List your top movie going *experiences*. Your best experiences might not match your experiences watching the best movie you've seen.

For example:

In 1997, my older brother and his family went out to Virginia to visit with my brother and sister. We saw Armageddon at a theater which served meals like hamburgers and fries and beer along with the movie. The movie was pretty good. (I actually liked the scene where Bruce Willis' character, said goodbye to Liv Tyler's character) And the food was great and the seats were nice.

Saw Episode I at the Coronet Theater in San Fran the Friday after it was released. The movie obviously wasn't that great, but watching the movie with 500 other Star Wars fans and listening to them scream after the credits rolled was cool.

Watching 2001 at a theater in San Francisco on a 35mm projector. The movie looked great and it was cool to watch the movie in a theater.

If you have any experiences like this, list them below.

The first time I saw Star Wars Episode I was cool for the same reasons you listed, and to this day, when I see Darth Maul pop both lightsaber blades, I think of everyone cheering in the theater and the nerdgasm about to blow.

My brother and I caught Grindhouse the weekend it opened at like midnight, didn't leave the theater until 330 or so when it was over, and that was one of the best times in a theater. We were the only 2 in there at the time, getting up and moving around, talking throughout, getting rowdy during the cool parts, etc. Good fun.

I still remember seeing The Lion King, Jurassic Park, The Avengers, all for the first time, b/c they were so enjoyable.

Movies I've seen twice:

The Avengers (b/c it was so awesome)

The Expendables (I grew up watching Sly, Lundgren, Bruce, Arnie, so them mixing it up with the 'newer' guys was cool as hell)

The Expendables 2 (to see if it was as bad as the first time b/c I was in disbelief... it's still not a good movie)

The Matrix Reloaded (same reasons as Expendables 2, although I have come to enjoy this movie for what it is)

Guardians of the Galaxy (while I liked Cap 2 and X-Men better last year, I saw this twice b/c the fiancé hadn't yet seen it, so I went again)

Blair Witch in the woods

during the underground club scene of Matrix Reloaded. And I was an adrenaline laced teen at the time.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

I was the only person in the theater. So... I took my pants off and sat in my boxers.

n/m

>I was the only person in the theater. So... I took my pants
>off and sat in my boxers.

lol

opening day. My cousin slept over night to get tickets. I think i was like 23 at the time. Took the metro from Falls Church to DC and stood in line for hours. Seeing all the costumes was great. I laughed a lot at Bobba Fett t-shirt and homemade mask on one guy who appeared to probably still live at home and had a beer belly sticking out right next to super Bobba Fett costume that looked to be studio quality.

I saw a bunch of bad movies there growing up- Evita, ID4, Lost World, Mulan.

this was before it came out as fake.

I had just graduated high school. So it was a summer of partying and hanging out with friends. I remember we were drinking in someone's backyard when he started telling us about the movie. I hadn't heard of it yet and I wasn't into horror flicks. So I wasnt interested. We ended up driving to another friends house who had internet to watch the trailer. We watched the trailer and I was like son we gotta see it. It was in limited release. The nearest theater that was playing it was in Anaheim. Which was like 35 minutes away. But fuck it. The next night we drove out there around 7pm. Sold out for the rest of the night. They wouldn't let us buy tickets for the next day either. So we drove back down the next day at 5pm. Same thing sold out for the rest of the night. FUCK! The next day we drove out at 11am and were able to land tickets for the 9pm showing. We bought them and drove back home.

We showed up around 730pm to start lining up for seats. We were one of the first ones there. But right after we got there everyone started showing up. We actually saw a few groups of people we knew who were leaving the earlier shows. They were talking about how scary it was. We were so amped. Grabbed our seats right in the middle of the theater. Man that was a fantastic movie experience. Everyone in the theater thought it was a true story. People were screaming during so much of the movie. But not like the typical scared girl scream, But like OH FUCK OH SHIT. Guys and girls. The scene when they were in the tent and the kids hands started banging on the tent. Man you could feel how uncomfortable and nervous everyone was. Then the ending. When they are walking down the basement stairs and you see the guy in the corner and the whack and the camera falls! MAN everyone was freaking out. Then the credits start up and dead ass silence. Nobody left and nobody talked. Just people sitting there.

I want to say a week later it came out as a hoax and people started coming back from the theaters talking about how wack it was. Them admitting so soon that it was fake ruined that experience for so many people. It was real to me man.

I can't really say that any great drama I saw in theaters left a mark on me BECAUSE I saw it in theaters which is probably blasphemy to a lot of people here, but I've always felt like comedies are the only things TOTALLY changed by a live experience (usually for the better, sometimes for the worse).


Scary Movie 3 I was starting freshman year in high school and me and my friends from middle school had all kind of solidified what our group humor was and the first time we went and saw that movie it BLEW US AWAY. I'd already been schooled on its predecessors by my dad (Airplane!, Naked Gun, etc.) but I wasn't immune to the knockoffs yet. We really liked the first two but had only seen then at home because they were Rated R, but seeing Scary Movie 3 in theaters made it seem amazing.

In or defense, we went back the next week to see it again all psyched to roll over laughing from front to back all over again but we walked out within 20 minutes. It's both my favorite movie experience and one of the very few movies I've ever walked out of.

Undercover Brother I saw with my best friend at the time, who was black, and we just kept punching each other and laughing hysterically and kept cracking the racial jokes at each other during games of Madden constantly afterward. It's also peppered by memories of him having a brain aneurysm shortly after and losing most of his personality/physicality for several years, so it's a fond last memory of the best friendship I've ever had.


Superbad came out the summer after graduation so by this point the team I'd seen Scary Movie 3 with had gotten heavy into weed and knew some people we could smuggle booze from, and it happened to release the weekend before the first of our friends moved away to college (almost all of us were staying in Nebraska or going to Colorado/Kansas but he was going to CANADA) so we got LOADED on dope and smuggled shooters in and had a fucking blast. I can't say it was directly comparable to the Scary Movie 3 experience because it was partially fueled by substances instead of raw adolescent hormones but, man, what a way to send off a good friend, especially since a lot of us started high school out the same way (and some of us were leaving high school with the same hangups).

Thanks Superbad.


OH, I could throw in The Ring because (other than its sequel) its the only scary movie I ever saw in theaters. Same typical crew, and dude I was sitting next to was the only other guy that all week long had been saying "no man, I don't do scary movies, that's not the movie we're seeing this week" and from the opening scene onward we caught each other, like, totally grabbing for each others' hands and shit at least 10 times. We didn't care how many homophobic jokes we got afterward we were legitimately terrified and shrieking like women throughout. It's hilarious in retrospect but I'll never forget how afraid of powered down TVs in unlit rooms I was for, like, two years after that movie.


~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

We covered by the Blood which never loose it's power



http://soundcloud.com/rayandersonjr

If you were on OKP when this movie was in development you know the anticipation was crazy. I went to the theater and met up with some buddies. Some of their friends dressed up like pilots and had little rubber snakes around their necks. We went into a PACKED theater on opening weekend. I sat next to a couple who was trying to figure out why the theater was packed. I told them I'd been waiting for almost a YEAR for this movie. The girl told her guy "See I told you." It was an event!

From the very beginning the generic Asian character name had everyone rolling. The unintentional comedy was greatness. When we saw the bumper scenes showing the plane in the air a group of people in the theater made a "ssssssssssssssss" sound every time. When Sam Jackson does his big Snakes on a plane line I stood up and applauded with a bunch of other people. It was so much fun that I've yet to top that experience in a theater.

Snakes on a Plane will always have a special place in my heart for that reason.

Man, this movie had the internet blowing up, BIG time.

It's still a fun and unique story in the internet age just before social media really took ahold of everything, and the documentaries on the DVD capture it relatively well.

but you had to go opening weekend. I'm guessing there was no one there after that.

I'll just name the films, the reason is all the same : great movies seen first run that we did not expect to be great:

Christmas Story (did not expect it to be this good)
Ferris Bueller <-Looked Cheesy in previews
ROBOCOP <-Blew our MINDS.
SouthPark BLU: Did not expect it to be so good - it's a classic
The Matrix during preview screenings - no idea what it was. A few weeks before publicity started.
Bad Santa - Saw it 5 times in the theater the in one week. The first time I was alone, then next 4 I brought friends and paid for their tickets.
40 Year Old Virgin - No idea it would KILL!
Pootie Tang: It was the weirdest film we ever saw with a crowd.
Pineapple Express preview: Not a great movie, but Judd Apatow was in the lobby and I got to speak with him about Larry Sander Show and Freaks and Geeks.

Main theater was packed to the brim. Just as my buddy and I walked in they announced they opened a second screen. We bucked a quick U-Turn and got seats smack dab in the middle of a fairly empty theater

I remember taking my soon to be wife to a back to back showing of Blade 2 and Panic Room. Good times, but too much popcorn

Oh, and seeing the Star Trek reboot on IMAX at the Air and Space museum. Once the Enterprise rose over Titan it was a wrap

Saw them in incredible theaters and by myself. No distractions, just you and the film

At some rinky dink theater in Brooklyn.

Must've been out a week. And if you remember how big the Batman craze was. T-shirts. Hats. Batman medallion necklaces. All that.

My uncle dropped us off. We got there a little late. No seats available, or at least we couldn't see them. But that didn't stop us. Nope.

the beginning of what was to become my movie crew


we went in skeptical
of like the whole deal
we red of waiting in line getting there two hours early getting bad seats for subpar movies
even if it was for free
it was the end of the 90s and we were getting to old for this shit lol
but this looked interesting so we pulled together as a group to go
we were negative about it on the wait in line
no way we were getting in
look at the length of the line
even if we get in
bad seats
okay if we get seats
theres like 10 of us
we won't be together

man no way this movie was good


...

ffwd two plus hours layer
we got in
we got seats
together
and OMG we were blown away

the next one after that was grindhouse
we paid because at this point rodriguez and tarantino was IT for us
we were puzzled as it was a tiny theatre
on a friday at that
and empty
it was our group
and one other group
and this was opening weekend

we *shrugged*
leaned back prepared to just enjoy what was given to us
we gave a standing O to the death proof ending
something about the mood we created in the theatre with our NYstyle OOOoooo
OOOOooooooOOOOOO
OH SNAP
was only 25 of us in that theatre but we bonded oddly

and still wondered where everyone else was
LOL
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When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
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You cannot hate people for their own good.