I haven’t seen Insomnia yet. I’ll have to check it out.
I’d say I thoroughly enjoyed probably 60% of the movies I’ve seen, liked 30% and maybe 10% left me leaving the theater asking why?
The worst was Gods of Egypt. My favorites include Raiders!, Midnight Special, Nice Guys, 10 Cloverfield Lane, Conjuring 2, In Bruges, and others that I can’t think of right now.
Swiss Army Man, The Lobster, Wiener Dog, and Green Room are movies I’m not sure if I liked.
Yeah, same. It’s funny, my daughter’s mom was a projectionist and student during my daughters first 10 years of life, so my daughter literally spent much of her life (and many nights) in movie theaters. Some nights she’d throw a sleeping bag down in the projection room and fall asleep to the warm sound of film projectors running, other nights she’d sleep in a theater (either with me in a theater where a film was showing for the public, or in an empty theater by herself where her mom was screening a new film she had spliced together from 6 reels to start showing the next night). I also worked for the theater, and our city had an arrangement that allowed theater employees from all of the theater companies free admission to all of the different theater companies in town, even the art houses, so we spent many a weekend sequestered away in theaters watching pretty much every film that came out, for years. Now, as an adult, she STILL loves going to the theater to watch films. I do too, actually. There is something magical about it. Part of it for me, is sharing the experience with a bunch of other people. There is something communal in hearing a story with a group of people. It’s sort of the modern version of ‘sitting around a campfire with your peers while the village elder tells stories’. Now that we have to pay, we just go to matinees, which where I’m at at least, are much cheaper. I paid $5 to see The Force Awakens on a Wednesday afternoon. I certainly understand the frustration, though, of taking a family to the movie theater. That adds up quick. Too bad Hollywood doesn’t do some sort of a ‘Family Pass’ deal or something.
Agreed. Films like Gravity do not scale down very well. The overwhelming sense of awe at the vastness of space and its utterly merciless conditions can only be conveyed at the scale of the big screen. These are the sort of films for which I’m willing to spend $15. For everything else, I usually just wait until it’s released on home video.
“Movie tickets are at an all-time high”
And in other news – hey, inflation is still a thing!
Movie ticket prices adjusted for inflation actually reached an all-time high back in the late 1960s and early 1970s. (The average ticket price in 1971 was $1.65, which would be $9.82 in 2016 dollars.)
Nobody else got this stuck in their head after seeing ‘movie’ and ‘all-time high’ in close proximity?
I prefer being at home because:
I have ADD and this stuff drives me crazy. That being said, we will go to the cinema for any new Star Trek, Star Wars, and 007 movies (just not until the third week). Everything else can wait.
Mister Pibb plus Red Vines is crazy delicious!
With me it’s more of a ‘some movies are better for home and some better for the theater’ thing.
Generally I like my big explosions in the theater and I’ve got a home setup that’s nice enough that ‘just a screen’ is just like staying home in a less comfy chair. If I’m going, I’m going to the nice theater with the expensive recliner seats and good 3-D
That being said, I saw Keanu with a friend in the theater and was pleasantly surprised by the crowd, they were laughing their butts off and that sure did add something to the experience.
I’m one of those perverse people who’d rather see a bad movie in the theater than a good one at home (although watching at home does have its advantages). Reading through the other comments it’s nice to know I’m not alone. And at first I was going to say that it’s unfortunate that there aren’t enough of us, but, really, it doesn’t seem to be declining ticket sales that’s driving up prices. It’s the industry taking advantage of those of us who feel there’s something special about the theater.
Lucky for me I can get discount tickets through where I work, although even with those going to the movies is getting too damned expensive.
If I notice any of these to the extent that they distract me (ADHD-PI diagnosis here), I take it as a sign that the movie is to blame. An especially good movie will keep the attention of my bladder.
ETA: The Budapest Hotel was this latter kind of movie for me.
This works for the above-mentioned movies, but it bugs the hell out of me for something kind of nuanced or minimal.
I feel like I should somehow take offense at that. 
I haven’t seen it in a while, but you forgot:
I saw O Brother Where Art Thou with a small crowd of evidently kindred spirits. During the final big scene, we were clapping and stomping along to the music. Pretty hard to match that in the confines of one’s living room.
This! Exactly! I didn’t expect it or sign up for it, but I enjoyed the heck out of it when it happened.
I mean, I tend to prefer small crowds if I have my druthers, but I can’t deny that having the crowd laugh with you is an unusually fun experience.
See, The Budapest Hotel is a perfect example one of my bullet points souring my experience. But something like Keanu, which I’ve yet to see, could’ve been really fun.
(See, I can’t write on two threads and keep my grammar straight.)
At the end of the 2011 prequel The Thing all of us in the theater–about seven of us–gathered at the front of the theater and had a spontaneous group discussion about how it compared to the 1982 John Carpenter film and 1951’s The Thing From Another World, then onto the original Howard Campbell story “Who Goes There?”
None of us, as far as I could tell, knew each other, and after talking we all went our separate ways. Nothing like that has ever happened before or since but it could only have happened in a theater.
Now that I’ve re-read your previous post, I can think of some great films whose delicate moments would be easily pierced by many of the things on your list. The Budapest Hotel being one of them. So yes, good points, all of them.
Unless it affects me, then I have to be protected by the government!!!
They drop between noon and 5pm, usually.
Aside from that? I don’t think movie tickets have ever gone down in price in my (21 year) lifetime.
