I love going to the movies. In fact, over the last 14 months my girlfriend and I have gone to the movies almost every week, or
at least every other week, with the exception of a good 2 month span when there was nothing but total shit playing. For over a year
we frequented the movies with only minor incidents. Since I do well with lists, here are a few of them:
The Strangers - Apparently no one in the theatre knew beforehand that this was a suspense movie, not a slasher flick, because they
were getting pretty loud and bored. Everyone gasped and someone even yelled "Are you fucking kidding me?" when one of the killers
first enters the room when Liv Tyler is drinking some water. You know, the part that was in the trailer and TV commercials?
I might have been shocked if I hadn't seen the fucking trailer a million times. There was also an old couple next to my girlfriend who
kept talking and saying how stupid the movie was. Had she asked me to switch seats, I would've made a seen and told them to get out, but
I didn't know until after the movie.
Grindhouse - I actually saw this one with Syd shortly before moving. There was no real incident in the theatre, but during the fake
previews between the two movies, I had to run to the bathroom. Two old women who were in the theatre walked out as well, and I heard them
talking as I walked to the bathroom. They were basically complaining that the movie was terrible, had very poor production quality, and they
couldn't believe the reel melted at one point. I thought about explaining to them there was an entire other movie they had paid to see,
but clearly they wouldn't have cared anyway. Who pays $10 each to go see something in the theatre that they have no idea what it even
is? That doesn't even make sense to me. In retrospect, however, "Deathproof" sucked, so they didn't miss anything.
I Am Legend - The audience was getting a little bored and restless during this one, and it was upsetting us because we both liked the movie.
At the end, the theatre was dead silent except for one girl who, in an EXTREMELY stereotypical Spanish accent said "That was stupid". I imagine
her head was probably bobbing in some sort of sassy fashion as well, but didn't see. I then bought the audiobook off iTunes and after
listening to it, we both agreed the movie was indeed stupid.
Pathology - This movie was actually an incident in and of itself. Nothing I can say can do this movie justice. It's the sort of movie that opens
and closes in the same weekend, and only makes $66,000 that weekend. And that's not a joke. It was in theatres for one weekend and came in 37th at the box office.
You seriously need to see this as long as you don't pay money for it.
Vantage Point - My boss had told me beforehand that the movie goes on for like 15 minutes, then rewinds and shows it from another person's
perspective, and that it does that like 6 times. Maybe knowing exactly how it was done helped us out, but even the trailers gave
some indication that something like this would happen. The strange part was that the audience got pissed every time the movie would rewind
because they weren't expecting it, but they got mad at the wrong time. The movie would start rewinding suddenly after the bomb exploded,
and the theatre would be silent. It wasn't until the screen went black and it showed the time as noon or whatever again that people got mad.
What the fuck did you think was gonna happen after they showed 15 minutes of footage super fast in reverse, particularly when they've done
this multiple times? I think they were expecting the screen to just say "MOVIE OVER" instead of showing someone else's perspective.
So those are some of the minor incidents. All in all, not too bad for seeing like 30-40 movies over the course of a year. The last
two movies we saw, however, were pretty much dreadful displays of humanity. It sucks too because they were good movies:
The Dark Knight - That's right, this movie was literally ruined for me because of the people behind me. Luckily, I planned on seeing it a second time in IMAX anyway. We saw this opening weekend, which was apparently a mistake. It was a 9:45 show for a 2½ hour movie. If you can do math, that means that you know you won't be getting home until at least 12:30 when you include driving time and the length of the previews. We see our second trailer for "The Spirit" and it looks MUCH better than the first one we saw. We then see a bunch of crappy trailers, followed by the trailer for Watchmen, which not only looks like a visual orgasm, but every scene in the trailer is very clearly a scene in the graphic novel, so it looks like they're going to be very faithful to it. I'm extremely excited at this point, and ready for the movie to begin. The bank heist begins, at which point I discover, very loudly, that there is a family of five behind me. A mom, dad, and three kids who are too young to be getting home at 12:30, and definitely too young for this movie. These five people do not shut up. For like an hour. I understand that they're too stupid to follow the simple plot of a movie by themselves, but there's no reason that the rest of us should have to suffer just because they're borderline retarded. It's fucking bizarre too, because the mom got all excited at one point and was like "OMG! Harvey Dent turned into Two-Face!!!!!111eleventy!1" It's hard to properly convey the inflection of her voice online, but she had a very clear understand of who Two-Face was, but no fucking idea that his name was Harvey Dent. I finally waited until there was some nice loud action in the movie, so as not to disturb the other movie patrons, then turned around and yelled "Shut the fuck up!". The guy sitting next to me thanked me, and, quite luckily for them, they did indeed shut up. Even so, it was too late to really appreciate the movie, because it's impossible to get into a movie and enjoy it when you're so angry and annoyed.
Hellboy 2 - This was the next movie we saw, and while not as amazing as the Dark Knight, it was still really good. I didn't like
that they made the human leader guy of the BPRD out to be bumbling and incompetent whereas in the first movie he was just kind of a dick,
but that was really my only complaint. Anyway, the movie begins without incident, but about 10 minutes after the movie started, some guy
walks up to the back row where we're sitting and sits in the least seat, about three seats away from us. The dude is kinda coughing
and basically his entire existence is loud. My girlfriend then informs me he's spitting loogies into a cup, so I offer to switch seats with her.
Much like with the old couple in the strangers, it's amazing how big a difference one seat makes, because I couldn't really hear him before,
but Jesus Christ is this guy gross and annoying. About five minutes later he leaves the theatre, and I'm relieved. A few minutes later he comes
back with popcorn and soda. He's now breathing loudly, eating loudly, and spitting phlegm into a cup. If that wasn't bad enough, he then
answers his phone, and talks for about a minute straight. LOUDLY. At this point I could feel my heart beating about 150 times a minute, and
the only thing that kept me from beating the shit out of this guy was the fear of whatever disease was making this guy so fucking gross.
Oh yeah, and he left the movie before it was over too. If you're going to show up to a movie late, leave in the middle to get food, talk on
the phone during it, and leave early, why even go and ruin everyone else's time?
So what have I learned from these experiences? I need to get rich and build a movie theatre in my house. That, and that the bad
guys in Watchmen had a great idea. If you don't know what I mean, you will in March.
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© 2008 by Dr. Jeebus