While it doesn’t hit me every night, there are at least a few times a month where, after my kid is asleep and I have enough energy where I think I can make it another couple of hours, all I want to do is to watch a good black-and-white movie. Perhaps it’s the generally slower pacing of the films or maybe it’s even the black-and-white look itself, which offers a contrast to the bright colors that blaze into my eyes for the hours a day spent on my phone and laptop, but something about monochrome photography soothes me. And when I get that particular black-and-white itch, there’s really only one streaming service I rely on to scratch it and that’s HBO Max.

