplifies the various glories of cinema. It especially touched my soul to see a clip from Miss Juneteenth in this exhibit. Released in June 2020, Miss Juneteenth never got to play in theaters. It could’ve easily gotten lost in the blur of that deeply traumatic year. Now, here it is. The filmmaking of Channing Godfrey Peoples and Nicole Beharie’s lead performance kicked off the Academy Museum's joys.

This swelling sense of emotions kept hitting me as I navigated various corners of the Academy Museum. Tears dabbed the corners of my eyes watching vintage Oscars speeches, being inches away from actual costumes from The Favourite and The Man With the Iron Fists, and seeing odes to artists like Agnes Varda. Best of all, there was such an expansiveness to the cinema explored here. I mean, for goodness' sake, Lucy Liu’s iconic outfit from The Man with the Iron Fists is in this exhibit! The Academy Museum made room for everything from practical Porg puppets to highlighting the works of Pedro Almodovar. That breadth of cinematic affection is impossible not to enjoy.

It was sitting watching the final exhibit of the Museum, though, that I finally understood my emotions. This exhibit is kind of like a new version of that 90th Academy Awards montage I love so much. A trio of montage screens on a gigantic wall, with each montage comprised of wildly varying clips. Batman Begins, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, Wings, they’re all in here. And then it hit me, as tears streamed down my face: this exhibit directly rebukes how cinema is presented today. The variety here is the very enemy of modern presentations of film as “content.”

Today, film is viewed as thumbnails on Apple TV+, Disney+, or Netflix home pages. Executives gloat about new motion pictures being nothing more than “content”. They create business models shunning independent theater owners “daring” to ask if they can screen Glass Onion or CODA. Streamers cultivate libraries of movies dictated by algorithms meant to give you the same thing you’ve watched before ad nauseam. Expansiveness is not the point here. Satiation is.

Accessibility is a dirty word, as streamers clutch tightly to their titles and keep them behind paywalls. Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods is not available on any physical media. Neither is the 2023 Todd Haynes classic May/December. Garrett Bradley's 2020 masterpiece Time (which is featured in the opening Academy Museum exhibit) can only be accessed by handing Jeff Bezos more money. Many people used to stumble on movies (both mainstream and arthouse) through cable TV reruns, borrowing them from the local library, or other post-theatrical revenue streams.

The greediness of streaming conglomerates has made it harder than ever for modern classics like Shirkers, Crip Camp, and Dick Johnson is Dead to get visibility. You can go buy Bucky Larson: Born to be a Star on Blu-Ray right now, but not Crip Camp. That sentence is utter madness. There’s also the pesky detail that streamers hate movies made before 1985. “Classic” cinema is “boring”. We all have to fight tooth and nail for executives like David Zaslav to not gut entities preserving such cinema like Turner Classic Movies.

The film section of Amoeba Records, meanwhile, does away with that. All kinds of filmmaking live side-by-side with one another. One can get a sense of the full breadth of cinema, which encompasses everything from Frankenhooker to Daughters of the Dust to Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans. The power of that versatility clicked into place for me at the Academy Museum, seeing such vivid reminders of how many forms moviemaking can take. Exhibits dedicated to everything from Boyz n’ the Hood to The Godfather to sci-fi cinema’s endless manifestations just make you grateful for all the ways cinema is utilized.

Streaming algorithm selectiveness has no place here. You do not get to choose or cultivate what kind of movie montage you witness. It’s all such an exciting subversion of dangerous modern cinema norms limiting options for consumers. The Academy Museum could certainly do even more in recognizing all corners of cinema (I noticed a dearth of various strains of Indian cinema recognized in various montages). Still, there's something enthralling about watching montages in making room for both Blade Runner 2049 and Night of the Kings. Can you imagine those titles occupying a Netflix homepage?

On a personal note, there’s also something deeply moving about strolling through this museum that makes me feel less alone in my love for movies. Growing up as a kid who lived and breathed everything cinema, I was surrounded by adults (outside of my family) telling me that my passion amounted to being “an encyclopedia of worthless knowledge.” I’ve always felt self-conscious and even stupid for loving this stuff.

The exhibits at the Academy Museum, though, help me feel otherwise. Somebody else clearly loves all areas of moviemaking too. There are other souls out there who get misty-eyed watching movie montages. This medium, and the exciting ways it can look like anything mean something to someone beyond just me. Maybe it’s not so worthless after all? Seeing shrines to figures like Varda or works like The Thief and the Cobbler makes me feel a little less alone and reminds me why I love this material in the first place. This is a beautiful art form. It’s worthy of praise, thoughtfulness, and exhibition.

Every time I leave my apartment, I put a collection of friendship bracelets on my wrists. Some of them are, of course, movie-themed, and read things like “Todd Haynes”, “Isabel Sandoval”, or “I <3 Titane”. The Academy Museum felt like a five-story equivalent to those bracelets in exuding such passion and expansiveness for all things movies. Between this and the Amoeba Records physical media selection, it was great to get a breath of fresh air from the algorithm-dominated modern world of art consumption. Great, meaningful movies can look like anything. Unforgettable movie quotes manifest as everything from “pimps don’t commit suicide” to “what if this is the best version of me?” The possibilities of this medium are truly limitless. It’s easy to forget that sometimes. It was good for my soul and tear ducts to get such vivid reminders in those Los Angeles locations.