Book Review: ‘Lost in the Stream’ finds a way toward a richer movie-watching life
2025 / Author: Jeff Rauseo
☆ 4/5
If you’re a movie nerd who loves physical media, odds are high you’ve seen Jeff Rauseo in your social feed sharing his top 5s, niche movie recommendations, and fresh takes on new 4K/Blu-ray releases—no doubt informed by his enviable collection of over 3,000 movies.
He has parlayed that expertise and enthusiasm into a new book called Lost in the Stream: How Algorithms Redefined the Way Movies Are Made and Watched, which is part memoir, part industry analysis, and part cri de coeur for a richer and more intentional movie-watching life.
In the first section (“A brief history of movies and how we watch them”) Rauseo charts the rise of moviegoing as a cultural phenomenon from its post-World War II peak through the television era. TV being an in-home source of entertainment initially siphoned away revenue and attention from movies as a cultural phenomenon, but also reinvigorated them in the 1970s and ‘80s as eventized made-for-TV movies, premium cable offerings like HBO, and emergent physical media formats like VHS and Betamax revolutionized how people could experience cinema.
This section also contains what I’d consider one of the strongest part of the book: a “Ghost of Movie Nights Past” scenario where Rauseo walks through what an at-home movie date night would look like for an average thirty-something in 2000 and in 2025. At the turn of the century, such an event was a tactile, IRL experience: getting in your car, going to Blockbuster or other rental store, inspecting the DVD cover art and descriptions, chatting with the clerk, scanning your membership card, paying a couple bucks, and stopping by a pizza place to pick up your order. All of this was “real, authentic, and human,” writes Rauseo, yet very different from today, with that entire journey having been reduced to small screens and hijacked by mysterious algorithms and profit-hungry streaming services with ever-increasing subscription fees.
The rest of the book digs into both how that came to be—aggressive digital marketing tactics, sprawling IP-verses of the late 2000s and 2010s, the post-COVID Streaming Revolution—and how to find ways to overcome the status quo and discover movies outside the algorithm. Investing in physical media is a big one, obviously, but his other tips make a great starter kit for the budding cinephile. (One I’m sure he supports but doesn’t explicitly call out: public libraries. Beyond the Kanopy streaming service available with your card, libraries themselves are a great free source for new and classic movies, many of which can be hard to find elsewhere. Not to mention regular book/media sales where you can get Blu-rays for dirt cheap.)
If you already keep up with the tumultuous business side of Hollywood, much of what Rauseo covers will be familiar. His detailed analysis of the major studios and streamers—Netflix, Universal, Disney, Warner Bros, Paramount, Sony among them—is informative but also frozen in early 2025. (There’s no mention of the Paramount/Skydance merger, for example.) This isn’t a criticism of the book or Rauseo, simply the cost of writing about a rapidly changing media environment in a printed book. Luckily his newsletter and other channels remain a fount of fresh analysis for the fellow film-obsessed, and his earnest love of movies and movie theaters is an inspiration no matter how many SteelBooks you own.
Read if you like: The Town by Matt Belloni, rage-tweeting at David Zazlav, and saving up for Barnes & Noble’s biannual 50% Off Criterion sales.