Movies worked fine for me until the Eco Lifestyle patch this year, but I hadn’t bought that stuff pack immediately at release, so I wouldn’t know how they behaved back then. My sims can watch movies until I decide, which I am ok with because I often use movies to kill time and invite friends to watch with them. Of all the bugs, this one is totally bearable to me.
The laundry bug is way more frustrating. From what I’ve gathered, certain upgrades cause the machines to stop working properly. It seems some old clothes get stuck in a loop when I try to wash and dry them. So I have deleted all hampers, clothing piles and laundry machines, then re-purchase them, and it seems to reset things back to normal as long as I don’t make any upgrades beyond adding scent to the washer. I’m looking forward to a patch for this because I’m not getting full use of the product when I can’t upgrade them anymore, not to mention the time and money wasted figuring this out in the 8 households I play.
