SCFZ

Define this however you'd like

Mine (chronological order)

July 9, 2010 (Pacific Cinematheque) - Yojimbo. My first Kurosawa. My awakening. I went to the cinema that day, and I really never left

June 24, 2011 (Rio Theatre) - Dazed and Confused at midnight, Slacker at 2am. Shotgunning contest on stage before the movie (which I won). Back when the Rio didn't suck

July 25, 2014 (Doc Films @ U Chicago) - Mysterious Skin on 35mm. Went in lukewarm on Araki. Saw one of the most amazing pieces of art I'll ever see. Totally taken aback. Tears streaming down my face. A religious experience

October 10 & 14, 2015 (Gene Siskel Film Center) - Kings of the Road, my favourite, on the big-screen. Nothing will ever beat that but I hope to experience it again. And yes, I went twice 4 days apart

May 8, 2019 (TIFF Lightbox) - As I Was Moving Ahead ... on 16mm, while I'm fucking doing training in Toronto for my corporate law firm articles, during the day... at night I can still come home to the cinema and experience some God-level appreciation and expression of the tragedy of human endeavour

this is actually tough...taking this as in the cinema, a public space where movies are screened, not just like "a movie i watched somehow"

sunrise, spencertown academy sometime in the early 2000s? - i actually god a summertime job at this space, a weird kind of stuffy arts space out in a extreme rural location run by a nyc transplant who had made a ton of money from a life in advertising. she was actually very sweet but the whole organization was a mess...they spent thousands of dollars a year i remember sending mail adverts to people who had been dead for years, most of my job was to call those people up and see if they still existed (most of them did not). but at one point before i worked there they ran a silent film series, where donald sosin did live accompaniment on piano; i've seen him since and he's always been fine but not great but this, with my first experience seeing this kind of theater experience seemed magical. sunshine is great of course but at this moment the space just seemed alive, exciting in some weird way.

cowards bend the knee, time and space limited hudson ny (2003 i guess?) - tsl was or i guess is a weird reclaimed industrial space in hudson, i guess a very gentrifying space by a lovely queer couple that was when i still lived upstate very dull in its programming but sometimes very exciting. was in high school at the time, convinced a friend of mine to drive up to hudson with me to see it, we were the only people in the theater besides the brazilian funk band that was supposed to play later that night. expected it to be camp or funny but found it very unsettling, vulnerable.

out 1, museum of the moving image 2006 - couldn't convince anyone else i knew to go to the theater with me so i went into city by myself for this, getting totally lost the first day but making it on time somehow. remember leaving the theater after the first half, with the extraordinary ending of part six just finishing, taking the elevated subway back home (which is my regular train now many years later) when it just started to snow, a strange old woman singing christmas songs over her out of tune acoustic guitar. still probably the most important film in a theater experience i can think of.

the water magician, japan society (2008 i think?) - the photographer hiroshi sugimoto programmed a set of films that meant a lot to him at japan society, i think a friend and i also went to see world of geisha at the same series. but water magician was shown in an incredible print, with not only benshi narration from sugimoto himself but a live electric shamisen score. have seen the film a few more times, including on a print with pre-recorded narration at momi's mizo series, but never had the same effect on me since this screening and performance.

god's comedy, brooklyn academy of music (2010?) - maybe the last time i went into a theater not knowing anything about the film or the filmmaker and came away so surprised. and one of the most beautiful prints i've ever seen, just the way sunlight looks in it. have had great experiences in theater since then but can't think of a kind of rush of something from out of nowhere since...

haven't been to the cinema that much compared to most cinephiles, I'd say, and these events may seem small and silly but these are the ones that jump to mind:

National Treasure (New Year's Eve 2004) - briefly summarized the experience in my lb review, but as a 12 year old this helped shape me. Came home and started drawing treasure maps that night and soon after getting lost in historical non-fiction, especially U.S. history

The Tree of Life (Summer 2011) - 4 times in the span of two weeks with four different people. A religious experience. Transformative.

Monsieur Lazhar (Winter 2011) - didn't love the film on a recent rewatch, but saw this at the Circle Cinema in Tulsa, showing finished after midnight, snow was falling on the drive home, streets were calm and empty - serene but heavy emotions

Days of Heaven (Summer 2019) - Mayan in Denver. 101 degrees that day. Driving home listening to kottke's enderlin.

Saw a ton of movies in high school at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor. I love that place a lot, but I'm having a hard time thinking of a specific experience I had there that was especially transcendent. (As opposed to a movie I loved that I saw for the first time there, which seems like a slightly different question.) It still feels like cheating not to mention it, though.

The summer after I graduated high school I was a counselor at a summer camp in Boston. We got a Saturday off in the middle of the session and I spent the day watching Kieslowski's Three Colors trilogy, and then Sweet Sweetback's Badass Song, at the Brattle in Cambridge. I think all of those movies except for Three Colors White are great, but I had a really emotional experience that I think had to do with more than their content -- it had been kind of a stressful summer for me and I appreciated the time alone, and as silly as it sounds I felt very adult for being able to just hop on the subway and go watch movies for eight hours. I noticed midway through the second movie that there's a big, lit-up(?) clock at that theater, right next to the screen. Like, in case someone realizes they're running late for a meeting? I've never seen that anywhere else but maybe it's more common than I think!

Last summer I saw Sam Green's and Bill Siegel's Weather Underground doc at the Music Box in Chicago. I'd never heard of Bill Siegel, but he had died the year before and they were showing both of his movies. Although I wasn't able to stay for the second, about Muhammad Ali, because I had to work in the morning, I thought the one I did see was really smart and well-made. Afterwards there was a short talkback with Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, and they mostly discussed their friendship with the director rather than the content of the movie. Bernadine Dohrn said they would go to Cubs games together and talk about their respective kids -- or maybe it was White Sox games? Either way, I thought it was so sweet, and I felt really privileged to be with a group of people celebrating this guy who had clearly meant a lot to them but whom I didn't know anything about. Kind of a stark contrast with the doc itself, which is pretty bleak.

Probably mentioned it before, but I vividly recall seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey as a kid when my parents surprisingly decided to go see it, presumably because of it had gotten a lot of press or something. They didn't care for it much at all, but I was enthralled. I still think of it as being quite possibly the purest response to a movie I've ever had, in the way it was more or less meant to be experienced. While I'm much better able to quantify or explain my experience/reactions to it or any movies now than I obviously could as a child, I think I've only rarely "understood" a movie better as a total experience than I did then. All the added intellectual justification I could now offer over why I think or feel as I do about films isn't quite the same thing at all as completely "feeling" the experience. I don't regret the shift to how I think about movies now, as relying on one's experiential take alone carries other dangers and I grew to be more fascinated by thinking about audience response than just responding, but I can't deny the power and influence seeing 2001 like that had on me.

Aguirre the Wrath of God was likely the first "foreign" film and/or "arthouse" film I saw at a theater, as part of a double feature with,I believe, Amarcord. It was an ideal theater experience for being so well suited to the big screen, so different than US films and for being the first in a string of viewings of major "art"/"foreign" films I'd go to see within a brief period, that would really inform and define how I came to appreciate a wider world of movies. It was the first of dozens of movies we'd go see at that theater, stuff like Amarcord, The Tin Drum and Kagemusha were all amazing to me then for how different they were from each other and, even more, from the standard mass audience films you'd see. The theater itself played a part in the experience, even all these many years later the smells, sounds, and vibe of the place remains as a connected part of the memories. All this was helped by it happening when I was 13/14 with seeing all kinds of movies and getting involved with other media forming the basis of a friendship with another kid who's mom was all about the value of the arts. My parents weren't that way themselves, but allowed me more freedom to do what I wanted than was probably good for me, which allowed the two of us young teens to do pretty much whatever we wanted, which somehow meant indulging in media not really considered aimed at young teens, to good and more questionable result. There was something unlikely about that back then, which the internet has sort of made more possible today.

To maybe cheat a bit, in high school a teacher was given the chance to try out a having a film history course for one quarter, which I obviously took. She showed things like The General, Bridge on the River Kwai, and some others I no longer recall, save for Citizen Kane. We watched it in class, but the thing that sticks with me is that while we had the class, the movie was held in the AV room of our school library where we could check it out to run for ourselves in one of the AV rooms. Needless to say, I suppose, there wasn't a long line of other students longing to grab it, so I spent my lunch hours for the few weeks we had the movie, projecting different segments of it for myself. Also needless to say perhaps is that when we did get around to discussing the movie in class, I was as big a pain in the ass as I am now, debating the teacher on a number of points for having watched it so intently by then. It seems somethings never change. Watching it like that combined with my getting interested in reading film criticism, and disagreeing with it, helped develop how I came to think about movies and the interest in them as something more than just as an experience of the moment.

Gymakta, the thrill of gymnastics plus the kill of karate! What more need be said? Well, okay, maybe I could add I saw it in an otherwise empty theater with a group of friends and had a wonderful time for being able to talk about/ at the movie while we watched it. We had such a good time that the people who worked at the theater remembered me months later, as they evidently were coming in to the theater to listen to us "discussing" it because it was such a slow day. That led to me getting a job at the theater where I made some good friends, but watching and enjoying Gymkata also helped change the way I think about entertainment and convention, as ot how people catalog or slot different movie experiences into packages like "so bad its good" or in how certain completely unbelievable things are accepted without a shrug in conventional films if they're packaged in a way one expects, but are slotted differently if the movie violates expectations even if the pleasure provided acts along the same general axis.

Lastly I guess I'll say Moonrise Kingdom since I largely stopped seeing movies at theaters years ago, but seeing Moonrise Kingdom on the big screen reminded me of the very real differences between viewing something at home on a smaller screen and seeing it in a theater. The impact of some movies is completely different when seen large and in theater sound, and that's setting aside the difference an audience makes. Seeing Moonrise Kingdom, and some other movies, on a small screen weakens or outright loses some of the visual and aural emphasis of the film in a very real way beyond the other little distractions and differences in manner of watching, like pausing films and breaking up the flow of the experience which shouldn't be forgotten, even as I still don't partake in theater viewing much at all anymore.

A lot of my top experiences overlap geographically with Bure's at the Siskel Center and Doc Films. I've also been to the Music Box many times (@harry), and I actually stopped in to look at the Mayan Theater when I passed through Denver in 2016 (@liquidnature). It's hard to pick only five, but here goes:

Circa 1981 (Varsity Theater, Evanston, IL) - When I was about 11 my parents took me to Picnic at Hanging Rock. We saw it in one of those old theaters of the 1920s with a Spanish castle around the screen and stars on the ceiling. I don't remember what I thought of the movie then, but maybe because the movie never truly ends, it activated something in me that came back with full force nine or ten years later. Suddenly I had to know what that movie was about girls disappearing in a rock... it was like a long-forgotten dream. I decided it was my favorite movie, and catching up with it again a couple years later didn't change my mind. Last year I celebrated my 50th birthday with a visit to the real Hanging Rock near Melbourne.

February or March 1990 (Northwestern University Library, Evanston, IL) - When I first watched The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari I was more interested in architecture than film. The expressionist sets drew me in, but I was amazed to discover an intricate plot with lasting psychological insights. I've watched the film every year since then, 31 times and counting, and I still discover new things in it.

November 1992 (Facets Multimedia, Chicago) - Watching Stalker for the first time left me shaken. It was everything I wanted a film to be: beautiful, challenging, reassuring, and mysterious, and I couldn't stop thinking about it for a couple days. On my fifth viewing in 1999 I suddenly realized the film had too many parallels to The Wizard of Oz to be a coincidence. Later I shared my observations with a professor who was teaching an entire course on Andrei Rublev, and he encouraged me to publish my findings, which I finally did in 2006 in an Italian journal.

July 1994 (73rd floor of the John Hancock Center, Chicago) - In May of the same year at Facets, at a screening of Touchez pas au grisbi, I met who would become my teacher and best friend for 24 years, Lawrence N. Fox. He lived in what was then one of the highest apartments in the world with a killer skyline view, and in July we started meeting there weekly with a couple friends to analyze films. The first of these "classes" was on Shadow of a Doubt, and it changed my thinking irrevocably. Larry had a way of finding hidden patterns in movies, and he showed us how Hitchcock built the whole film around a ring and a staircase. A wedding ring changes hands three times in the movie, and whoever holds the ring holds the upper hand in the relationship. Reflecting the ring, each circle, even the loop on a windowshade drawstring, comments on the power struggle between Uncle Charlie and his niece. Our next two classes were on The Exterminating Angel and Muriel. Thanks to Larry I began to understand how much in movies no one notices, not even the best critics.

2007 (Hyde Park, Chicago) - Watching Godard's 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her for the fifth or sixth time, I started to see that I had misjudged the film pretty badly. It's humbling to be so wrong, but there's nothing like the experience of coming to understand and appreciate a film you've disliked. It means the cinema is bigger than any one person's view of it, and there's more to a film than anyone's reflexive opinions. It taught me to put my own likes and preferences in perspective, and to reappraise films I hadn't cared about before.

One of my favorite things about moving around the globe so much is that I get to form these strong emotional bonds with various venues, and films that would normally not make much impression except for the nostalgia of a former home.

Chungking Express at the Jerusalem Cinematheque in Jerusalem. Saw a great 35mm print of this film with only Hebrew subtitles (which is absolutely useless to me). So I watched it with no real emphasis on spoken language (though I had seen it before, so basic plot wasn't really an issue). This was a transcendent experience. I wish I could see more prints for the second time without English subs. I've only managed to do this one other time (with I Don't Want To Sleep Alone) and it was also a really great way to re-experience a beloved film. There's the added benefit that I was living in the West Bank at the time. Walking 25 minutes to checkpoint 300, being herded through like cattle, getting guns pointed at you and screamed at, waiting for the apartheid bus to show up then getting off and hiking up hill to the theater... not an experience I want to regularly re-create, but immensely cathartic once you're inside and watching a movie and being completely transported out of the conflict for brief moment in time (despite the uncomfortable reminders all around me. The cinematheque in Jerusalem is build over many of my good friend's literal demolished homes, and they weren't allowed to come see the film with me because of their identity.) Incredibly bittersweet and emotionally overhwelming , but the film experience itself was top notch.

Stray Dogs at the Breeze Center in Taipei. Scored tickets to the world premiere of this at the Taipei Golden Horse film festival. I essentially moved to Taipei out of my love of Tsai Ming-Liang's films. Getting to see what was ostensibly (at the time) his last film on a massive screen; one that really felt like a final statement, and recontextualization of all his previous work was absolutely invigorating. I also got the chance to chat briefly with him, Lee Kang-Sheng, and Chen Shiang-Chiyi. My Chinese was terrible and I'm pretty sure they understood nothing I said. But it felt like a historic moment in modern cinema, and I was overwhelmed at the opportunity to sit there and watch it unfold.

Hiroshima Mon Amour the SPOT Huashan in Taipei. Watched this in a theater owned by Hou Hsiao Hsien, and a brand new 35mm restoration. I'd seen the film for the first time maybe six months prior to this screening, and loved it, but nothing came close to this screening. There's a moment in the film where Riva, somewhat suddenly, screams "I WAS SO YOUNG ONCE!" and I started sobbing without any biological forewarning. I'd never experienced that. The theater was packed full. Taipei's audiences were the best I've experienced anywhere in the world. But this began a permanent love affair with Resnais and Duras. Mind blowing experience.

Biutiful at UGC Bercy in Paris. UGC is a massive cineplex. I remember nothing special about the programming or projection in general. But I would regularly skip class and just see whatever title piqued my interest. This was one of those, and I stupidly didn't consider that the film was in Spanish. Meaning I'd have to navigate Spanish audio and French subs. I'd never attempted to watch a movie without English audio or subtitles ever before. And after a brutal first 15 minutes, I felt fairly comfortable and found I really could handle 90% of the dialogue. This was a major step forward in my French language skills, and a defining moment in language learning for me. I still have never re-watched the film, because I like that I've only experienced it with French subs.

Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Silence at The Egyptian in Los Angeles. The American Cinematheque did so much amazing programming between the Egyptian in Hollywood and the Aero in Santa Monica. I used to visit one of them every week, and am being crushed with nostalgia for their programming lately. But if I had to pick one highlight, it would be the Bergman triple feature (they programmed every one of his films over the course of a couple months for his centennial). It was partly just getting see the films again on the big screen, partly seeing them back to back, and partly the weird vibe of getting out of a Bergman triple feature at 2am and stumbling onto Hollywood blvd. A fight broke out in the opening minutes of Winter Light because they gave no warning and just dropped the house lights and started playing the film. One guy was trying to put his phone on airplane mode still, and the guy behind him kicked his seat for not doing it quick enough. First guy dumped his popcorn over the seat-kicker's head and stormed out. Oddly enough a month later a fight broke out at my screening of First Reformed, so something about crisis of faith pastor movies doesn't sit well with L.A. crowds. Oddly conflicting mood, but unforgettable nonetheless.

1. Wild at Heart (March, 2017). My local film festival had David Lynch retrospective and as I haven't seen Wild at Heart before, watching this unique masterpiece on the big screen was a blast. It was an experience like no other. The screening room was packed with one of the best audiences I've ever encountered during my days of going to cinema. The energy of everyone equally loving the experience coupled with the colorful canvas of full-blown craziness painted on the screen by one David Lynch. Great experience!

And that jacket - it truly represents a symbol of individuality and belief in personal freedom.

2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (March, 2020). Funny enough, it's also the most recent film I've seen at the cinema. I've seen 2001 multiple times at home before watching it in a crappy little cinema on a tiny screen a few years back. So I was glad to find out that restored version was coming to my favorite cinema and on the biggest screen in the city. Audience of 700 and yet one could hear a hair fall down. That's how this film takes you in and doesn't let go. Monumental achievement in film-making.

3. The Great Beauty (September, 2013). I watched this one when I lived in London. Having seen and loved Sorrentino's Il Divo, I expected something special and yet I was stunned and amazed at the extraordinary beauty of this film. It is currently in my Top 10 of all time, the only film from the 21st Century. Toni Servillo's performance is a unique meditation on human condition. City of Rome plays a character itself. Would love to watch this one in cinema again.

4. L’Atalante (March, 2018). An opportunity to see Jean Vigo on the big screen should never be missed. L’Atalante, I think, is a perfect film in every step of the way.

5. Koyaanisqatsi (November, 2012). I was pleasantly surprised that another, smaller festival decided to hold a special screening of Koyaanisqatsi. Again, it is one of those films that greatly improve when seen at the cinema. The beautiful compositions by Philip Glass playing loud over the spectacular visual montage is the experience I won't forget.

wow you guys. unless you live in 5 or 6 certain cities in the uk you can forget seeing anything other than trash in a theatre.

i hate going to the cinema. people talking all the way through it, kicking the back of your chair, taking phone calls. sorry why the fuck have you paid all that money to sit somewhere and chat when you could do it for free in a fucking park. sitting innocently glad that you finally managed to see a french or greek film and then the director puts a giant close up of an erect penis on the screen and you want to die. hey, i'm british. fuck going to the cinema. the last few times i've been i've left hating everyone and everything.

the last time i actually remember being happy about the cinema was one month in (2007/08/09/can't remember) when the local arthouse cinema showed three monkeys, in the city of sylvia and the romance of astrea and celadon and it was bliss until later that month they announced they were changing hands and stopped showing foreign films which to be fair was expected as i was the only person at all three of those showings.

only other happy cinema experience i had was going with work colleagues to see borat and again we were the only people in the cinema and we all just started laughing mainly at each other laughing and we all left crying, but that's pretty much it for me and cinemas.

Aw man, that sucks twodeadmagpies... I live in NYC, so luckily we have plenty of theatres where people know how to behave and watch movies.

Top 5 -

1. First and earliest memory is my parents taking my brother and me to the drive-in to see "American Graffiti." I was probably only about 5. I sat on the roof of the car. Everything that was happening was so new to me that it was instantly etched into my brain.

2. Second was when my dad took my brother and me to see a matinee of "Blues Brothers" in 1980. It was my first Rated R movie. That's all that mattered. Being at a real-live grown-up's movie. I also ate a spoiled Slim Jim while I was there and I threw up in the car on the way home. Regardless, it was an epic day.

3. (Related to twodeadmagpies' entry above) While in high school, a group of friends and I went to see "Karate Kid, Part II" and we were so obnoxious in the audience that we got kicked out. Shameful. Ah, youth. Live and learn.

4. While at college in Florida, I went to see the movie, "Green Card." It was fine. Your basic Rom-com. But the significant thing was it was the first movie I saw by myself.

5. In 1995, I was on a national tour in the U.S. with a musical and the whole cast went to see this movie about Vegas called "Showgirls." Maybe you've heard of it. We were in showbiz, so it seemed right. None of us knew what we were in for.

i don't keep track of dates or cinema names so i might have some of these wrong

jurgen reble films (a few of them), somewhere in east london, want to say the lux? - seeing reble on film is an unreal experience, it's like the screen is alive and burning up and imploding before your eyes. most memorable thing i've ever seen in cinema

sergei parajanov double bill (shadows of forgotten ancestors, color of pomegranates), electric cinema, london - cinema is from like 1910, it was the first time i'd been to a theater that old, art deco architecture, couches everywhere (i heard they were planning to put in beds too, for an especially relaxing cinema experience). and parajanov on the big screen is special

bela tarr, satantango, nft, london - a lot of my best cinema experiences are with long duration films, watching at home i'd take lunch breaks or whatever, but that uninterrupted immersion you just have to have in cinema i find especially powerful with films like those bela tarr makes. i've had similar (better, probably) experiences with werckmeister harmonies (at the montreal film festival if i remember correctly) or lav diaz's norte the end of history (at the art gallery, ago, in toronto, during tiff) in cinema, but the satantango screening felt like a real event, since it's so rare a cinema can block off that many hours, there was like a buzz in the lobby beforehand. and the quay brothers were sitting immediately behind me for eight hours.

guy maddin, the saddest music in the world, london, curzon soho i think - the london premiere, good film, but was just a really fun night because my partner at the time was friends with the head of the distribution co, so we drank beers with guy maddin (and briefly maria de medeiros) after the film

louis malle, zazie dans le metro, somewhere in paris - saw this at a paris rep cinema without subs, and while my french is good it's not queneau-good, it was early into my first trip outside of canada when i was still a teenager, i wasn't even that into film then but it was just one of those times, having a cultural experience in a new country in a different language, where i felt like i was learning something about the world at the same time as seeing a movie.

hon mentions - frantisek vlacil, valley of the bees at riverside studios, london, and celine and julie go boating at tiff lightbox in toronto

harry wrote: ↑Fri Aug 21, 2020 5:35 amI noticed midway through the second movie that there's a big, lit-up(?) clock at that theater, right next to the screen. Like, in case someone realizes they're running late for a meeting? I've never seen that anywhere else but maybe it's more common than I think!

I've only seen that at one theatre, a since-departed one here. See the clock at the front, just to the left. It looks pretty plain in the light of (inside) day, but during a movie it was very nice and... oddly comforting

(And White was by far the best of the 'trilogy' for me, and I don't know why I'm the only one who feels that way!)

Beirut, probably 1988? The civil war was still going on, but during periods of relative calm, I used to often go with my dad to see movies in a number of rundown theaters in Hamra street, which was Beirut’s liveliest street pre-civil war, but by then was a spooky semi-deserted place with a lot of shuttered stores and sandbags. I remember on that day we went to the el dorado theater, which is now a cheap cloth store. They weren’t exactly showing a movie, but rather a collection of fight scenes from different Bruce lee flicks. The seats reeked of pee, and I remember buying a crush glass bottle, a soft drink that used to make my tongue super-orange, probably not good for you. The place was packed with like 200 rowdy men, teenagers and young guys, not a girl in sight, loud and screaming and cheering and totally out of control. Just the best movie crowd I’ve ever witnessed. I think I tried some of the Bruce lee moves on my younger sister that same evening and got yelled at.

Beirut, 1999. There was an Iranian movie festival in the Al Medina theater, an iconic place that closed many years ago. I was with a couple of friends. There was a double feature that night. The first movie was called ‘I am the sigh’ or something like that, just an atrocious garbage melodrama. My friends and I just laughed about it throughout the showing. The second movie was by a guy I had not heard of at that point. Abbas kiarostami. Life and nothing more. I was completely transfixed. I still remember the scene with the car going up the hill. Just life changing.

Beirut, 2001. I think I’ve told this story before, but I once watched Salo in some super-small movie video club run by the communist party. I used to go alone to a lot of micro-cineclubs around Beirut at the time, but I had never gone to that one before, and it took me a while to find it. It was in the basement of some rundown building. They had the screen up between a small kitchen and a toilet. The copy was a shitty video cassette, but that was my first Pasolini and I was quite floored at the time. The handful of people who were there Left in disgust midway through, and by the end it was just me and the “projectionist” ie the guy who hits play at the VCR

Boston, 2007. I accepted a job offer at a software company, but I had to wait for immigration to clear me before I could start, so I decided to just hang out in Boston until I was cleared. The process took like 100 days, so I was leading this weird flaneur life, walking around all day, sitting in coffee shops, reading novels, watching a lot of movies, whatever. I used to go a lot to one particular coffee shop in the Boston University area, because a pretty student used to hang out there a lot. I eventually spoke to her, and we actually went one a couple of dates. Then I heard that yo la tengo was going to provide a live music accompaniment to a bunch of Painleve underwater movies at the Coolidge corner. Of course I asked her if she wanted to go, but she said no, and I ended going alone, and it was really awesome. I remember the long line outside, and that I was pretty much the only freak who showed up alone. Next day I saw her on the subway with some other guy. She later told me she got back together with her ex.

I’ve got to include something from the Harvard film archive, which I used to visit a lot before I got married and had kids and moved to the suburbs. I guess I would go with the Pedro costa retrospective in 2009, with costa in attendance for introductions and Q and As. I saw in vanda’s room, colossal youth, casa de lava... oh my oh my.

lineuphere wrote: ↑Fri Aug 21, 2020 10:05 pm
3. (Related to twodeadmagpies' entry above) While in high school, a group of friends and I went to see "Karate Kid, Part II" and we were so obnoxious in the audience that we got kicked out. Shameful. Ah, youth. Live and learn.

oh so it's you is it!
pretty sure i could live with screaming during karate kid tho.

sorry if i came across as psychotic - am hyper-sensitive to noise and my whole life lately is one long fruitless attempt to get just one hour without hammering, drilling, booming music, revving cars etc and to just be able to concentrate on a book that requires concentration. ignore me everyone i'm glad you can all get the classic cinema enjoyment, me i think i would prefer death.

This thread is a joy to read, I've never actually lived in a city that had rep screenings but I also don't enjoy crowds, people etc.

Believe it or not I'll second national treasure as the last film I saw w my dad. He loved it

everybody dislikes the teens but honestly the only truly disruptive audience (and i don't count going to like a comedy where teens are laughing or a masala movie where families are cheering and the little kids are walking up and down the aisles as if they're on holiday) i've really seen are the elderly crowds that go to the matinee screenings at the museum of modern art. you think you're getting to see a nice lubitsch print on your day off and end up hearing senior citizens shout at each other across the auditorium, hashing out years old conflicts. not the worst way to spend your retirement i guess but it is kind of weird for the rest of us

As awful as other people in the cinema can be, I find that I'm my worst enemy when it comes to movie-watching and in the cinema I know I can't pause, can't look at my phone, can't go make a cup of coffee... Great thread, will have to think about my list.

nrh wrote: ↑Sun Aug 23, 2020 12:14 am everybody dislikes the teens but honestly the only truly disruptive audience (and i don't count going to like a comedy where teens are laughing or a masala movie where families are cheering and the little kids are walking up and down the aisles as if they're on holiday) i've really seen are the elderly crowds that go to the matinee screenings at the museum of modern art. you think you're getting to see a nice lubitsch print on your day off and end up hearing senior citizens shout at each other across the auditorium, hashing out years old conflicts. not the worst way to spend your retirement i guess but it is kind of weird for the rest of us

I've heard people say that, but I've personally never experienced it. I must say that the only time I like going to the cinema is during festival seasons.

My choices:

Batman (1989): More for the hype and spectacle. I was very impressed with the film itself though as a kid. What I recall most is the sense of anticipation before it started and hearing Elfman's bombastic score booming out of the speakers while the camera was gliding through what would later be revealed as a bat symbol.

Pulp Fiction (late 1994): Saw it 3 times at the cinema. Was forced to sneak in all 3 times as I was underage. The reason I'm including this film is not because it is still one of my all time favs (it isn't even in my top 150), but because it was probably the first time I saw a real 'zeitgeist' defining film. PF captured lighting in a bottle and had a huge impact on culture of the mid 90's and beyond, more than its box office would suggest, although it certainly made a lot of money. For a while there, it kind of made talking about film 'cool' and it was nice to be able to have more conversations about film without people wondering why the hell you were constantly talking about it.

2001: (1997): It's a conventional choice, and I've gone back and forth on it over the years, but it was the first time I saw a genuine 'classic' film at the cinema that wasn't a family film, and it really blew me away. It was the first time I'd seen it in full too as I didn't have the attention span to watch it previously.

Star Wars reissue (1997): This was more of a nostalgic thing to a degree, but it was exciting to see a film I loved as a child on the big screen in a brand new print. I was also just out of high school and therefore at the tail end of adolescence, so it had some significance that was difficult to articulate at the time but became clearer in retrospect.

L'avventura (late 90's): a university screening. This was my first real introduction to old European 'art films'. I'd be lying if I said that it had a huge impact on me as a film (my appreciation for the film and Antonioni's style grew with time) but it was one of those dot joining 'eureka!' style breakthrough moments for me where the pieces starting falling into place. i.e where I finally understood the connection between films of that style and the European and US art films of the 80's and 90's that I was far more familiar with up until that point. Unfortunately, due to lack of access, I was unable to capitalize on the moment, and I wouldn't really have an opportunity to explore the European art films of the 40's, 50's and 60's until years later, but this screening really planted the seed, and my former lecturer was very pleased to hear that 10 or so years down the line.

FLIP: Valley of The Bees is a great film, but what is it about that experience in particular that made it noteworthy?

Joks Trois wrote: ↑Sun Aug 23, 2020 7:49 am FLIP: Valley of The Bees is a great film, but what is it about that experience in particular that made it noteworthy?

i was thinking about which films impressed me most when i saw them in cinema, and that was one of them - i've never seen it any other way, but it's really visually impressive when projected. but i didn't otherwise have a story about it, so i listed it at the end, along with celine and julie.

nrh wrote: ↑Sun Aug 23, 2020 12:14 am everybody dislikes the teens but honestly the only truly disruptive audience (and i don't count going to like a comedy where teens are laughing or a masala movie where families are cheering and the little kids are walking up and down the aisles as if they're on holiday) i've really seen are the elderly crowds that go to the matinee screenings at the museum of modern art. you think you're getting to see a nice lubitsch print on your day off and end up hearing senior citizens shout at each other across the auditorium, hashing out years old conflicts. not the worst way to spend your retirement i guess but it is kind of weird for the rest of us

This cracked me up.

I thought one of my MOMA experiences was an anomaly, but apparently not: I went to an afternoon screening of "Children of Paradise" at MOMA a few years ago. It was fairly quiet throughout, (aside from the occasional plastic bag rustling -- Old NYers love their plastic shopping bags at matinees), but as soon as the movie ended, some older gentleman shouted, "That's the greatest film ever made." Another gentleman from across the room retorted, "I don't know if it's the GREATEST..." The guy yelled back at him, something like, "Why did you come here if you didn't like it?" The guy shouted back, "I've never seen it. That's why I'm here!" Etc. etc. It was easily one of the nerdiest arguments I'd ever heard.

^ I would agree it's the greatest movie ever made... but people who talk (especially loudly and in public) immediately after a movie is over are the worst people ever made. Except for people who talk during the movie. Or people who laugh at non-comedic parts of foreign movies because they're different from their own culture. Or people who play air keyboard to the soundtrack of a movie in a theatre.

...like someone said up there, I hate seeing movies in theatre -_-

tough one. when i was just a wee little lad, the lion king was one of my fav movies ever. saw it in theatres multiple times back in the day. remember going to the dollar movie theatre (these were theatres that played only movies that had already been out for a while, so you paid just one dollar to get in; does anyone else remember these?), which was next to the rack & sack grocery store (where i used to go and play mortal kombat, while my dad shopped), and my dad (who was probs sick and tired of watching the lion king) went and saw stargate, while i went to the lion king showing, and i was wearing my cowboy boots (cuz i was fuxking john ford-ing it even before i knew who john ford was), and i was all hopped up on candy and soda, and ended up throwing up in the theatre. missed a good part of the movie, while my dad helped clean me off in the bathroom, but i was a super champ even then, so eventually i went back in, and finished watching the lion king for the fifth or sixth time, bellyache and all

this is tough, as I've seen thousands of films at the theatre, most of them older films from the the first 100 years of film/cinema history, which were usually great and many of which I love.

I have actually seen 33 out of my Top 55 films I posted in our poll (viewtopic.php?f=5&t=552) at the cinema from film prints.

So this is just a list of 5 mindblowing cinema experiences out of many.

Ben-Hur (1959): watched this unrestored from an original old 70mm print where almost all the colors had faded, so it was almost in black and white.
I had loved the film for some decades and seen it over 10 times throughout my life and was at a screening with 2 of my best friends who are also hardcore cinephiles, one of whom disliked the film while the other one didn't care about it.
I had always loved certain parts of the film but thought that it was too long and some parts were boring and corny.
But boy were we all wrong!!! Within seconds after the overture had set in we were all 3 completely captivated and loved every second of the whole 4 hour experience. The picture was so sharp, so detailed, and the 6-track magnetic soundtrack so so so unbelievably great (I didn't know they had such fantastic sound-design in the 50s already). Cause we were still in awe a few days later I said "let's put in my Ben-Hur Blu-ray so that we can look at the great colors of the film a bit as well", cause as I mentioned, almost everything had faded from the print we saw - but after a few seconds we were so turned off by the crappy picture quality of the Blu-ray that we quit this unhappy endeavor.
Anyways, it's been about 10 years and I haven't seen the film since and have no desire to revisit it in anything other than an original 70mm print at a cinema with a large screen and a good audio system, cause I'm still ffilled with the power and impact of that screening, which made me totally re-evaluate and actually really discover a work of art I had already loved for many years and thought I had already "seen" and "understood" before.
PS: watching films in 70mm from old unrestored 70mm prints in a good cinema, with the proper screen and audio setup rules! I can recommend this to any cinema buff. I've seen some 50+ 70mm films at the cinema and it's always great, even if the film itself sucks.

Das Mädchen mit dem Mini (1965): watched this privately at a closed screening with a lot of cinephile friends and the guy who ran the cinema and owned the print during an incredible weekend, where I discvovered around a dozen new favorites. Didn't know anything about it and went in expecting nothing. The atmosphere during the whole weekend was fantastic with a lot of talk during all the screenings, and a lot of film talk at night instead of going to sleep, so this one is just a representative choice. I could have easily chosen "Le gout de la violence" (1961) or "Aido" (1969) instead.

Mädchen Mädchen (1966): I chose this film for two farewell screenings from the cinema I curated with some friends for a few years when I was moving to another town. Didn't know anything about the film or its director other than that I wanted to see it, and cause it wasn't available as a rip or on home media or any such thing outside of a 35mm screening at that time I was really anxious to get to see it. I attended both screenings with my then-girlfriend cause the movie exceeded all my expectations by far. A rare case of desperately wanting to see something and having high hopes for something and not just not being disappointed because of too high expectations but instead discovering that what you see is so much better than anything you ever could have hoped for.

Flora on the Sand (1964): watching this film for the second time in a packed cinema, after having seen it at a fantastic Ko Nakahira retrospective with 12 other Nakaghira features, but having been so so terribly tired at that previous screening, that I was almost delirious and afterwards remembered absolutely nothing anymore other than it being Nakahira's best film (even recalling nothing after talking extensively to other friends who had seen it and them trying to describe and verbally recreate some scenes for me). After the 2nd screening this was clearly my no.1 favorite film of all time (and remained so for a few years)

A nos amours (1983): also in a packed screening with some friends sitting to the left and right of me. I hadn't seen this film before, but had watched one Pialat previously at the cinema and fallen in love with that one. I usually don't cry much during films, and I was in a good and relaxed mood and such, looking forward to another Pialat, but for some reason I started crying at the beginning of the movie and couldn't stop for one second till the film had finished. So I watched the whole film while semi-silently crying (cause I was a bit embarassed by such an extreme emotional outburst in front of friends, even if it was dark and they were concentrated on the screen and not me). As I said this never happened before or after to me but is definitely a testament to the power of the art of film. I also haven't had a similar experience with music or other artforms.

Umbugbene wrote: ↑Fri Aug 21, 2020 10:40 am Circa 1981 (Varsity Theater, Evanston, IL) - When I was about 11 my parents took me to Picnic at Hanging Rock. We saw it in one of those old theaters of the 1920s with a Spanish castle around the screen and stars on the ceiling. I don't remember what I thought of the movie then, but maybe because the movie never truly ends, it activated something in me that came back with full force nine or ten years later. Suddenly I had to know what that movie was about girls disappearing in a rock... it was like a long-forgotten dream. I decided it was my favorite movie, and catching up with it again a couple years later didn't change my mind. Last year I celebrated my 50th birthday with a visit to the real Hanging Rock near Melbourne.

Stunning. I wish my parents were nearly as savvy about cinema. ps. this is luc btw. Your avatar gave you away. I expect the others are unfamiliar with WALOM

I'm not sure that I can nail down 'the' finest 5 big screen experiences overall. There's plenty of films that I saw on the big screen when they were released and there's a degree of which some are better than others and a certain value in having seen the film on the big screen. More often though it depends on the who, what and where that adds to the experience. Other times I've sought out far more obscure items on my own as I knew I wasn't likely to catch it with anyone else. Either way, here's a set of some experiences that stick in my head.


Aug 2002 Lilya-4-Ever (Northbrook, IL)

So if you're not familiar with this Lukas Moodysson classic. Well, the saga of a Russian girl being tricked into becoming a sex slave is not for the faint of heart. Needless to say, I had a friend who was a member of some suburban film club. Once a month they get tickets to a new film (they're never told what it is) Sometimes it's a major release. Sometimes it's a smaller film. It's a rare event to catch an unknown foreign picture that will have all of the soccer mom's in the audience loose their minds. This was definitely it. It was like watching John Waters teach how to bleed a turkey to a room of vegans. They didn't say boo til the film was done but boy were they outraged. I loved it and the fellow leading the discussion was one of my professors from college so it was nice to see him too.


Feb 2010 Jack Goes Boating (Music Box Theater, Chicago, IL)

Philip Seymour Hoffman's directorial debut. He came out for this circa 'Sundance' screening so it was kind of a surreal experience.
The soundtrack was done by the band Grizzly Bear which still reminds me of Hoffman as he really did adore the band too.


Aug-Sept 2012 The Master (Music Box Theater, Chicago, IL)

This was BEFORE the wide release of the film and there was a handful of special screenings in 70MM and I got wind of it and snagged tickets. I'd not seen a line run so lone and down the street and around the block for a film since the Star Wars films as a kid. (Well, Decalogue ha pretty big turn out too but I digress) The wild wonder to me at the time was they were dead set on no one trying to record it with their phones so they literally had security people wandering up and down the aisles. It was quite a sight to see all the commotion. I ducked out to front once everyone was seated and PT was there. Pretty much keeping to himself and definitely 'not' looking to be identified. Yet there were still people stringing past him to go in and see the film. It was one of those moments where I'd be curious if even half the people had any clue what he looked like.

Circa 1995 Voice of the Moon (Film Center of the Art Institute-Pre Siskel!!)

Fellini's final feature would show up in some screenings but it would always be a print without subtitles and this was somewhat like that. The signage for the subtitles was on a red ticker tape style light board 'below' the screen which meant having to do a tad more stretching of ones eyes to 'read' the translation lines. I'd just seen Scorsese's 'Casino' and found it odd to hear Devo's 'Whip It' in the sountrack and here Fellini included Michael Jackson at a scene of an outdoor dance club which I thought was very weird but then this starred Roberto Bengini before he broke out even bigger with his Academy Award winning film.

Circa 1987 Dr Strangelove (Norris Center, Northwestern University Evanston, IL)

First time I saw this and I went with a girl who I had the biggest crush on in the world. Even to this day. Everything about this day was perfect. It's absurd to even write this but it's true.

Circa 91' ? Silent Film/Loud Music (The Vic, Chicago, IL)

Not your standard film experience but one that hasn't been repeated on such a scale since. Black Label funded two (seated) evenings that included a different group performing live music to each of 3 different features on each evening. I only went to the horror evening which included; Haxan (1922) Christensen, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) Wiene and Nosferatu (1921) Murnau I wish I had better notes about the various performers but I honestly have nothing to detail it all other than adoring this as one of the finest film experiences.

cinesmith wrote: ↑Thu Sep 17, 2020 4:12 amStunning. I wish my parents were nearly as savvy about cinema. ps. this is luc btw. Your avatar gave you away. I expect the others are unfamiliar with WALOM

Wow, this is a nice surprise. Good to see you here, Luc! Hope you stick around for the polls & other discussions!

It occurs to me that I'm pretty much alone in interpreting this question to mean "cinema" in the broadest sense of movies in general, not just movie theaters. Oh well... Bure said we could interpret it as we wish.

I saw Batman v Superman in 2016 and there was nobody else in the ENTIRE ROOM. Pretty sick.

1. NAPOLEON -- I'll count two as one because it's okay when I do it. Seen the first time at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC all those years ago with a live orchestra and real Polyvision and I was just knocked out, and as my friend and I were driving home we passed the Lincoln Memorial just as the lights were put out for the night and our minds were truly blown. And again a few years back at the Paramount Theater in Oakland, CA in the full Brownlow restoration with Carl Davis conducting his score played by a live orchestra, and hell yes.

2. PANDORA'S BOX at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, on that Big Fucking Screen with the Matti Bye Ensemble playing their score for a sold out crowd. It was some kind of new restoration funded by the Hefner Foundation, one that has been bouncing around ever since and I'm hoping that Criterion gets off their ass at some point and releases the damn thing on Blu-Ray for our home enjoyment. My God. Louise Brooks is the most dangerous drug of all. My local pal and I were so knocked out by it that we had to go for a long walk afterward. I was debating whether or not to stay for the next film on the program, and he said, "Man, you've just had an eight course meal, there's no need for snacks."

3. APOCALYPSE NOW at the Uptown Theatre in Washington, DC from front row center in the balcony, the first of the 18 times I saw it in that first run, and movies were never the same for me after that.

4. THE GENERAL at the long lost Regency Theatre in NYC. My first exposure to Keaton's masterpiece, still the movie that lands at the top of those Ten Best Lists I make up every so often.

5. A double feature that started with Murnau's SUNRISE at Film Forum, which left me very cold indeed, I'd been anticipating something really special and found instead a very pretty but very dull movie complete with one of the most bogus happy endings ever, I was so bummed out that I had a bit of an attitude going in to the second half of the double feature, I sat there all "okay, classic movie, impress me if you can" and the second feature was von Stroheim's GREED and yeah, it impressed the fuck out of me. Von Stroheim's bracing brutality came as a great antidote to Murnau's drippiness -- it only occurred to me later that the "drippiness" might be Murnau's joke on Hollywood, a la the happy ending of THE LAST LAUGH but without the explanatory title giving the game away.

There's others, I guess which could make the grade. HARD TO BE A GOD at the Museum Of The Moving Image with maybe six other people in attendance, THERE WILL BE BLOOD at some multiplex in Fort Lauderdale with an audience that didn't quite get it, BRAND UPON THE BRAIN at the Village East in NYC with live soundeffects, music, narrator, "live castrato" and narration by Edward Hibbert whose performance really should have been included in the Criterion release, he captured a fussy ferocity that fit the film far better than any other narration I've heard for the film (I understand Lou Reed fell asleep onstage the night he performed it), my first exposure to SEVEN SAMURAI at the Crystal Theater in Missoula Montana in the uncut print that took many years to make it to the rest of the country,

In terms of audience assholishness, I can remember my first screening of LA DOLCE VITA at the Crystal which was ruined by a drunk who was loudly commenting on the action. He went too far at one point, and the entire audience told him to "SHUT UP!" whereupon he told us all to "Fuck You!" and a couple people got the manager, who escorted the drunk from the cinema, to a round of applause. Living in NYC, I can say that I've stopped going to the first run movies on Saturday night because of audience stupidity, loud comments and talking and the like. Amen to the comment above about those goddamn plastic bags that make more noise than you'd think possible. One guy at Film Forum was a particularly bad offender at a screening i went to, ignoring repeated requests to keep those fucking bags quiet, and when he was confronted about it at film's end, he actually said, "But it's a silent movie!"

And those goddamn seniors -- I've started avoiding the weekend matinees at a local cinema because of the influx of seniors from a nearby senior home. They can always be counted on to answer their phones, talk loudly, and generally be shitheads.

And those goddamn straight people who go to gay-themed films and snicker at any display of affection between members of the same sex. A screening of Haynes' CAROL was ruined by the breeder couple behind me who laughed like Beavis & Butthead throughout, even saying "Sluts!" during the film's love scene. Similar events at other screenings have made me wary of going to those things in first release any more.

Roscoe wrote: ↑Tue Sep 22, 2020 12:24 pmthose goddamn seniors

yeah, at a screening of hou hsiao-hsien's three times, this old dude fell asleep during the middle story - which is silent, and really slow, even by hou's standards - and snored like fuxkin totoro for the rest of the film