I Give up on going to the movies

Okay. I gave it another shot. I admit it.
I went to a multi-plex theatre yesterday with friends and sat thru a movie.

And thats it for me. No more, please!

The movie was "Open Water". And as for the last few years of movie going
I left the theatre disappointed. Very disppointed. As usual.

The previews shown left me cold. Nothing there to get me in the house.
I can't afford to pay $6 to $7 for a small popcorn & coke.
So goodbye to a former favorite pastime.

 

Rent them on DVD and watch the crud in your own home with some microwave popcorn and a soda. Cheaper.

 

Perhaps your expectations are too high? What is it you find so dissatisfying? The film making, story, ambiance, sound quality, the sum of all these? Do you have a similar experience when you play a new CD? I'm just curious.

Sometimes a successful movie experience depends on what you bring to it. When I see a "popcorn summer movie", I expect lots of booms and action, and not much plot, and am rarely disappointed. Say, for example, the Kill Bill films. If I go to an Oscar nominated film, my expectations are higher. Are you after escapism, a good story, or something else?

 

Most movies coming out of Hollybuck are trash to me, and we are talking about hundreds of them, the more they make the worse they get. Al they want is to make a quick buck at our expense.
I mostly watch foreign movies now, some recommendations for you...

Blue, White, Red trilogy from France-Poland, awesome movies
Amores perros, (Love is a dog) from Mexico, also great
Talk to her, from spain, first class cinema
Closely watched trains, from Czech republic
Hiroshima mon amour, from France
Among others.

 

I kind of went through an anti-theater phase, but I can't imagine not going once in a while.

I think what keeps me coming back is that, unlike most people I know, I go very rarely. It seems like so many folks use it as their de facto thing to do, which makes it less special (and is also why cruddy flicks rake in the $$). I go only if it's a something I really want to see or will be fun. My last two flicks, for example, were F9/11 (curiosity) and Riddick (2nd date with current gf; lots of fun to make fun of it MT3000 style in an empty theater).

And yeah, I even get the popcorn and/or soda sometimes, even though it's expensive. That's OK since it's so rare for me to go.

The big screen, the booming sound, and the comraderie of a good audience can't be beat for a great flick. I know people that don't go because they're afraid of rude customers, ie, gabbing housewives/teens or cell phone jerks. Don't let the thoughtless get away with it and dictate your life! Tell 'em to shut the hell up.

 

Regardless of the quality of the theater, I can find a lot to enjoy: mainly, the great popcorn(always a monster bucket)and the movie, of course. But I don't go into films blind anymore; that's for DVD rental. My last five movies were the three LOTR and two KILL BILL's...figured they'd work on the big screen(they do!)and the only thing I don't buy is the water, which I need plenty of and therefore--heh--have to smuggle in.

Of course, the better the theater the more fun it is but, on the main, even the small dump in our area will do for something that is really good.

 

Well, yeah, we do want to make a buck. That's the "business" side of show business. The films you seem to dislike the most are the ones that make a buck - i.e., that a lot of people prefer to spend their money on.

I was on a flight from Paris to Los Angeles a few years back. It was a French airline and they showed us a couple of French movies to pass the time. These weren't any award-winning French movies - just the same sort of run-of-the-mill stuff you seem to detest so much about American cinema. These were completely forgettable films - terrible really, despite one starring Gerard Depardieu - and it made me realize one very important thing about foreign cinema that everone here in the U.S. seems to forget. Other countries make an incredible amount of trashy films too, with their "worst" often far worse than our "worst." The thing is, these run-of-the-mill foreign films are rarely shown outside of their own countries. The foreign films that we see here in the U.S. are essentially the cream of the crop, the very popular ones and the award winners. Yes, the ones you list are "great," but that's the point - and the deck you're playing from is heavily loaded...

 

I look forward every summer to some fun summer blockbusters but they are getting worse every year. Spiderman was good and that was it. I remember barely keeping up in summers' past.

 

He didn't name any specific movies he disliked, so how can you say 'the films you seem to dislike most"?

 

Well, I guess if you talk like that you must be a Goldwin or a Warner, good for you!
I'm an art cinema fan, I grew up with Citizen Kane, Sunset Boulevard, Casablanca and many other great movies. I don't know really what made things degenerate to the lows we are at today, I mean I wouldn't mind to put up with some garbage, if they made a good movie every once in a while to make it up to us, but unfortunately that's not the case.
I'm sick and tired of senseless plots, car chases, bar fights, meaningless sex scenes, coming of age movies and happy endings, not to mention the senseless endless sequels.
Still nobody forces me to go to a theater to sit there and wish time goes by faster, what I'll do is drop off my kid and come back to pick him up when it's over.
Foreign movies might be the crop of the cream, but then again what is the crop of the cream in american cinema??

 

To address the specific post I would say you need to see better movies. Yes I know better is subjective, but you can surly find opinion from people who like movies you like and have a good basis for respecting their opinions'.

 

Your assertion is their is "no cream of the crop" for American cinema? Even from the so named independent cinema?

 

Bill, Unless you are wealthy enough to afford a major home theater layout, the big screen movie theaters still offer something watching at home does not (if I ever win the lottery I will get a 61" plasma, but even that does no come close). When I was at HE2002, Samsung gave out free tickets to Starwars 2 shown digitally at the Zegfeld theater right across the street from HE2002. Everything was free (popcorn, snacks, drinks), the crowd was so into it, it was great. To restore your faith in movies at the theater go see Festival Express when it comes to your area. If you love Janis, The Band, the Dead (who cannot love these musicians) you will love this movie.

 

At least you got to sit through it (based on your post) without feeling like you needed to take the people seated in the row behind you out back and beat the tar out of them so they would SHUT-UP while the picture was on ...and I'm assuming it was in focus and the volume wasn't so loud you looked like the guy in the MAXELL Cassette magazine ads...and don't forget the COMMERCIALS at the beginning that you PAID to watch before the previews and the movie...

So I agree with everything you said, but my experience is apparently not even that good lately...

 

I don't doubt that there are many bad movies made all over the world. But the cream of the crop make their way to North America, and they are worth seeking out.

I am lucky enough to live in a city that has a few outlets for independent films and I have to say I've seen some terrific movies in the past few years. However, I rarely go to the huge AMC multiplex, since the standard Hollywood fare just doesn't grab me anymore. Maybe I'm getting old, but it seems like acting, direction, production design, and script writing have taken a back seat to CGI tech. With the exception of the LOTR movies, I can't remember the last movie I saw that had good CGI. I Robot looked like a video game and not a live action movie. Just awful.

I think in much the same way as we lament the shortcuts that are taken by mastering engineers on CDs these days, filmmakers have learned that instead of using live action and real sets to create a scene, it is easier to design the whole thing on computer and plant uninspired actors in front of a green screen pretending to react to action that hasn't been created yet. Just once I would like to see a modern director produce a war battle like David Lean did in Lawrence of Arabia. Or a science fiction director create a spaceship set like Kubrick did in 2001.

 

I don't go to the movie theater much at all either.

 

I don't live in an area where there are theaters that show independent movies.

 

I've pretty much given up on going to the movies too, but not because of the quality of the movies. It's the quality of the audience. I seem to be cursed with the fate of always having some sonorous-voiced irritable armchair movie critic sit in back of me wherever I go, and thoroughly ruin the experience with his insatiable bitching. Happens in the theater as well - my last experience seeing the musical "Les Miserables", which I love in spite of its conspicuous popularity - was trashed by just such an idiot, sitting directly behind me, drowning out all the songs and dialogue with his world-weary declarations of how very bad it was.

So, I'm just damned sick and tired of laying out about $25 for a pair of movie tickets, or $100 for a pair of theater tickets, just so I can listen to some thoughtless bastard criticize it. I'm quite happy to get the DVD and not have to lecture the people around me on basic courtesy and manners.

 

Leaving aside the generally poor quality of films,I quit attending motion pictures and live concerts out of frustration with the boorish behaviour of other patrons and the utter unwillingness of theatre management to rein them in.

The last time I attended a live performance was Showboat in Calgary which cost my wife and I about $200.00 when parking is factored in and fortunately on that occasion the people around us behaved well.

That said I have sat through a Neil Diamond concert where Diamond was drowned out more often than not by a shreiking female and on another occasion I attended a performance by Arlo Guthrie where I saw but rarely heard him due to the antics of about a dozen noisy,hooting,flatulent drunks. When I complained to an usher at intermission I was informed that "Those gentlemen have valid tickets and no one else has complained."

The costs? ND C$150.00 +/-,Arlo Guthrie C$ 125.00.

I am not prepared to spend that kind of money and not be allowed to hear the performance.

I no longer attend films for the same reasons. A night at the movies for 2 adults can easily run to C$100.00 if snacks are purchased. I simply will not spend $100.00 and endure some Bozo putting his knees into the back of my chair while he and his girlfriend motormouth their mindless way through the film.

Lest anyone read this as a "Everything was better in the good old days" rant... I suspect that the truth is that I was simply more tolerant of the yahoos when I was younger and the prices were lower.

 

I'm pretty much the same way myself. Most of my DVDs are either classic movies, Star Wars, Star Trek, kids' movies, music videos/concerts/bios, or old TV series. The last time I went to a theater was for Shrek 2. And I'll be going for the Spongebob movie in November, and maybe SW Ep. 3: Revenge Of The Sith if I hear it's any good. Beyond that, I just don't have any interest to go spend that kind of money at a theater anymore. I would also add that there are just about no modern actors today that hold a candle to the quality of acting on the older movies I like. Even in the Star Wars films, IMHO, the actors in the recent two movies just don't have that "something" the ones in the original trilogy had. They just don't draw me in, and don't hold my interest.

 

What I hate about Hollyweird is that they try not to let you know too much about a movie before you go to see it. It's like the worse the movie, the less they want you to know. Then, when they show their trailers and TV commercials, it's all 2-second flashes, cutaways, and "whoooosh" noises. Then some gravely voice tells you that it's the "must see movie of the year", and that some no-name reviewer from the Pimple-butt, Montana daily news thought it was the greatest thing since the douche bag....opens Friday at a movie studio-approved chain theater not-so-near you!

 

...try $8.50 a pop! and all those freak in CELL PHONES, TALKING, etc...Ain't like the old days when they had ushers that came down on any disturbances during the flick!...Can still see the flashlight spotting out the perpetrators!...INSTANT SILENCE...can you imagine that today? Probably pop a cap in the poor usher ( If they were still around)...

 

I keep promising myself to stop attending movies. My problem is the local cineplex, which is a sad, run-down thing that seems to be barely scraping by. There never seems to be more than three or four employees working, sometimes less, and the facilities have been allowed to deteriorate to a pretty bad state. There's always a row of seats roped off for repairs, floors that seem an inch thick with popcorn oil and detergent, and I've had to retrieve an employee to focus the projector a couple times. It's been this bad for several years.

A regional commercial real estate agent told me that while these may be a boom time for studios, they are very lean times for theaters, which is why no one else has moved in with an improved complex, despite all the development in southern Maryland. One shopping center promised a new stadium-seating styled facility at their zoning approval, only to donate a community pool instead in order to develop the property as a warehouse club. Anyone need a six-pack of tuna or shampoo?

 

That's what kills it for me. I try to go to the earliest show....11 am or so, when all the numbnuts's are still sleeping or hungover.

 

I agree with most of what has been said. The worst part of going to a movie is the audience. Screaming kids, talking people, cell phones, spilled soda, thrown popcorn, God forbid you should sit in a row between two groups of "friends".

It is probably a reflection on modern day society, but "polite" seems to be a thing of the past, movie theater or elsewhere.........................

I stay home. The $15 DVD is much cheaper, and I can watch it whenever I want to.