In praise of the workout movie
Resolve to burn some calories while consuming cinema.
For many of us, the dawn of a new year means those pesky resolutions — many of which pertain to health and fitness. We don’t have time to get into the particulars of why it took me a long time to embrace physical exercise, but let’s just say that about a decade ago, I stumbled into an ingenious way to make myself go to the gym more frequently. In fact, I actually started to enjoy it.
The trick? I brought an iPad to put in front of me on the cardio machines. It became an hour of the day where, no matter what, I’d have time to watch a movie. (Economists have a fancy word for motivating an unwanted action by tethering it with something more desirable — temptation bundling.)
I often don’t have a choice of what I get to watch — my viewing time is frequently dictated by assignments or research. But when I get the choice, I’ve developed a knowledge of what really gets me going on the machines … and tend to save certain types of movies solely for the purpose of watching them during a workout.
For years, I assumed I must be the only person crazy enough to think like this. But Twitter will connect you with conspiracy theories people who share similar proclivities, as found when I engaged with fellow critic Noah Gittell1 about this very topic. As a fellow “workout movie” enthusiast, I asked him to define what he thinks this genre is:
“A good workout movie is neither too boring nor too engrossing. An action movie usually works. Or a comedy you’ve already seen. You ultimately want something that doesn’t require close attention but can keep you distracted from the impulse to stop exercising and go sit down. You don’t want anything that requires patience or a long attention span, so basically nothing before 1982.”
Frankly, I couldn’t agree more (with one caveat that you’ll see below). I’m not here to make some kind of absurd claim that unlocking the power of the “workout movie” will bring about better fitness results like a corny personal trainer. But, at the very least, you can make an otherwise miserable activity (in this writer’s opinion) a little more tolerable and keep yourself around long enough to see even more movies!
MARSHALL’S CRITERIA FOR WORKOUT MOVIES
Nothing heavily sexual (and especially not with explicit nudity) — you don’t want people passing by to think you’re watching porn
Nothing understated — there’s a time and a place for slow cinema, but not while you’re trying to get your heart rate up
Nothing you wouldn’t mind breaking up into multiple viewings — unless you’ve got some stamina, make sure you’re ok watching something in two parts
Be careful with complexity — any story with too many characters or a labyrinthine plot is going to frustrate you in the event you miss something while in the zone
Nothing with creative cinematography — it deserves a bigger screen anyway, and you’re missing the point of that film by cramming the visual detail into a few pixels
What does that look like in practice? Well … here are 10 types of workout movies that I’ve always found get me in the zone.
1. Action-packed adventures
The action genre is your friend at the gym! A competently made action movie is reducible to largely set pieces connected by some light storyline. They generally trade in familiar hero/villain dichotomies, and it’s pretty harmless to disengage during a big action sequence because the results and implications are usually clear when the dust settles. Plus, the quick editing along with a bevy of other cinematic techniques are already trying to elicit a physiological response from you. Let them.
Not all action movies are created equal, though, so don’t settle for something totally inane. For my money, no one understands what audiences really want in this genre more than Tom Cruise and the creative powers behind the Mission: Impossible franchise. Since I gave Ghost Protocol some love last week, let me shout out the underappreciated Mission: Impossible III (available on Amazon Prime Video) for your viewing pleasure. It’s entirely thrilling and boasts the series’ best villain played by none other than the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman in a burst of truly terrifying menace.
2. Propulsive score-based movies
The more traditional cultural stimulant for cardiac performance is music. You can get that from any number of movies, too, of course. This specific style of movie might require a bit more research to identify, but once you find one that utilizes energetic scoring as the backbone of its sonic landscape, you’re golden.
I personally tend to find that electronic or other highly synthesized scores get me going the most, and you really can’t beat Good Time (available on Netflix) among those. I’m in the small minority who prefers this grimy New York crime tale from the Safdie Brothers to their latest work, Uncut Gems. This tightly-coiled night from hell following the slimy Connie Nikas (Robert Pattinson) as he tries to scrounge the funds to rescue his brother from jail is made electrifyingly propulsive in large part due to the score by Oneohtrix Point Never. At the very least, you should know this movie for more than just the tracksuit meme.
3. Fast-paced foreign language flicks
This may seem counterintuitive, but I actually think foreign-language films make for ideal workout viewing. I find that my mind having to fixate on reading the subtitles keeps it from other thoughts, such as “why the hell am I doing this?” or “this resistance level is HARD!” Make sure that you’re not watching some Romanian New Wave movie that consists of only a few static shots, though. Other countries have popular entertainment just like America does; seek it out.
The paradigmatic example here would be Parasite, but how boring would that be as a recommendation? (Plus, you’ve already seen it … right?) Allow me to recommend you go further into the Bong Joon-ho back catalog with his monster movie The Host (available on Hulu). This allegorical creature feature is an energetic combination of humor, horror, and action.
4. Light rom-coms
Say it with me: Formula! Is! Your! Friend! (At least at the gym.) The rom-com has many shadings, but it usually boils down to any number of scenes strung together to keep us guessing … “will they or won’t they?” Even if the movie is smart enough to avoid the traditional meet-cute or eschew the grand romantic gesture, it probably follows a familiar enough arc. All it takes to make an entertaining one for this scenario is a little bit of unexpected humor and a few show-stopping scenes.
I know people still have ~feelings~ about Katherine Heigl (spoiler alert: they’re probably a projection of your own insecurities!) but everyone should get over them because 27 Dresses (available on HBO Max) is delightful. It’s just enough of a twist on the traditional structure by elevating a supporting archetype, the supportive friend, into leading lady status. And if you can’t relate to or enjoy the “Bennie and the Jets” bar scene, I don’t know if we can be friends.
5. Legal thrillers
Part 2 of “formula is your friend” — legal thrillers tend to feature clear-cut sides built into their structure by the very nature of trial law. There are nuances to each story, sure, but they all circle the same question of guilt or innocence … and whether or not that can be proved in court.
There’s an exception that proves the rule: Michael Clayton (available on HBO Max). Embrace the ethical murkiness, the conflicted psyches of the characters, the non-linear structure, the unclear sides that people take. This movie is so tautly constructed that it’ll keep you entirely riveted. There’s not a shot or moment out of place as everyone maneuvers their way into previously unfathomable new traditions, making it the perfect workout movie in spite of itself. (Superfans of this movie, in case you hadn’t picked up on it, are frankly incapable of ever shutting up about its brilliance.)
6. Crime classics
Here’s my aforementioned break from Noah — I do think you can venture back beyond four decades ago. But to his point, the editing rhythms from the pre-blockbuster era do get significantly less rapid. Be careful when venturing into the lugubrious and languid film noir category, but I find that crime films generally have a zippy pace no matter the era. Police, criminals, and criminal police and their pursuits tend to have ready-made conflict ripe for cardio.
One way to knock out a canonical classic while you work out is The French Connection (available on the Criterion Channel), the Best Picture winner about crooked NYC cops trying to nab a heroin smuggler. It’s consistently thrilling throughout but never more so than its tense car chase scene, one that still has the power to take your breath away 50 years later.
7. Movie musicals (especially dance-based ones)
If you want to get academic with this one, let me direct you to my senior thesis video essay on the nature of editing in the movie musical. But if you want the abridged version, the main reason the movie musical made a comeback in the ‘90s is basically MTV. The aesthetics of the music video reinvigorated (or ruined, depending on your point of view) the movie musical genre, so the vast majority of contemporary adaptations feature heavily cut numbers rather than recreating them like on stage.
Perhaps no modern movie musical embodies this new visual style as well as Chicago (available on HBO Max). The “Cell Block Tango” number is essentially hacked to bits here, ruining any semblance of continuous motion in the dance. For workout purposes, though, that’s ideal — and the movie more than makes up for the lost theatricality in form by playing it up in story.
8. Silent comedy
More film education by way of workout! Latch onto the wavelength of silent comedies, where movie stars really had to physically exert themselves to get that laugh from you. It’s almost as if these movies were really made for workouts a hundred years later — they try to show rather than tell, they rely on outsized gestures to convey meaning, and they even look like they’re moving abnormally fast due to the way they played with frame rates. (If you’ve never gone down this rabbit hole, I highly recommend it.)
You can’t go wrong with any Charlie Chaplin movie, but for cardiac purposes, I’ll say The Gold Rush (available on HBO Max and the Criterion Channel) is probably your strongest option. Of the feature films featuring his iconic Little Tramp, this is the one most centered around extended gags and physical humor rather than sentimental plotting or political messaging.
9. Zippy animation
The imagination necessary to make compelling animation makes it an unexpectedly great bet for a good workout. Because anything can happen before us on the screen, it really tends to keep the eyes focused. Plus, even the most mature of animation seems to have some kind of levity and warmth that never makes the enterprise feel too daunting.
This doesn’t just have to be Disney vault classics, mind you. Wes Anderson made a perfectly wonderful treat in Fantastic Mr. Fox (available on Disney+), a visually inventive take on the Roald Dahl story that wows without overwhelming. Though rated PG, there’s a startling amount of creative workarounds to smuggle in adult humor and themes.
10. Campy trash
I reaffirm my hatred of the term “guilty pleasure” because no work of art that brings you some pleasure can be entirely bad. However, for the purposes of explaining this final and slightly disreputable category, I’ll throw out the term to get your mind in the ballpark of what I’m thinking about here. “So bad they’re good” movies make for perfect workout fodder because they keep you glued to the screen and reeled in for whatever bizarre turn could come next.
I am not officially “recommending” The Beach (available on Hulu), the big post-Titanic leading man gig for Leonardo DiCaprio. Or maybe I am! Honestly, everyone should see this bizarre star vehicle careen off the rails in spectacular fashion. DiCaprio is just GOING FOR IT here, and there's lots of fun to be found in the gap between the movie in his head and what ultimately plays out in Danny Boyle’s splashy spectacle of kineticism.
WHAT I WATCHED
The past week was big on the three F’s: Fellini, Farhadi, and Frances McDormand. Two of these three, you’ll be reading much more about. One was just for fun!
Also, happy awards roundtable season to those who celebrate — a real highlight of THR’s actors’ roundtable was this clip of Nicolas Cage talking about his bad on-set equestrian experiences. It’s made even better by Andrew Garfield giggling like a schoolboy throughout.
WHAT I HEARD
It’s been a week of truly gutting celebrity deaths — Bob Saget! Sidney Poitier! — but don’t let Peter Bogdanovich get lost in the shuffle. If you’re not familiar with his work, I’d start with one of the all-time great three-film heater runs ever clocked in cinema: The Last Picture Show, What’s Up, Doc?, and Paper Moon. This legend of the so-called “New Hollywood” era of the 1970s was perhaps the clearest link this generation shared to the classical studio era, and Bogdanovich’s interest in filmmakers like Orson Welles and Howard Hawks as true artists helped lay the groundwork for our contemporary appreciation.
Anyways, if you’ve got some time and are a fan, I really dug the archival interview with Peter Bogdanovich that Marc Maron dug up:
WHAT I READ
A book! I’m proud of myself. Got ahead on my book club’s next selection, A Burning by Megha Majumdar, because we don’t have a set date yet … and I’d rather not be scrambling at the last minute. (Also, if you’re the type that uses Goodreads, let’s be friends!)
Also, this is a good piece in Forbes about why you should care that Disney is sending a third Pixar movie directly to its streaming services! I really do worry that the Mouse House is setting up a situation with films that is not unlike the current state of online journalism, conditioning audiences to believe that the expensive labor of artists is not something they should ever expect to consciously pay for.
“…what Hollywood has done is potentially conditioned general audiences to expect to see these very expensive films for absolutely nothing. Sure, right now there’s perceived value (especially in terms of Wall Street prioritizing streaming revenue) in essentially giving away these $150-$200 million movies as a loss leader. But that’s not a permanent solution to pandemic-specific circumstances.”
WHAT I WROTE
The reason I binged all of Search Party last month is not because I was finally persuaded by years of begging from many friends, though it did somehow factor into the decision if you’re among that crowd and want to give yourself a pat on the back. The immediate reason was that I spoke to star Alia Shawkat for The Playlist in conjunction with the final season’s release on HBO Max.
Subscribers also got the full HBO Max Syllabus post, and you can access that at any time if you choose to join their ranks!
In conjunction with the Apple TV+ release of The Tragedy of Macbeth on Friday 1/14, subscribers will be getting an appreciation of star Frances McDormand in their inboxes later this week!
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall
You can find Noah Gittell’s writing in Washington City Paper, The Atlantic, The Ringer, The Guardian, Polygon, and Decider. You can find him on Twitter at @noahgittell.
I fully support the “reco but not a reco” of The Beach. It’s weird and amazing, but also bad and fantastic.