Normally all of us usually navigate to the the folder where we store all our movies/videos and then double click to play them. However I found this nifty Totem trick which will help you save your time by not having to search for video files before playing them
First of all open Totem from Application > Sound & Video > Movie Player
Now go to Edit > Plugins
Search for the plugin called Local Search. Enable it by clicking on the check mark box click on OK.
Now in the side pane click on the drop down box which says Playlist, select Local Search from the options. You can now perform search for any local video. For this feature to work you must have either Tracker (the searching & indexing tool which ships with Ubuntu) or Beagle (similar to tracker but better) up and running.