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Comment by baddox | Hacker News Reader

My local Cinemark recently remodeled all the rooms to have fantastic reclining seats and reserved seating. In my experience, the trendy or upscale theaters like Alamo Draft House have far worse seats and screens. If I want $10 craft beers I can buy those at a store and drink them at home. The only reason I'm going to a cinema is to have the best possible comfort, picture, and audio.

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The one in Mountain View, CA is like this as well... It's so great!!! No stress in any way to go to the movies, or even getting up to go to the bathroom. I've easily gone to the movies 10 times as much over the past few years because of it. And I pretty much refuse to go see a movie anywhere else. I'm sure many people have the same feeling as there's rarely an empty seat. I really hope they're making money as I would hate for this to be a short lived trend.

Have you been to the Hollywood Theater in Portland? They have a 70mm film projector something no Cinemark has. You can see movies like Dunkirk in the format the director intended.

There's nothing stopping one from going to a special theatre for that one film shot in 70mm. But most movies are not that.

You are ignoring all the other arguments. Better movies, better food, a general lack of children.

There's certainly an appeal to specific formats like 70mm, but that comes along fairly rarely. I haven't been to Portland, but I have seen 70mm films in classic theaters. They're rarely comfortable, the sound usually sucks, and the lack of stadium seating can be brutal, but you're there for the insane effort that went into end-to-end 70mm production.

Of course, I saw Dunkirk in IMAX 70mm projection at the Metreon in San Francisco, which is a state of the art screening room, but that will probably only ever happen every few years. Sadly the Metreon recently remodeled with completely terrible seats (only in the IMAX room), so I'm rarely tempted to go there.

Seats in the IMAX room is indeed very bad. It’s sad because the screen is 2nd largest in North America. But your only memory of the movie becomes how much pain your back and behind are. Try the shoreline cinemark in MV, very comfy seats!

The Metreon IMAX is such a shame. They installed that incredible new digital projector (Dolby laser, I believe) but at the same time ruined the seats.

There's definitely Cinemark theaters with 70mm. I saw Dunkirk at one.

More importantly, though, not very many movies were/are shot in that format. Not enough to really build a business on.

70mm film?

A number of Cinemark theaters that featured Dunkirk in 70mm listed here: http://www.slashfilm.com/dunkirk-70mm-locations/

Which Alamo do you go to? I've two in proximity and the quality of service and comfort is different enough to go to different ones depending on the movie I'm seeing.

Additionally, I will pay for the more expensive Alamo ticket every time because of their fanaticism about NOT TALKING during the move

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