How to Start Your Movie Club
Find a Group of People
Perhaps the most important part of Movie Club (MC) is the Club! We recommend you create a group of 3-5 people total that have varying tastes in movies and backgrounds. The joy in MC is watching movies you wouldn’t normally pick for yourself, enjoying others’ perspectives and interpretations, and sharing your own movies and viewpoints.
We recommend keeping the group small enough that scheduling recurring movie watching events isn’t too difficult to coordinate.
Schedule Time to Watch Movies Together
Find time, ideally on a regular basis, to meet up with your MC and watch/discuss movies. Movie Club ATX meets 3-5 times a month. We try to meet on a weekly basis, but sometimes life/scheduling conflicts get in the way and we miss a week (it’s not a big deal!) but it is good to have a general weekly/monthly time set aside so that we never drop the ball on the next meeting.
You’ll want to ensure you have plenty of time for the movie and general discussion; 3 hours should be sufficient, depending on how long that day’s movie is. We follow a loose structure for our sessions of:
Meet and general catching up/chatting
What movies have you seen recently?
That day’s movie presentation
Movie time!
After-movie thoughts and discussion
Determine What Movies to Watch
Figure out a system that works for your club! We use a simple turn-based order in which we take turns picking and presenting a movie for each session. You may want to implement a different structure, but you’ll want to be sure that everyone has the opportunity to share the movies they love.
To add an additional layer of fun, we set up different rounds/categories to inform the movies we bring, and we will spend the next round of meetings taking turns each bringing a movie that fits into that category. These categories can be broad or specific, for example “Siblings” or “Academy Award Best Picture Losers”. For ideas on different round categories, you can check out all our categories and the movies we each selected.
One of the founding missions of Movie Club is to share our favorite movies with our friends that may not necessarily pick that movie for themselves, and to be exposed to movies you wouldn’t typically pick on your own. As such, we always try to select a movie that a majority of the other MC members haven't seen, or a movie that may deserve to be revisited with a new perspective.
Share Your Knowledge About Your Favorite Movies
During each meeting, the designated presenter brings a movie that they’ve selected to fit in that round’s category. Share your thoughts on the movie with the group - at Movie Club ATX, we each create a presentation with different information including:
How does this movie fit into the category provided?
Information about the creators’/actors’ background and how they were influenced to create this movie
Cultural background of the movie and the state of the world at its creation/release
History of a movie’s genre and how this movie impacted or was influenced by other movies like it
Fun facts about the movie
We find it fun to provide a few hints about the movie at the start of the presentation to allow other MC members to guess what the movie is. Find out what your group is interested in and go with that!
Watch Movies!
This is simple - watch the movies you and your friends bring to the club! We recommend gathering in-person, when possible, to view together; however, if schedules or geography make that difficult, watch the movies at the same time and meet before and after the movie for discussion. After the movie, allow everyone the opportunity to discuss their impressions of the movie, and listen to other people’s thoughts. Be open to other people’s perspectives and open to new ideas - and don’t be afraid to disagree (respectfully)!
Have Fun With Your Movie Club
Beyond watching/sharing information about movies, there are so many ways that you can grow your Movie Club to keep things fun and exciting for your group! Here are some examples of the extra things Movie Club ATX does:
After every 16 movies, hold a bracket to determine the ultimate movie for that group! Give everyone the opportunity to advocate for their favorites, and vote for your top picks. See Movie Club ATX’s brackets here
After every 32 movies, hold an awards show. Come up with categories (you can include serious and fun ones) and allow everyone to make recommendations for nominees.
Movie Club ATX implements an extremely complicated but fun (to us) process for our Cainey Awards. We have a round of “For Your Consideration” nominations, a more formal nomination voting form, and then an ultimate “awards show” with the top nominees from each category. During the awards show ceremony, we reveal the nominees for each category, watch clips and reminisce about those movies/performances/and vote for the winner. You can see more about Movie Club ATX’s Cainey Awards and past winners here
Speaking of awards shows, celebrate awards season with your Movie Club. Movie Club ATX celebrates the Academy Awards every year with games including Oscar bingo, trivia, and an awards ballot, and a menu inspired by that year’s nominees.
Are there any upcoming movie screenings that relate to Movie Club through a common interest or perhaps a sequel or rerelease of a beloved Movie Club movie? Make it an event and go with your fellow Movie Clubbers!
Appreciation of movies goes hand in hand with appreciation for television. Instead of movies, do a round of your Movie Club members’ favorite television episodes. Maybe you’ll discover your next favorite series!
Share Movie Club with more friends! We have established the MC Website (where you are now) to document and share Movie Club with others. Through this site we have fun making recommendations to others through our Staff Picks, writing Clips about our favorite movies or movie related topics, and having a home to see all the movies that are now a part of our Movie Club ATX repertoire.
See what works best for your club and have fun with it!