*Being There *starring Peter Sellers. Saw it on the second date with the first woman I fell in love with. A truly wonderful night.
I saw both Entry Level Male and Idiocracy in theaters.
The Simpsons Movie. It wasn’t so much the movie, as the audience and the theatre. The theatre is very old, and has that theatre smell, and wooden floors, and is in my favorite vacation spot. They had one showing that day, and it was opening day. The next day it would be shipped off to another theatre, and when it came back I would be gone. And the audience was great! People of all ages went, and the theatre was packed.
The next year a coworker told me to see The Hurt Locker. I had no idea what it was about, but I saw it at the same theatre. Definitely not a vacation movie! It did a serious job on my head.
And I saw all but the last two Star Trek movies in theatres. I saw II probably four times.
In the “this is now kind of a cult film, and I saw it in the theater so feel like I was in on the ground floor” category, I saw The Iron Giant during its fairly-unnoticed theatrical run.
Purely for memorable theater experiences, I went to charity advance screenings of all three Star Wars prequels with a red carpet and George Lucas in attendance and the massive weight of nerdy anticipation… certainly memorable, despite the major warts.
As for pure “holy shit that movie was amazing” experiences, I think the prize for me might have to go to Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which I still think is one of the best scifi/action movies of all time, had utterly stunning fx for its day, and came out at just the right time for me to be an impressionable high school student.
Point taken! I struggled with “amused.” I didn’t want it to sound like snark, but, you see, I’m also struggling with “proud.”
I’m certainly “glad” I saw it in a theater. I’m “glad” I’m a movie fan.
I still go see movies in theaters, but probably only eight or ten times a year. There was a time when I went to a movie theater at least two or three times a month, and sometimes even twice a week.
I’ll still have to think about whether or not I’m “proud.” 
I’m in that very small club as well. Played for one week in Chicago at the Lowes 600.
I saw that in one of the most technically advanced theaters in the US, the AMC Mainstreet. It’s just down the street from their corporate headquarters, and it’s where they test new technologies. So I saw The Hurt Locker on a 4k digital projector on an extraordinarily large screen with 11 channel sound with a bass shaker installed in each theater seat.
That film, in that environment, was like being assaulted. Nobody, and I mean nobody, watching this film in their home theater had a comparable experience. You don’t have a 4K copy, you don’t have a 4K projector, you don’t have 11 channel sound…though you might have a bass shaker. So you didn’t have the same experience.
Sad that this wonderful movie fell through the cracks.
Seconded.
I had the same experience with the original Alien. I saw that in Kansas City’s Midland theater. Geiger’s designs were wonderfully complimented by the cavernous, rococo movie palace. I walked out of that movie practically tripping.
It sounds like the polar opposite of the theatre I saw it in. But I felt a bit assaulted as well!
I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey many times in the theater. Several times on its first run and every time it was re-released.
You’d expect 2001 to be a “you’ve got see it on the big screen” movie, but I’d seen Citizen Kane on TV many times but didn’t really see it until I saw it on the big screen in a beautiful 75 year-old theater.
Exactly! Film is composed for the “medium” of the theater, and Citizen Kane more than most. The scene of Kane talking to Susan in that vast, echoing hall filled with packing crates is a fine scene on video, but emotionally devastating in a theater. The sound mix uses the emptiness of the theater as part of the acoustics.
I saw “Avatar” in Imax 3D - it was my first experience with a 3D movie, and I’m a bit afraid I came in on a high that’s going to be hard to top. You can criticize the film for many things, but I think the Imax 3D version I saw was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.
I stayed awake through “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” when I saw it in a theatre - I’m fairly proud of that. 
A couple of things stand out to me, watching movies on the big screen. First its been a while since I seen something in an actual theatre, something like two or three years and I cant even remember what it was.
As a kid, I went to a local mall theater and watched a lot of Ray Harryhausen movies, with the stop motion animation special effects, I dont think they held up very well on TV.
As per my age, I seen the must see movies of my generation, the starwars trilogy, the Treks and the indiana’s, plus numerous eighties movies that teens of my generation were moved by.
For sheer comedy, I would have to say Flash Gordon was the funniest movie that I had seen in theater, that the whole audience laughed and cheered.
For that oh my fucking god experience, that would have had to be apocolypse now in Imax. It was almost like you were there in the slicks sitting on your helmet, and meeting the tiger later on. I cant say that I liked the balance of the movie from that point, it went from a very nice action movie , to its heart of darkness origins.
So charlie did not surf, who knew.
Top gun anyone seen that several times in theater and quite possibly more than starwars.
Then I went to my first adult move about 7 or 8 years ago, which was love actually. Up until that time, I pretty much would describe my movie going experience as not another teen movie, or scifi or Chuck Norris, Stalone, Arnie etc, stuff that usually connected with my hind brain.
So I would not say that LA was an Art adult movie, but it did have adults in adult situations and it resonated with me. It translates well to the smaller screen , but it was different experience seeing it on the big screen.
Declan
My votes:
Star Wars (the original): Wow. That big star destroyer at the beginning was totally going to set the tone for the move.
Alien: Again. Wow. A good one, and my mom had to sneak me into the movie.
Halloween: This one pretty much set the mood for the rest of my life for my love of horror flicks. Of course, nothing else has even came close.
The Blair Witch Project: While I do own this on DVD, it was better at the movies. I saw it and was so enthralled that when the lights came on, I faked going to the bathroom and went back into the theatre to see it again. I saw a friend of mine who I worked with who was going to do the same thing and we watched it together for the second time. Though this is filmed in a TV format, I thought it worked really well in the theatre.
Saw Jaws right before my first SCUBA dive.
Saw Alien in the theater. Scared the bejezus out of my cousin and I.
Age must have a lot to do with it. I probably would have had the same reaction as you did if I saw those movies when I was a kid. I was 17 when I saw 2001 and while I didn’t understand much of it, it hooked me on some more visceral level. The few parts I did get opened my eyes to the power films could have (the discovery of tools sequence, especially). By the time I saw Star Wars, it struck me as cartoonish. Like you with 2001, I haven’t seen it again, but maybe I should, just to get another perspective.