Out Watching Movies

Puskin Art Mozi in Budapest (photo lifted from
Facebook because I'm not snapping photos
at the movies).

Some movie theatre memories, in no particular order:

Going to the Pushkin – a classy, small indie theatre in Budapest – for the first time with Kata.

Watching Independence Day with my brother on my fourteenth birthday.

Walking out of Western Film on my old university campus after watching Mystic River and feeling so dejected that our entire group decided against drinks and swiftly parted ways.

Toonie Tuesdays at Galleria, Westmount, and other long gone movie theatres in London... Canada.

Speaking of long dead theatres in London, RIP Capitol Theatre, whose "Opening Soon" sign hung on its front door for so many years, and might have planted the seed of my powerful pessimism.

Going to the Montreal Forum – former home of the Canadiens – during my brief Montreal Days for movies and once to attend an impromptu press conference during the Dawson College shooting.

Standing outside a theatre, smoking and rehashing a movie with friends on a Christmas visit home while the snow fell in the deserted parking lot – save for a red Aerostar and a black-blue Volvo.

It might be a generational thing, or it might be growing up in the suburban wilderness of London, Ontario, but going to the movies was a thing we did often. 

The need didn't change when I moved to a foreign country with an indecipherable language. In fact, the need increased, along with the obstacles in my path to watching a movie in my mother tongue.

I don't mind reading while I'm watching a movie, so subtitles are be fine with me, but both Germany and Hungary dub foreign movies into their own language. Ostensibly it's to protect and strengthen the local language, but I'm certain it's to throw money at the local voice acting industry. I don't mind, voice actors got to eat, but it also eliminates most movie options for me.

So I carefully scan the listings, looking for the correct acronym – OmU or OV. The locations showing movies with these acronyms are few, usually just the super-duper cineplexes, and their surround sound systems, mandatory 3D glasses, with enough screens and seats to accommodate the locals and those pesky foreigners.

This also narrows the options to the guaranteed money-makers in English like the reboots, comic books movies, whatever joy machine Pixar has created, and, for some reason, whatever inconceivably popular cash machine Kevin Hart or that Mall Cop guy has made.

Blockbuster can entertain most of the people most of the time, but it can't entertain all the people all the time. Sometimes you just want to escape the shopping mall sterility of the super-screen-o-plex and watch an actual film in simpler surroundings. 

Thank goodness for small gems like Budapest's Pushkin Art Mozi and the Dorf's Bambi Filmstudio. These are little Art Deco oases in a barren blockbuster landscape for the English-speaker. Even if Bambi, like so many other German cinemas only sell sweet popcorn, not the salty stuff.

These theatres are smaller, more cozy, more comfortable, and play some films in their original language. Granted, they are not places to watch Rogue One, but they are places to watch the latest Woody Allen flick (both Allen and Star Wars are averaging a movie a year now, so one can achieve movie cinema balance).

Am I sounding like a grumpy expat? I don't mean to. Everything has its place. We saw Rogue One in all its 3D glory at the sole gigantor-plex that plays English movies in the Dorf. A movie like that is made for the jumbo screen.

When we can watch a movie that doesn't have a budget bigger than the GDP of Lithuania, it's nice to ditch the 3D glasses and vibration chairs and lean back in less grandiose surroundings and watch to a more intimate movie. Even if there's no salty popcorn.

One more thing!

That multi-screen-o-plex that shows the English movies in the Dorf runs a great program everywhere Wednesday: CineSneak. You pay a lower than usual admission price to watch a recently released English-language movie, the catch is you don't know that you're about to watch. 

We've gone to a few now and we haven't seen a bad movie yet. They're not something you typically see the Dorf, usually somewhere between an indie flick and a blockbuster. Plus, they have salty popcorn!