As our viewing methods become increasingly fragmented between streaming services, some lesser-seen movies have become both more and less available. With so much content available at all times it’s almost impossible to stumble into a hidden gem you didn’t already know you were looking for… which seems a bit like an oxymoron.

New and popular movies keep getting foisted in front of our eyeballs by algorithms while older, smaller, less visible excellence recedes into an infinite and daunting ocean of potential.

The deliberate act of searching for a title does not align with the way we actually discover movies. How many times do you set out to watch a movie at home and know exactly what you want? If you’re like me, you approach the wall of movies and stand there for minutes, scores of minutes, hordes of minutes. The movies you love and know versus all the movies you’ve yet to watch, locked in an infinite death match for those precious minutes of waking attentiveness.

Some of us are old enough to remember the double-edged experience of going to a video store. You probably had a new title in mind, but when it was inevitably unavailable you had to look to Plan B, which was often the “wander around and look” method.