Like a lot of people, Barbara VanDenburgh keeps a list of all the movies she watches, and writes little capsule reviews of them.
But, unlike a lot of people, VanDenburgh publishes her list and reviews in a pair of long-running threads on X and Bluesky. In 2024, VanDenburgh watched 145 movies. As of this interview, she’s up to 76 in 2025.
VanDenburgh, the communications manager for the Sidney Poitier New American Film School, joined The Show to discuss her threads, and said that part of her goal is to encourage people to watch movies with intention.
Full conversation
BARBARA VANDENBURGH: I don't like watching a movie and doing other things simultaneously. In fact, I hate it. Like I talked to a lot of people, oh, you know, I have a movie they've seen five times on in the background while they're working and they'll multitask. And for me, I like to be fully invested in whatever piece of media I'm consuming. I don't even like to listen to an album where the music has words, and I'm doing something else. I want to be locked in.
SAM DINGMAN: OK, so in that vein, I'm really glad you brought up this idea of how captively you're held by the movie. Because one of the other really fascinating things to me about this ongoing thread that you do is the way that in reading it, it becomes a reflection of other things that are happening in the culture. The movies that you're watching are inflected by other events that are happening. For example, after Gene Hackman passed away, you went on a run of Gene Hackman movies.
BARBARA VANDENBURGH: I did.
DINGMAN: And in the case of the movie “The Conversation,” you wrote, “Something about watching this in 2025 makes it hit harder than it used to. The loneliness amongst others, the voyeuristic observation of life without participation, the dread of being known. The movie understands the internet age long before its existence.”
In spite of the fact that, you know, there is this desire to kind of wall yourself off from the interferences of other life factors — obviously, as evidenced by this, life outside of the container of the film experience is interacting with your experience of watching it. How does that relate to your relationship with the idea of immersion?
VANDENBURGH: You know, movies don't exist in a vacuum, they exist in a continuum. And they change as you get older and they change as society changes. So, I love to revisit films that — it's been a minute since I've seen. With “The Conversation,” it's about a man who is listening in on other people. His job is to wire people and listen in and make recordings and catch people and stuff.
[MOVIE CLIPS PLAYS]
I saw a parallel to how we exist on social media. How we are voyeuristic and looking in on other people. And that's not the same as participating directly in life. And it had me reflecting on that.
DINGMAN: Talk to me a little bit about how you decide what you're going to watch on a given night. Because with the Gene Hackman films, it makes sense, you know, he was in the news, but recently you watched the film “Strange Days.” Which is a very old movie. What goes through your mind when you're like, what should I watch tonight?
VANDENBURGH: Well, “Strange Days” is another movie kind of like “The Conversation” where it came out in 1995. And so it's before really the popular adoption of the internet. It's before social media sites. And yet so much about “Strange Days,” much like “The Conversation,” speaks to the way social media has cooked all of our brains.
[MOVIE CLIP PLAYS]
The main character, who's played by Ray Fiennes, is a sort of black-market dealer in first-person media. So people wear these devices on their heads that record their experiences through their eyes from their vantage point. And I'm like, “Oh, this is TikTok, before TikTok existed.” [LAUGHS]
DINGMAN: Sort of like a proto-Google Glass sort of situation.
VANDENBURGH: Yeah, sort of like that and it just felt incredibly prescient.
DINGMAN: Uh huh. Tell me what happened on one that jumped out at me was on Feb. 11 you watched a movie called “Fright Night,” which is a 1985 vampire movie starring Chris Sarandon.
VANDENBURGH: That is my favorite horror film. And Feb. 11 is my birthday, and they were showing it in 35 millimeter at the Majestic. You know, if you're young and you've never seen a proper film, it's very different from how you're used to seeing movies. They're often old prints and they have a lot of texture to them. So, I think that is a perfect '80s horror film. It is my favorite horror film. And Chris Sarandon is just a delightful '80s vampire.
[MOVE CLIP PLAYS]
DINGMAN: Something else that I really enjoy about this ongoing thread that you're doing is that your reviews and evaluations of these films sometimes are written in a sort of like objective tone. But sometimes you're also talking about very personal reactions. How do you think about your critical voice?
VANDENBURGH: It depends. Sometimes I treat it as a diary, where it's less about the critical aspects of the film itself, and more about where I'm at in life and what I'm feeling and what I'm experiencing. I journaled off and on most of my life. I find it kind of daunting to look at a blank page and not know where to start — as all people who write or try to write do. And I find that the movies serve as a useful prompt. It's a writing prompt. “Hey, I watched a movie today, let's talk about it a little bit.” So I'll end up talking about, you know, “I was feeling sad today, and I decided to watch this movie. And here's why I was feeling sad, and here's how the movie either helped or exacerbated the sadness.” But there's a catharsis to it.
DINGMAN: I'm curious what kind of interactions you have online or offline with people as a result of this thread that you do.
VANDENBURGH: You know, I — online it gets fun because people will end up watching movies that I'll talk about it. I watched this movie and it was great and somebody be like, “Oh, I've never seen that, I'm going to go watch it now.” And we'll end up having a back-and-forth in the thread about it. So, it does end up being, especially online, a connector. And I have made friends, online friends, who I consider real friends. [LAUGHS] But, I've made online friends just from talking about movies through this thread, and there are people who created their own threads based off my thread, and now I'll watch movies based off their recommendations.
And so I just am very gratified to see people experiencing art with this kind of intentionality, because I do think more and more people are second screening their movies and just sort of half paying attention while they're on social media or looking at TikTok — not to, you know, judge anybody for doing that. ... Every brain is different, but I don't want to lose that magic of you being held captive experiencing something in communion with other people. And that's all I was trying to get at when I started these threads — and I think I did.
