Scopophilia is a fancy film-theory term for the compulsion to watch that underlies the love of movies. It’s more than mere jargon, though, to the obsessed wretches in this lighthearted documentary by Angela Christlieb and Stephen Kijak, a look at six compulsive New York moviegoers. They subordinate everything else in their lives to attending the maximum number of films per day, carefully planning their schedules with computer programs, eating binding foods to avoid bathroom visits, and marshaling their scant funds (most are unemployed or on disability) to pay for tickets and film-society memberships. Middle-aged or older, they tend to be uselessly overeducated and social misfits, and they all hate video.
Of the five men and six women, only Jack — paunchy, ruefully ironic, but still feisty enough to punch out someone who makes noise during a screening — seems to have any idea of what’s going on outside the movie theater. Reminiscing about actually sitting in a Paris café after having dreamt of doing so in imitation of the Godard films he loves, he laments, "It was just like being in a café. When the frame is not there, it’s just an experience." Within the frame of Cinemania — my third film of the day — his experience seems painfully familiar. (80 minutes)