How do you rate your hometown for movie theaters?

I’m curious as to how you rate the movie theaters in your hometown. Do you have a favorite that you prefer to visit? Are you able to see all the films that are released or do you have to travel a great distance to see a film that is in limited release or miss it entirely?

I live in Seattle, Washington and I rate Seattle very highly. We have the usual assortment of multi-plexes for any large city, some pleasant, some old. In addition we have maybe at least a dozen of what used to be called ‘art houses’ where foreign films, newly restored classic films, anime, or documentaries are released.

We also have an IMAX theater in our centrally located Seattle Center. Seattle is home to one of only three surviving Cinerama Theaters left in the United States. Occasionally they show true Cinerama such as How The West Was Won (1962)

but are also capable of presenting 70mm Ultra Panavision releases like Lawrence of Arabia (1962) or 2001 A Space Odyssey. (1968)

We also have a few dinner/theaters sitting 40 or less where you can watch a movie at your table during dinner (including a liquor license.)

My current favorite is the SIFF Theater (Seattle International Film Festival.). It is small and intimate (300 seats) and pretty much known only to film affectionatos. Films are introduced by a host, there are previews of coming attractions but no commercials (a real blessing.) They are currently showing The Human Condition, Ningen no joken (1959 ), by Masaki Kobayashi, a 10 hour epic in three parts. Last July they showed Michael Caine’s Harry Palmer Trilogy (very difficult to find on DVD).

If it seems like I’m boasting a little, well maybe I am, but I feel blessed to live in such film friendly town.

I should be so lucky!

Here's wishing that could be said about the Greater Boston area, which has only three decent movie theatres around, that're art houses where older classics, independents, foreign films are shown:
The Coolidge Corner Theatre, Brookline, MA

Brattle Theatre, Cambridge, MA

Somerville Theatre, Somerville, MA.

I make a point of visiting those three theatres and have annual memberships to two of them. The multiplex cinemas, with rare exceptions, are, imho, places to be avoided like. the. plague.

i live in a town of 9,000 if everyone is home when the cenus people come around! we have one theatre which i have always loved going to. when i was a little girl, we had a drive in as well and the theatre only had 3 screens. but somehow we always had the best movies come to town. i can remember sat. afternoons very well..if you brought a can of soup or something, you could get into the movie free. when daddy would take us to the drive-in, i loved to be seated on the back seat of his convertible. i remember the way it felt to transported to another time watching any movie then even today.

today the theater is my escape to everyday life. i can so see why people in the great depression would pay to go the movies and spend all day there. not only for the ac, but to escape the bleakness of their whole existance. to live thru others. the movie theater now has 6 screens to chose from and usually its so hard to pick a movie..

Sadly I've not been to my hometown in at least a decade. When I was younger my parents used to let me go home to visit with my grandparents for at least two weeks every summer!

In those days, my grandparents worked most of the time. I was left to my own devices. Oh sweet freedom!

People just about never talked about stranger dangers like they do now. I was allowed to roam free. I always had enough money to go to the 7-11 for candy and comics.

Sometimes my granddad would drop me off downtown while he worked. I'd go to one of those glorious old show place movie theaters and watch things like Mary Poppins or Herbie. LOL.

I'd shop the department stores. Again, I always had enough spare cash in those days. I'd eat lunch in the diner my Dad proposed to my Mom in and try to imagine that scene.

There was also a newer theater in the burbs closer to my grandparent's home I enjoyed. It had four theaters. I enjoyed it often. My grandmother would drop me off there as a cover for whatever it was she went off to do behind everyone else's back.

Probably all those theaters are closed now. Most downtowns are sadly dead and most new theaters close within a decade to make room for newer theaters.

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All my town has is a crummy little 4-theater setup. It's very small, but the seats and sound and whatnot are okay, I guess. Right now, we've got Bangkok Dangerous, Burn After Reading, Righteous Kill and The Women playing. So it's not horrible. Plus, we've got a lot of nice, cozy cafes that show older flicks on the weekends from time to time.

My favorite theater closed down a few years back. It only had two theaters but they were huge and had balconies. There are really only two theaters left here, but thay are both Rave theaters with plenty of screens and I do have to say they keep them very clean.

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Houston has a number of theaters ranging from small almost neighborhood theaters all the way to the modern movie supermarket with 10-20 screens. I don't enjoy the new multiscreen where they save space by stacking the seat rows from floor to ceiling, so that you have to climb to the top in search of a seat. As you get older and fatter, that's awfully hard on your knees. Plus the seats are too cramped and uncomfortable.

I much preferred the theaters of my youth, where you entered at the back of the seat-section and walked down a gently inclined floor to find a seat. Those inclines used to be great fun for us kids who often got bored with any film that was not a western; we'd kill time by dropping cherry sour candies and listening to the roll all the way to the front of the movie house. Once as a teenager at a midnight horror show, some buddies and I lit a cherry bomb firecracker and let it roll down the incline from the middle of the back row. Went off like a cannon! I think the manager of that theater is still looking for us.

My favorite theater of all time, however, was the old Aztec Theater in San Antonio. They had a big (seemed like 10-ft diameter to me, but was probably smaller) round Aztec ceremonial table carved out of rock and engraved with Aztec images. We boys always wanted to believe it was a sacrificial altar and that the red background behind the figures was human blood. It was one of those big, old-time theaters with multiple balconies. Small lights in the dark blue ceiling looked like the night sky, and at the top of the walls on each side were the silhouettes of an oil Spanish mission, with soft lights in the "windows." I remember seeing some of the first 3-D films in that theater. Think they tore it down some years ago.

There are no theatres in my hometown of Richfield, Oh. But I live about fifteen minutes away form two cities with at least 3 movie theaters in them. Nothing small and artsy, so no foreign films. Cleveland does have an IMAX though.

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There are no theaters in my home town, the nearest one is an hour away by car and there are no IMAXs in my country (IN FACT, I'm not even sure what that means!). Stick that in your pipe and smoke it...

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I give it a 9/10. No IMAX, but we have two major theaters, another one that plays the independent and foreign films, a theater on campus that plays very random films, and an anarchist collective place that shows a lot of political films and documentaries.

Great post eMilee! It brought back many memories of my own. I grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota. My parents would take us to Rose Drive-In theater. The Rose had a beautiful Red Neon Rose on the back of the screen. Underneath the screen was a small playground for kids, swings, the old push merry-go-rounds that made you dizzy. Shows started at dusk with a news-roundup narrated by Lowell Thomas. Then coming attractions and a cartoon, Roadrunner and Wiley E. Coyote! Then the main attraction. Popcorn and sodas and a clear night! Heaven!
Anyway I was wondering if it was still in existence. So I googled around and found out it still exists and is showing films even today!





In looking into this I ran across a wonder website that is a database for movie theaters in the US and around the world. It has current theaters and old ones that have been closed or demolished.
For instance, when I was living in Denver one of the nicer theaters was The Center:



This was an old theater that opened in 1954 furnished in Art Deco style with balconies and red velvet. It was in this theater that I saw The Exorcist when it first opened. I saw it on the second day of release and yes there were people who actually ran out of the theater screaming! Sad to say it has since been demolished.
The beautiful thing about this website is that theaters are listed by country, state, and city or town. Many have a photo tour and sometimes a brief history. It will list them as open, closed or demolished.

Rufnek, here is a photo of the Aztec Theater in San Antonio:







It is listed as national historic register .

WSSlover here is The Brattle:


This a very nice site and here is the link:
http://www.cinematour.com/main.php

THANKS for the rep and i am glad i brought up good memories. i should have added but forgot to add this.

there is a drive-in 45 mins from where i live. the few times i have been have been memorable. when you first drive up, you turn left onto a dirt road and wonder is this for real? as you wind around and pray you don't meet another car, all of a sudden you see a giant screen. your heartbeat opts to skip a beat at the sight. the smell of popcorn and dust mingles in your nose. you find the perfect spot to park hoping that no big redneck truck will block your view. i saw freddy vs jason here. i must say that the hair on my neck stood up not from the movie, but being out of nowhere in an open field did. my date--the ex who was an ass- said wouldn't it be fun if some guy ran thru with a machete. needless to say, i didnt want to go back with him. i just wish we had a drive-in here in town. another memory of a drive in just came back as i write this. i had to go the doctor every week in a town a hr away from us. we would pass the drive in. i would always beg my mother to stop and she always said no. one nite, we toped the hill and i rolled down my window. i could see pete's dragon playing. i listened as far as i could.... hoping that one time mom would stop. even now, i see pete's dragon and knowing what point i saw it brings back good memories of leaning my head out to hear what i could....

Thanks for the photos and info on the Aztec! Glad to hear they're trying to save it. The outside photo must have been taken at its opening with all that information displayed.

One thing I don't miss about the small theaters in the East Texas and West Texas towns where I grew up--the balconies that were reserved for colored folks (black and brown).

Growing up, the first theatres I went to were the Compton, Lakewood and Bellflower Drive-Ins. My parents would take my brother and me, and we'd watch some adventure films or comedies. When I got older, they'd drive us to the local walk-in theatres. The two in my neighborhood were the Arden in Lynwood and the Allen in South Gate. I found an image of the Arden Theater.



This is the theater where I saw a rerelease of Ben-Hur (1959) and the original release of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It had 940 seats, but it's been torn down for quite awhile now.

I couldn't find an image of the Allen. My brother and I would see lots of dubbed horror films (Blood and Lace, Reptilicus) and some Disney flicks (The Love Bug, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes) at the Allen. Heck, I even saw the Chuck Heston Planet of the Apes, Patton and the first R-rated movie I ever saw at a theatre, MASH. It wasn't quite as old or grand as the Arden, but we didn't care as long as were at the movies.

Nowadays, I have a variety of theatres to choose from. I live in the city, but it's not like Los Angeles. All the cities here in Orange County blend together. There really isn't anything like "downtown" around here. However, there are at least 100 different screens in several complexes within a ten-mile radius of my house, the closest one being less than a mile away. However, if I want to go to a large theatre, I have to drive about 15 miles to Fashion Island to the Big Newport.



It was originally a two-screen theatre, but they've added more screens over the years. The Big screen is 40' x 80', and the auditorium has 1,108 seats. I've had some of my all-time favorite film experiences at the Big Newport, including all of the first three Star Wars films (now called Eps. 4-6), a "Back-to-Back-to-Back" screening of the three Back to the Future films, Alien, Apocalypse Now (yes, for all the problems I have with the film, the sound and visuals are not among them), etc.

I believe I've posted some of this info in another thread about theatres.

There's also an IMAX theatre about 20 miles away at the Spectrum in Irvine. We've seen The Return of the King, Beauty and the Beast (Disney) and Fantasia 2000 there. Excellent.

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Yeah, I went into detail about the Portland, Oregon movie theatres I frequent in THIS thread. But to repeat and modify it...

The two main, big independent theatres in Portland are Cinema 21 and The Hollywood Theatre (built in 1926). I support them as much as possible, including a yearly membership to the Hollywood. They both show good, new independent and foreign flicks as well as revivals of classics.



One of the many great things about Portland is we have some excellent second-run theaters. And I don't call them excellent only because they all serve beer and don't allow anyone under twenty-one for evening shows, though that is very nice. The Laurelhurst is one, and their films are all only $3. This weekend for example they are showing Indiana Jones & The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, The X-Files: I Want to Believe, Kung Fu Panda, The Fall, Mongol and Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson as well as Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Monty Python & The Holy Grail (1975).

The other place for second-run features, well places, are the McMenamins. They have four theatres in Portland, and four more elsewhere in Oregon (one is in Washington, actually). Their tickets are also just $3 a show. And the McMenamins are all these cool old buildings they restore and then put 1920s-style theaters into, each seat with a little table in front of it for your beer and pizza. The theater that's actually closest to my house, just an easy walk of less than a mile, is also an independent: the Moreland Theatre, which is pretty nice and similar in decor and intent to the McMenamins - though minus the beer and pizza. And the Northwest Film Center that I have a membership with and puts on the annual Portland International Film Festival I go on and on about, their main theater is the Whitsell Auditorium inside the Portland Art Museum.





I do go to some of the newer state of the art cinemas too, most often the Fox Tower downtown and the Lloyd Center, both of which are owned and operated by Regal. But being the movie junkie that I am I have been to a dozen more theaters in the area as well.

Overall, it's a damn good city for a cinemaholic.

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Though I must say, even with only living there less than two years the best movie theater city I have ever lived in was San Francisco. Damn, they have some marvelous old palaces still up and running, a true beauty to behold. The Castro is by far the best known and does the best and most eclectic programming, but there are several others still in operation around the city as well. Outstanding!

And where I grew up, in Maryland, there were and still are some damn fine theaters. The two best old timers are The Senator in Baltimore and The Uptown in Washington D.C. The Senator Theatre can be seen in several movies and TV shows including Barry Levinson's Avalon and Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys. My best and first memory there was in 1989 when they showed the restored 70mm print of Lawrence of Arabia. Saw it three times in a week. My best memory of The Uptown in D.C. was the 1992 showing of the Director's Cut of Blade Runner. Actually, that was bested by my first real "date" with my current special lady friend, May 14th 1998, a double feature of Bonnie & Clyde (1967) and The Wild Bunch (1969).






But truthfully I didn't really start going to them until I was older and either I or my friends could drive. My single favorite theater from childhood, the one that holds the most special memories including my first (and many of the subsequent) viewings of Star Wars when I was seven-years-old is the Westview Cinema. Sadly the Westview was torn down in the 1990s. But just thinking about it I can smell the popcorn, see the huge chandeliers, and a flood of cinematic euphoria washes over me. What stands in the Westview's place today is a frippin' Circuit City. And not only was the Westview a great cinema, but it also had a drive-in in the back, down the hill a bit (you could see the screen from the hardtop theater's parking lot). There's a Home Depot where the drive-in was. Travesty.

While I can't seem to find even a single on-line photo of the exterior of the old Westview in Catonsville, Maryland and definitely nothing of the interior, it was at least partially saved in celluloid by Baltimore native Barry Levinson. In his Tin Men (1987) the outside of the theater, which had an art deco '50s style, doubles as the outside of a restaurant, the place where the Richard Dreyfuss and Danny DeVito characters get into another fight and agree to take it "outside". That's the Westview, and the drive-in can be seen in the background. The drive-in didn't last much longer than that, but the cinema hung around until about 1996. I believe the last movie I saw there was Larger Than Life starring Bill Murray.

After I moved to Orange County in 1975, there were two revival theatres which I attended constantly, the Balboa Theater and the Fox Theatre in Fullerton.



The Balboa was something else, although it's had a checkered history. It's been a stage theatre, a porno theatre, live music hall and when I frequented it, it showed lots of old classics and newer foreign films. It also had a really cool balcony. Among the movies I saw for the first time there were Midnight Cowboy, Women in Love, Allegro non troppo, Santa Sangre, The Song Remains the Same, etc.



The Fox was an even more out-there theatre, plus it had about 1000 seats. The first time I saw such wackos as Eraserhead, Pink Flamingos and Zabriskie Point was at the Fox.

I also went to Bing Theatre at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art many times in the '70s and '80s. They showed all kinds of goodies there.



Some of the films I recall seeing there for the first time include Preston Sturges' Christmas in July, Tom Jones, Look Back in Anger, The Innocents, Two For the Road, etc., plus I took some friends there to see It Happened One Night and The Devil and Daniel Webster. The latter film was advertised as a restored 35 mm print from some William Dieterle family vault in Germany. Well, they didn't produce the thing, so everybody was a bit disappointed that we had to watch the butchered, yet-still-great reissue version. I'm thankul that Criterion restored 22 of the 27 missing minutes on their DVD, but I still wish I could see the other five minutes.

P.S. Holden, I think I posted this somewhere else, but when the original The Manchurian Candidate was finally rereleased to theatres in the 1980s, I went to the Castro to see it. That is one helluva theatre.

I forgot to mention The Silver Screen here in Pensacola. I have not been in so long that it slipped my mind. I love to go there, it is just on the other side of town and the Rave is only a few blocks away. You can play pac man and space invaders for a dime while waiting. The prices are great and the atmosphere is fun. The Silver Screen is the ultimate in a dinner an a movie - at the same time. You can order beer and pizza and have a grand old time.

I grew up in a small town with one movie house, The Columbia Theater. It opened in 1925, and is now part of historic downtown Longview. It is being refurbished and will re-open in 2010 as a performing arts theater just as it had originally been.

It was a very cool theater. It had chandeliers and a balcony. Back in the olden days, we could sit in the theater all day and rewatch the film if the movie had been playing for more than two weeks. I think it was $1.75 back then.

It was where I went on my first official car date when I turned 16. My date had borrowed his brother's car to drive us there, but we could have walked. I think we saw Superman II. I rate it an 8/10

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