Musings on movies

I actually prefer to see my films in a movie theater. The magic of the silver screen still holds for me in spite of the high ticket and concession prices and the boring building construction. I still like to sit in a dark room with a bunch of strangers all focusing on the same thing. My preference is to get there early, buy my food and/or drink, get a good seat and wait for the film to begin. Occasionally I’ll get lucky and overhear an interesting conversation from the people sitting around me. I’ll never forget seeing Sex, Lies and Videotape at a theater in Cape Cod. We arrived a bit too early and sat in front of two senior couples. One of the couples asked the other how they had met. Thus began a long and delightful story of dating in 1940’s NYC, taking long subway rides just to see each other. They apparently realized we were listening in because they said at one point that these kids must think they were very old-fashioned. I turned around and assured her that I thought it was a fascinating story. I liked the movie a lot but the story beforehand was even better. But, after the movie, as we were leaving the theater, I overheard one man say to another “We need a young Robert Redford type for our film and this guy (James Spader—the star of Sex, Lies and Videotape) might be just what we’re looking for.” You just never know what you’ll overhear in Cape Cod!
When I’m not on vacation I prefer to see films at the Spectrum Theater. Not only do they get more of the foreign and independent films that I like but I don’t have to go to the mall, walk through the mall, walk through a cavernous lobby, spend $$$ buying food and/or drink, then walk down a long hallway, just to get to my seat. If I do go to a film at the mall, I prefer to go to the first show on a weekday when no one’s there. When I saw the film Babies it was just me, another woman and her baby. It seemed appropriate to have a baby in the audience at that particular film and the baby noises didn’t bother me at all.