My fiance mentioned we haven't gone to see a movie in theaters in years and it would be fun to go.
I checked what was playing and:
2 tickets, 2 sodas, 1 popcorn.
$86 dollars.
Don't know if I'll ever go to a conventional movie theater again.
I checked what was playing and:
2 tickets, 2 sodas, 1 popcorn.
$86 dollars.
Don't know if I'll ever go to a conventional movie theater again.
Presently, we watch foreign movies at home 95% of the time and maybe a Hollywood production when they manage to find their roots and create something worth watching.
Also, growing up in a small town in Yugoslavia in the 80s definitely didn’t guarantee a top-tier cinema experience, to put it mildly. But the feeling I had watching the James Bond opening credits from a damaged film reel, with frayed subtitles projected from a decades-old projector, is something I can never quite recreate when watching on a 4K screen from a perfect source. So there's that.
</old-man-rant>
As a kid who grew up in 90’s I would say it is easily better than what cinema had back then.
I don’t have that high expectations of sound/video as many people will point out that streaming kills the quality but for all its worth still much better than what I need to enjoy a movie.
As you say with the image quality being as high at home now plus a decent surround system really makes the theater experience at home very enjoyable.
If you are in an urban area and are not a millionaire, you probably live in some kind of apartment or studio. And yes, you can stick up a projector and a good surround system... but it might be that the builder cut corners on the floors and your neighbors already come knocking when you are talking, much less turn up the audio system to a tenth of the sound pressure a good cinema sound system provides.
I don't have any of the problem - but I don't have "cinema sound system" as I mentioned whatever I have must have just clear sound and clear doesn't mean loud. I don't need "sound experience" to enjoy a movie.
Unfortunately, most cinema movies are not properly remastered in their audio tracks, but keep the original cinema mix. That results in very silent dialogue (which is not a problem in a cinema, at least as long as people behave and don't yap around all the time) and very loud sequences particularly in action shots.
When you now give such a movie to your usual home theater setup, you have to turn up the volume enough so you can understand the dialogue and either constantly turn it down whenever it gets heated or live with neighbors complaining.
Straight-to-streaming releases usually don't suffer from that problem, because they are made and mixed for normal users streaming on their laptops with shitty speakers. Note I said usually, because Disney's Star Wars series are still mastered for decent setups with dynamic range.
There's a debate to be had about the impact of that on storytelling, as straight-to-streaming these days is produced with the movie/episode on a side screen while people are doing something else, so everything that you would normally see on a screen is verbally described by actors, but that's another debate entirely.
As an american and English as my only human language, even I need subtitles.
And the movie "Tenet" was so bad that I ragequit 30 minutes in. Horrible horrible audio.
Post-1990s, directors forgot how to mix audio for stereo.
And streaming services assumed you had at least a 5.1 system with a dedicated center channel.
It doesn't help that many actors these days have become students of the "mumble acting" school of acting. It's amazing watching some 50-year-old movie from the 70s and the dialog is crystal-clear and perfectly understandable.
Back then dynamic range in cinemas also wasn't there and TVs were mono as well. You couldn't fix stuff in post to a large degree either, so in moviemaking you were all but forced to have sets as quiet as possible and actors speak clearly.
Commercial theaters are all digital now. They don't even have film projectors anymore. Some independent or "revival" cinemas might still have them.
Funny enough, I want to see a version of Chungking Express that feels processed to look like an early-2000s digital camera.
The best thing a home theatre system has that is equivalent to the 90's experience and superior to current cinema is that you can have an intermission to take a leak.
In the 90's, the intermission was long enough to visit the bathroom and then buy some more popcorn and candy. These days I have to miss some part of the middle of the movie.
What's wrong with that?
I've seen several other movies (normal ones, not 3D/IMAX/etc.) here since I moved here, and they were all the same. Audiences here have excellent behavior.
We're planning to see Project Hail Mary this weekend when it comes out, this time on IMAX.
I wouldn't complain much about people singing along to a ballad or such but yapping, you can go do that somewhere else.
The problem isn’t with “human presence”. It’s with the select few who can’t or won’t control their own behavior out of respect for others.
Also, if the music feels bad enough to where people find talking to each other more pleasant than listening, isn't that the fault of the 'sensory experience?'
It’s like people talking through a comedy show. Saying something quietly to the person next to you? Whatever. Talking loudly for 20 minutes? Get the fuck out. Go talk to your friends at a bar and let people who came to hear the act enjoy the act.
> if the music feels bad enough to where people find talking to each other more pleasant than listening
But then leave. If you don’t like the show, it’s totally fair for you to just get up and go. Talking through a show you don’t care about and disturbing people who do want to be there? Why?
Some of it is minor but just suggests to me that many people lack any sense that they should be aware of others around them. Just today I was walking down the street and a woman was stopped, in the middle of the sidewalk, staring at her phone. She was in front of a shop door but not right in front of it, so she was half-blocking both people passing on the sidewalk and people trying to get into the store. I see this kind of thing so often now, in store aisles, on sidewalks, etc., and a part of me wants to go up to these people and inform them that there are other people around them and that if they want to take a moment to look at their phone they should step to the side.
It's not "people". One half of all people grows up playing contact sports or at least have some form of rough-and-tumble with their homies in schoolyards. This half also knows that you can get punched if things get too rowdy.
The other does not. Almost all of the entitled road blockers are in this category.
I picked it up and put it back and they still gave it third place.
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/why-did-the-beatles-stop-tourin...
The problem with projectors is that they can't display black: they're shining light through a filter, so they can't produce a true black, and the contrast ratio isn't that great. For best effect, you need an extremely dark room. With an OLED screen, black is absolutely black, because black pixels simply aren't lit up at all, and you get better contrast ratio than a projector. As a bonus, you can even watch it with the lights on.
Obviously it depends on your projector/screen choice but it’ll probably be cheaper, too. The portability is also nice.
If I watch a movie by myself, I would choose my $500 27" 4k monitor connected to proper speakers/headphone over a $300 55" TV without external soundbar any day. Most people probably will choose the opposite, which I totally understand.
Off topic, but since I retired a few years ago, I go to movies all the time but I go during the week and catch movies between 11am to 3pm. Theaters are almost empty, but just enough other people in the theater to feel like a shared experience. I see about five or six movies a month, and my wife goes with me about half the time. I worried that my local theater would go out of business until we went to a Saturday night movie and all 16 theaters seemed busy, will wall to wall people in the huge lobby area.
So, I hope the movie industry survives in close to its present form. I share your fondness to foreign films, BTW.
Well, it suited my tastes anyway. :)
So the theatres stay alive by selling concessions.
I'd wager everyone here complaining about prices would also wax poetic about how theatres don't "pay a living wage" to the kids scooping popcorn and would immediately drive home in their $100k Rivians or Teslas so they can give a one star review on Yelp or complain on Reddit about the bathrooms or floors being dirty or sticky.
These same people wouldn't bat an eye at paying $14 for a food truck grilled cheese and leave a tip.
You can't have it both ways.
I prayed it wasn't urine.
I liked that theater because it was super cheap (like seriously $1.50 for a ticket because it showed out of date movies). One time when she and I were watching The Purge, I hear this kind of squishy noise from right behind me.
I turn around, and a guy is getting a handjob. I motion to my wife that we need to move a few seats over.
You know, The Purge isn't the worst movie ever but I gotta admit that it's not a movie that ever really turned me on either. To each their own, I suppose.
From that point forward we always called that the Handjob Theater.
To get a better view, right?
I don't live there anymore and haven't for about eleven years.
I've never had an experience like you described, but I totally believe it.
If I lived in Dallas still I'd probably still go there all the time.
If all of those things are true, then the conclusion is that theaters can’t operate in a way that wins my business. That would be unfortunate, but it’s not contradictory. It also seems to be that pretty much true, as I see a movie in a theater maybe once a year.
After all, they move 1s and 0s at the end of the day. No screens or customer-facing capital equipment to maintain outside of DCs.
I believe they wrote that it is consistent to find sufficient utility from a $14 grilled cheese sandwich and also find insufficient utility from a whatever price movie theater experience.
It isn’t written out, but when people complain about the price of anything, they are complaining the price to utility ratio. Not exactly profound stuff, but that is basically what it is, most people don’t get a sufficiently better experience in theaters in today’s world.
The extension of my logic to Netflix would be, if I think their prices are too high and that causes me not to subscribe, and their prices are so high because they need to pay very high salaries, then there’s just no way that Netflix can exist in a form that I would subscribe to.
Either way, until the industry lets me pay directly to the org that literally made the movie, I'll just pirate.
I do want to pay the artists that make the films. I think the most viable way to do this is via cryptocurrency associated with social media accounts, and then validate ownership by having owners post a magic validation link. This way I can send artists money and it's on them to go get it if they want it.
putflix is criminal theft. They pay nothing to people who make movies. You can drive the cost to zero by downloading torrents directly from pirate bay.
If you did want to pay the artists then you would pay for netflix of rent/buy from a number of places (amazon video, youtube, apple).
Your cryptocurrency fantasy is just a way to rationalize stealing.
It's just "rent", there's no buy option from any of these people, no matter what their site says. If they can revoke your ownership at any time, for any reason, then you don't own it. And if you don't own it, then you're not buying it.
I get the motivation to not pay these crooks, and instead pay the actual people that made the movie direct.
They can, if studios gave them a better deal: "Most if not all the ticket price goes directly into the studio's pockets."
That is not a fact of nature, but the studio's whim. If they want to drive theaters out of business and send all their customers to the pirate bay, they are more than welcome to.
This seems weirdly condescending, especially since I think these two things are very related.
There are two types of $14 food truck grilled cheese in my experience:
The first type is usually found at farmer’s markets or free city events where the cheese will be local and artisan, and the bread will be local and artisan, and it’ll be pretty freaking good, and remind you that you can make incredible food with simple ingredients.
The second type is where there’s a captive audience, like a music festival or a brewery patio. This is no free market: you are hungry, and you’re about to be exploited.
I find American society increasingly reflected in the second type of $14 grilled cheese. Movie theaters, sporting events, music events, video games, tipping culture, hidden fees, etc. etc. Exploitative business practices to extract profit at the expense of the customer. It’s like walking around being shown the middle finger at all times. And people complain about the breakdown of the social contract…
the artisan grilled cheese is better than a hotdog that’s been overheated for six hours with a stale bun, and stale popcorn with fake flavoring
Simple ingredients should be cheap. It’s fucking cheese and bread, stop trying to normalize $15 for it. The raw ingredients are milk and wheat, both of which are incredible cheap.
So yeah, I don’t disagree, it should be about half the price if we had better artisan programs in the US. But I don’t think wonder bread and Kraft singles should set the bar for grilled cheese pricing.
Cheese has more nuance to it and I agree the difference between Kraft singles and an aged cheese are vastly different especially in time and labor. For instance Gruyère ages for a minimum of 5 months. All of that being said, your artisanal food truck isn’t making the Gruyère and only about $1.50 worth of cheese goes into it (compared to $0.35 if you used kraft singles).
Popcorn cost basically nothing to make at home, especially if you buy the raw kernels and pop them yourself, and I can rent a 4k version of a movie for like three dollars on Amazon. My 85" 8k TV cost me $1200 (refurbished, but still). For the cost of going to the theater with my wife 15 times, I can buy that TV to watch movies but also use that same TV for many other things.
Even cheap shitty TVs are pretty ok nowadays, certainly better than the stuff when I was a kid, and after I have to question the point of going to an expensive physical theater where there's a risk of some teenagers talking over the movie and I can't pause if I need to use the bathroom. The theaters might not like it, but regardless of whether its fair, they are competing with TVs now.
However, I'm the outlier, none of my friends prefer the cinema. No idea why.
It's a pretty frequent complaint that drinks at pubs, bars, and restaurants have become extortionately expensive, to the point that a lot of younger people are drinking less for that reason.
If you are a dumbass kid like I was, that same $10 also gets you a Long Island Iced Tea, which is delicious and only gives you a little liver disease.
But instead of buying anything at all that could get you mistaken for being slightly unmanly, idiots will just complain and spend $10 on Bud Light.
Americans are extremely bad at value shopping or shopping around. They would rather go into debt than try something new.
I don't get it.
I will admit to having good experiences going to the theater with friends and/or family, but I don't really enjoy watching a movie with strangers. Nowadays if I want to watch a movie with friends, I will simply invite them over and we'll watch it together.
More power to you if you like going to a theater, I'm not trying to convince you to stop, just that I don't feel the value-add is worth it to me anymore. Decent TVs have gotten so cheap that I just prefer to watch movies at home.
But I haven't even done that for a while.
If it's going to be crowded - no thanks.
Tangentially, because my gf works in opera I've been to some productions, and real theatre - a real stage, with real people, and real stage effects - can have a presence and magic that cinema can't touch.
So I'd much rather spend money on that now. It's physically less comfortable because of the seats, but as an experience it's so much more hands-on, hand-made, and satisfying, and creatively it leaves so much more space for atmosphere and implication.
I don't dislike it, but it's also pretty expensive and it's not something I'm terribly passionate about. I agree that it's a little different though; each production is a little unique, and seeing it in person is a bit more of a visceral experience.
I can go to the movie and there is a decent chance people will talk through the movie or will be on their phones, etc. Or I could watch at home and be guaranteed a great experience.
Movie theaters have to upgrade the experience. They need to police patrons like they used to. They need to sell better food and drinks. And they need to get the pricing model under control.
Or cheapen it. We've got two draft house style theaters that are social experiences that show older reels, things from the public domain, and local and independent film. Door policies vary, but until the set feature time, it's just like a pub with an extra big screen in the back.
It's also cheaper to operate without box office staff and doesn't degrade the experience. People could be always be better, but I'd say big theater chains and Hollywood are really what are out of touch.
Isn't this a problem all across American society now?
The last time I went to a theater, I went to the first showing of the movie for the day. We were the only people in the theater. 30 minutes into the movie, the projection suddenly shut off and all the lights turned on. After sitting there for about 10 minutes, we went out to talk to a staff member about it, and they told us that the computer said there was no one in the theater so they should shut it off. Long story short, they did not end up turning it back on, and referred us to the customer support hotline to try and get our money back. And this might be a little ageist, but there's something infuriating about a condescending teenager acting like this is somehow our fault. Yeah, no thank you.
I initially very politely asked them if they could stop talking because we're trying to watch the movie, but they didn't take that very seriously.
After another ten minutes of their commentary I yell very loudly "SHUT THE FUCK UP!". Extremely loud, I suspect everyone in the theater heard me pretty clearly. I'm a pretty big guy and I have a very loud and deep voice, and of course the theater is dark, so they might have assumed I was more threatening than I actually am. The teenagers shut up for the rest of the movie.
The thing is, though, it kind of ruined the rest of the movie for me. The entire time I'm sitting there, kind of worked up and annoyed that I had to yell at some kids and ruin their Friday night.
I've certainly had good times in theaters too, I like movies, but I've grown a bit tired of it. Now generally the only time I go to the theater is the live showings of The Room.
But the experience is way better than when we were kids. Watching Jurassic Park on a 19-inch CRT with mono audio was nothing like going to the theater. The delta between home and cinema was massive. Now I have a 77-inch OLED with 4K HDR and an Atmos sound setup. I'd take my home setup over a generic cinema screen. Only the premium large format is a noticeable upgrade. It's hard to justify shelling out a ton of money for the movie and snacks for similar audio/visual quality to home, and the risk that the person next to me is checking their phone the entire time (happened a year ago, and it's super distracting in a dark theater).
I buy popcorn kernels in bulk at my local grocery store, and we go through a lot of popcorn. It might cost $10 a year in kernels to regularly eat popcorn at home when you pop it yourself.
After I made the mistake of reading the nutrition label on the back of Takis and potato chips, I bought a Stir Crazy popcorn maker [2] started making popcorn at home very regularly. Popcorn isn't exactly "good" for you, but it's not nearly as bad for you as basically chips. I buy the kernels in bulk on Amazon, and I have no idea how much I spend on popcorn but I don't think it could be more than $20 a year, even with three people living in my house.
If you want to real movie theater taste, there is also Flavacol [3]. This is what a lot of theaters will actually use to get the distinctive "movie theater popcorn" taste.
[1] https://en.creative.com/p/speakers/creative-stage Yes! Creative is still around and this sound bar actually sounds great if you plug in the subwoofer.
[2] https://www.amazon.com/82505-Electric-Popcorn-Stirring-Conve...
[3] https://www.amazon.com/Gold-Medal-Prod-Flavacol-Seasoning/dp...
My grandfather told me until the 1960s, tickets were for all-day entry. Show up whenever for whatever was playing, which was generally run on loop. You could step out for a smoke, get a drink, eat at a local diner, and then head back in and possibly catch where you left off, or maybe pay a dime fee for re-entry. At some point, they started closing the doors after the feature started, and from there we got the modern business model.
At home, I can still do all of those things, and more.
I complain about movie costs while I watch movies at home, drive a VW that was under $40k new, live in a state with a minimum wage over $17 an hour, and refuse to pay $14 plus tip to a food truck that doesn't provide seating when I can pay $12 and no tip at a fast food restaurant that does provide dine-in eating.
Some of us live our principles, we're not all just whinging hypocrites.
A rich person does not drive a Tesla.
EDIT: I was going off of memory, but matinee/child/senior pricing is apparently $9.75 at the theater I usually go to, evening is $13.25 (I never go in the evening, had forgotten what that price was). They have a two drink and popcorn combo for $22.10. So the worst case of evening prices (again, not considering IMAX, just regular screens and seats) for two with that combo is $48.60. That's not cheap, but it's not $86 either. And if you're willing to share the drink and go to a matinee you can cut the price to $34.80. This is a Cinemark, a pretty big theater chain.
IMAX opening week is a lot, $25-35. After a while it can drop to $20 or so. Regular is more like $20-25 opening week and drops to $12-15.
I don't bother with popcorn and soda, it's grossly over priced. Like $10 for a small popcorn the size of a pint. I buy a 0.5L bottle at the grocery store next to the cinema and some M (our M&Ms), maybe $10.
Though lately I've been going a lot to the local cinemateque. Not only are tickets around $7 regardless, they mostly show classic movies so seldom worse than the new stuff. They show popular movies too, recently saw Heat there, first time I saw it at the big screen since the premiere. Still packed a punch.
The minimum wage for a cleaner is 46k per year ($23\h). And your boss better not try any shenanigans, because you're most likely unionized and shouldn't really be messed with.
I've found $18 ticket for opening week for Hail Mary in my city. Most of them were at $23, but that's for the premium sall, with shaking seats or other fancy stuff.
So a person with a job looked down upon in most other countries can still get one ticket for an hour of work.
Reason I've felt compelled to reply was because cinema tickets always felt cheap to me in Norway, compared to more like 2h of work for minimum wage worker in Poland where I originally come from. Compared to any other prices like $15 for a beer at a bar or $30+ for a bottle of vodka in the alcohol shop* they just always felt like a steal. YMMV OFC.
*Interesting trivia: The alcohol shop is called Vinmonopolet and it really is a monopoly. The only company allowed to sell alcohol above 4.7% is run by the state. They have shops in towns, and if you live far from one (like most of northern Norway past the polar circle) you're most likely getting your alcohol from homebrew mafia instead.
IMAX opening week is a bit more but are comparable to mid-range concert tickets. And it really is a big screen, so can definitely be worth it.
The snacks and drinks at the cinema is wild though I think. As a comparison the M's they sell are twice the price and half the size of that from the grocery store. I get that they want to make some money on it, but 4x the price is just too much for me.
7 dollar tickets I haven't seen since elementary school
Despite what everyone here always says I haven't noticed a substantial difference in service or the audience quality since pre-COVID. Remember, even in the early 90's Seinfeld had an entire B-plot about disruptive movie-goers. This isn't new.
The one thing that's annoying is the commercials, but AMC even tells you how long those are now, and with reserved seats, you can just show up near the end of them.
Popcorn and drinks is usually roughly the same price as the ticket, though the smaller ones frequently forbid it - they claim for the experience, I wonder if it's that or not wanting to clean between passes.
I go weekly, though rarely American movies.
I haven't priced the popcorn or drinks, but I don't think they'd add on another $50.
And then wonder why people don't go to the cinema and wonder if they can increase the amount of ads to compensate...
Fwiw I always enjoyed the trailers at the movies, no the other ads I could very much do away with (and I used to purposefully come late to shows to miss the ads).
If the whole preshow is 10 minutes like in the theater where I used to live a few years ago, that is still somewhat more acceptable. But these days, with 20-25 min of preshow, were I to arrive at the showtime, I'd be looking at spending 1hr extra just to see a movie compared to watching it home (consider the time it takes to travel and maybe wait in the line for concessions).
I'm sure that's what lots of people do and many people are totally fine with this. Not me. I have got too much going on to spare that 1hr, especially on a weekday evening. I have to intentionally leave late to arrive on time to justify even going to the theater at all.
Oh, and it was $11 for one of the tickets, $13 for another. I don't remember how much a beer cost, but it was on par with (and maybe less than) local bars.
This seems key, the more comments I read here about cinema theatres and their crowds. Maybe the local (indie) cinematheque is the best movie theatre for money/quality ratio.
I haven't been to a movie in a theater in at least 10 years.
The prices you see upfront like this are for "suckers". People who come in, don't think about price, and just pay whatever the cost is. McDonald's is like this now too.
People who are concerned about price though - they use the app, they get deals, and so forth. I've gone to movies and done the same thing - two tickets, two drinks, 1 popcorn and it was $30. This is because these movie theaters run "deals" all the time for this stuff.
You'll have to get used to this paradigm as it's the main way everything is priced now. There's not going to be a "one price for everyone" thing anymore. It's going to be dynamic and different pricing for everything.
The markup on concessions has always been a thing but it really is just insane to think the unit economics on 2 sodas and a popcorn must be like 50 cents and selling it from $26 (in my area). Clearly they must make the most money this way but it is just crazy that anyone outside of significant disposable income even considers buying concessions. It's priced in such a way where anyone outside of the top 5% income brackets should just laugh at the price and view it as an extreme luxury good and not ever even consider buying anything.
So, we’re looking at $53. Which is $33 less than wherever you’re at.
I also don’t know how standardized prices are across all AMC venues. So while Pokopia costs $70 everywhere, the same may not be true of theater tickets and concessions.
But yeah, it’s typically why we try to avoid theater concessions, because they’ve always been overpriced
I get the experience and that there are employees to pay, and such, but if companies want people to still go the movies, they need to ramp those prices down in some way.
In Europe I only go to alternative cinemas which happen to be part of the movie pass network, called Gildepass in Germany.
The silver screen has a contrast ratio in the hundreds. A $300 consumer TV now looks significantly better than the blurry, muted, and muddled projector image.
Then the audio at theaters is always totally blown out and overly bassy and siblant. Fine for action, I guess, but it makes listening to dialogue exhausting.
And unless you get your favorite seat, you have to watch the movie skewed. God forbid you get a seat in the front and have to crane your neck the whole hour.
Meanwhile I can stay home, not deal with driving 20 minutes and interacting with the public, pay less, eat better food, get blitzed with friends, talk with my wife, have better visuals and audio, etc. Other than nostalgia, there's just no reason at all to go to a movie theater. It's become kind of outdated in an era of modern TVs to me.
Other highlights include the super bright EXIT signs flanking both sides of the screen -- helps me get immersed in the scene. The occasional loud bass rumble from the action movie playing one theater over also helps.
Although, I’ll admit I go way less often than two years ago when I was full time WFH. Which begs the question if I just went for a reason to leave the house
That being said, I don't go to theaters anymore either. I'd rather watch stuff from the comfort of my home, at any hour of the day. If I have to wait a few months for web/BD releases, no big deal. I have plenty to watch in the meantime.
At last check i was at almost 25 visits this year, just saw F1 again on saturday and off to see Project Hail Mary tonight
Not sure anything's changed. The movie theater experience has always been expensive and I think your bill is pretty much in line with inflation.
I don't think they were that expensive in the 1930s and 40s, maybe into the 50s. Supposedly, in the 1930s, they were around 25 cents, which $5 in today's money.
We've just seriously gone of the rails on pricing for some reason, but it probably started before I was born (in 75) and has just gotten a lot worse over time (so in the 90s, they were expensive, but are even more expensive today).
Comparing with the 90s seems reasonable because nothing is dramatically different about the experience except there are generally better seats now.
Skip the sodas and the popcorn. Go eat before or later. It still won't be cheap, but at least the meal will be better!
However it is still frustrating that they expect you to tolerate 30 minutes of commercials after paying so much money.
We simply arrive late.
For any normal movie I'd rather just watch it from my couch. But for the once in a while, over the top, blockbuster I'll still go to a theater.
I enjoyed each one in the theater but I tried watching Avatar: The Way of Water at home and despite having an entire media room devoted to good sound, proper lighting well calibrated projector and such it was not all that great. The movie fell a little flat without the theater experience to go with it.
I saw the limited run in advance to the 3rd one coming out in theaters again and it was good in that setting, as a reference point for my experience
That's not to say that all movies in this category are *only* worth watching in the theater like Avatar is. For instance I would have still enjoyed the recent Dune movies either way but they were a lot better with all the pomp & circumstance.
Or maybe it's just a horror/Marvel thing. Weapons and Endgame had a similar audience feel to Sinners and Black Panther.
Definitely not during Chris Nolan films. It's hard enough to hear his dialogue when it's dead silent.
I'm not sure who is going to the theater or why, but I hope they are enjoying themselves!
The market-clearing price is nearly zero except for some new releases. Oppenheimer was sold out in its first weekend, for example.
Anyone who went to movies before about 1999 remembers them being a lot more popular.
There is another theater on the other side of town that does midnight showings of Rocky Horror Picture Show. Those kinds of places are also cheap.
We almost never go to regular theaters anymore. IMAX feels worth it for something like F1 or Top Gun where it’s all about the visual spectacle, otherwise meh.
We go to Alamo Drafthouse a lot tho. A little pricey but the experience of watching a movie in comfy seats over a fairly decent restaurant dinner is fantastic for certain kinds of movies. Peaky Blinders was the most recent. Tommy Shelby paired with a good cocktail or two, fantastic.
Also I don’t know how Alamo achieves this, but people there are really good about noise and other bullshit. I think it’s because they do in fact kick people out for being annoying.
Tickets are a bit more for IMAX.
Less than an hour outside Philly. The theater is recently renovated too and has nice recliner seats, and everyone has their own armrest.
In Spain I went to regular cinema this Sunday, 8 EUR per ticket per person, + ~10 EUR per person for snacks, so ~20 EUR per person for me and my wife.
Also got tickets to see Project Hail Mary at IMAX, 2 tickets for the premiere, and I paid 29.80 EUR for two tickets, thought it was expensive, but seems we're luckier than I thought :)
It seems the pricing is about the same as yours.
Because my local AMC has tickets right now at $20, and soda+popcorn is another $20.
- Lord of the Rings: a family came in after the movie started with a cluster of helium balloons, each of which eventually got loose and floated around the theatre. A small balloon creates an outsized shadow on the screen when it floats in front of the projector (e.g., sometimes a third of the picture would disappear).
- A Beautiful Mind: Several guys, in different spots in the theatre, would wait for a quiet moment in the movie and say loudly "Oh my beautiful mind". One guy had a squeaky seat, so each time he said his bit, he would squeak his chair 5 times.
- Panic Room: Two people directly behind us just laughed hysterically at seemingly every line in the movie.
Also, the advertisements went on too long (20 minutes maybe?) and were also rock-concert loud.
Last night, I watched Wolfs (Apple TV) in my living room with my spouse and we enjoyed it. It's not a great movie, but it's good, there are no ear-splitting advertisements, and the audience is well behaved.
Edit: Later in the 2000s I did see a few Coen brothers films in the theatre, and those were good experiences, but I still avoided the theatre for the most part.
meanwhile I saw a 50-inch tv at costco for $239, and a 98-inch tv for $1299
Cheapest tickets are £2.50 where I am in London. Maybe £4.50 at a stretch. £10 worse care scenario.
Granted, I don't know about sodas and popcorn, as we always bring or eat beforehand.
Having said that, home theatre is hard to beat but I'd still check a cinema every so often just to experience the group vibe. Nothing beats the collective vibe around a great movie - and worth the risk of shitty neighbours. Maybe I just love cinema.
That is how it was explained to me when I said something similar
But in my days it was around 12€ for a ticket, popcorn and a coke. And there were cinema days with special deals. Or cheap sneak previews.
I would never go when paying for me and my SO is equivalent of one of my subscriptions for a year.
I'm not talking about the 1990s Times Square theaters with a whole other 'type' of audience, eh, member.
The communal experience is special
On top of that most people don't have the attention span to sit through a film without opening their phones - film is supposed to be about capturing your attention not just entertainment
Otherwise watch it on your laptop for all I care
Yes, but only if your community is composed of well-behaved people. Apparently, this just isn't the case in many places.