The Projector #79: A Night at the Movies (Patreon)

by Keith Phipps

The last time I went to the movies was some time in late February or early March of last year. I’d have to look it up to nail down a date, but it was a weeknight evening screening of The Invisible Man for this podcast. I didn’t think anything of it, really. I went by myself, had a beer in the lobby because I’d gotten there early, watched the film and went home. In the weeks that followed, I’d vaguely planned to take my kid to see Sonic the Hedgehog (she’d expressed interest and I don’t say no) and Onward. But the weekends slipped away and we didn’t get around to it. There’d always be next weekend, after all. And then there wasn’t. The theaters closed, for reasons we all know already, and a year passed. I hadn’t gone a year without seeing movie in a theater since I saw my first one as a kid. Neither had my wife Stevie, who was feeling the loss, too. So for her birthday this year, I rented a theater just for our family. Reader, it was great.

Stevie agonized and vacillated, since we had to pick something that was appropriate for a kid and which wouldn’t bore her. The Philadelphia Story was in the mix for a while. So were Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Moonrise Kingdom. Ultimately, she landed on J.J. Abrams’ infinitely rewatchable Star Trek reboot from 2009. We showed up with a Blu-ray, handed over to the theater’s extremely nice owner, and took our seats. (Two quick asides: 1) It’s a really good movie. I know the whole Kelvin Universe isn’t universally beloved, but I still think they made a bunch of smart choices with this outing. 2) The projected Blu-ray worked pretty well. The blacks were a little weak — exacerbated by this being, you know, a space movie — but it was quite acceptable.)

I honestly didn’t know how it would feel to be back in a movie theater. And, sure, it was weird having a whole house to ourselves. But here’s the really weird thing: it felt normal. We had concessions and sat back to watch the movie. Then we went home. (The 9-year-old liked it a lot, by the way. It's obviously time to start bingeing a Deep Space Nine rewatch with her.)

I’m putting this out there not to brag. If you have a theater near you that does private rentals for a reasonable price, I do highly recommend it, but that's not a luxury everyone enjoys. (Our was The New 400 in Rogers Park, one of Chicago’s last true neighborhood theater and a site for moviegoing for over 100 years. Its Facebook page boasts of serving Rogers Park moviegoers through two pandemics.) I’m putting it out there because it’s around the corner for all of us before the year is through. As tough as this has been, you will get to go to theaters again and eat popcorn. There will be an end to this, and sitting in the theater was the first time it fully struck me how good that end will feel.

In the meantime, there’s still plenty of quarantainment to be had. We hope you enjoyed our latest episode on The Last Unicorn and that you’ll also enjoy next week’s companion episode on Raya and the Last Unicorn. (So many mythical creatures in danger of disappearing!) And be on the lookout for a bonus episode on Zack Snyder’s Justice League, featuring Scott, me and anyone else who made it to the other side of its four-hour running time. In the meantime, here are a few pieces worth your time that won’t take four hours to read. We've also got a new bonus episode on an extremely odd year's Oscar nominations.

• Speaking of quarantainment, at Vulture, Alison Willmore wrote about a year of watching movies about being stuck at home while stuck at home and, at Uproxx Mike Ryan wrote about a lockdown year spent watching almost 400 movies.

• At The Guardian, our Scott Tobias wrote about Memento at 20.

• Also at Vulture, Max Cea listed 13 great movies over four hours long (for an obviously timely reason). And Joe Reid covered SNL’s history as an Oscar-season campaign stop.

• At Mashable, a video breaks down the color coded ways movies and TV make foreign countries look kind of awful.