Here’s how not to watch a film: in the background while doing something else; with one eye on the clock to determine how long is left; after you’ve read lots of reviews. 

Of course, I’m guilty of all of these things—of watching and getting distracted, of instinctively reaching for my phone—but it wasn’t always this way. In my 20s, I worked as a film critic for a newspaper. I would spend Mondays and Tuesdays in Soho, in London, notebook on my lap as I scrawled illegible notes in the dark. It didn’t especially matter whether I liked the films (often, I didn’t). I would have to find something to say about them by Wednesday’s deadline.

The critic’s job is to try to understand the film’s substance—what the film is trying to say, and whether it’s saying it clearly. But it is also their job to give voice to the feelings stirred and questions raised when encountering something for the first time. As Richard Brody, film critic at The New Yorker, put it, “When writing reviews, critics are in the position of the public.”

But you don’t have to be a critic to watch like one. The watching, I learned, was just as important as the writing. Watching is noticing. To notice, you have to concentrate, and to concentrate, you need to be immersed. And watching a film in a single, uninterrupted sitting is the simplest and most intuitive way to drop into another world. Most of us have been chasing this feeling since childhood—the delicious sensation of having lost track of time.