I am a snob about films, which is an unflattering thing to admit and also true. I had a category in my head for "films I will not enjoy", and the one I got talked into on Saturday sat squarely inside it: a premise I found twee, a trailer that gave away what I assumed was the whole arc, and the kind of poster that promises a tidy life lesson. I went along to be polite and planned to scroll my phone in the dark.
I did not scroll my phone. About twenty minutes in it quietly stopped being the film I had decided it was. The thing I had mistaken for tweeness turned out to be restraint, and the arc I thought the trailer had spoiled went somewhere I genuinely did not see coming. By the end I was the one sitting still while everyone else reached for their coats.
The mild embarrassment is the useful bit. I had built a confident opinion out of a poster and a thirty-second trailer, and the opinion was wrong. It is the same failure I make with code, deciding I know where the problem is before I have actually looked. Measure first. Watch the thing before you review it. I keep relearning the same lesson in different rooms, and at least this time it came with popcorn.