It's interesting that there's a sort of refractory period for enjoying a movie. In biology, refractory periods are spans of time following a stimulus during which further stimulus produces no effect. And it's kind of also true for something like watching a movie you love. Rewatching the same movie immediately after a viewing is usually not fun. Two months later is better, but five years later is even better than that. Apparently in psychology they call this "aesthetic satiation."
I think this might be the key to moderation and an overall happier life: Gaming aesthetic satiation. You don't want the most pleasure, you want the highest quality pleasure. That movie you love—what's the optimal amount of time between viewings that yields the greatest enjoyment? If we can figure that out, then we should be able to maximize enjoyment by planning viewings every x days. Reliable measurement is hard, of course, all sorts of biases and noise. Plus I suspect it's not linear. The graph probably looks something like this:
So optimizing for maximum enjoyment over your lifetime might mean watching the movie every period "A" because that's where the rate of enjoyment-gains-per-day (the derivative) starts to decrease.
I think is probably the case for everything enjoyable (music, books, desserts, intimacy, etc.), not just movies. Maybe we should try to notice how much we enjoy something in relation to how long it's been since we last experienced it and let those observations guide our behavior.
