I prefer sitting close to the front, but not so close that you can’t actually focus on the screen. Usually the 5th or 6th row back. Even if the theatre has stadium seating I prefer the first rows. If I’m not watching an action movie, I’m less picky, but I remember watching The Phantom Menace up close. The pod race was just amazing. The screen filled my view and it was as if I were there.
We once walked into a theatre to find that the only available seats were the very front row, which was about 6 feet from the screen. Much, much too close. We asked the manager if we could go into another movie instead and he obliged.
My preferences are
Stadium seating. Will go past theatre without it to get to one with it.
Seat near the middle of the theatre row wise. Maybe a little higher.
Usually sit on the asile. So I prefer theatres with a ‘center’ asile.
I’m a big fan of watching the audience along with the movie. If I go to see a movie twice, I will always take an aisle seat in the last row of the right side. That way, I can look over the whole theater and see all of the people lit up and reacting to the action on the screen.
When I saw Attack of the Clones last night, I had those exact seats (not intentionally), and it was great.
I can’t really say “halfway up”, because every theater’s different, but my favorite seat usually falls at about the halfway point. I try to find the row just close enough such that the screen will fill my entire field of vision, but not so close that I have to turn my head to see the leftmost or rightmost part of the screen.
And I take the seat in the center of that row, of course.
Always on the aisle, but the distance back depends on the theater. There’s one very small stadium seating theater here and I like to sit on the first row of the seats that start the sloped seating. I usually sit closer to the middle in the larger theaters with that sort of seating.
And stadium seating is a dream. Unfortunately, I grew up most of my life in an area without stadium seating. Fortunately, my new home has a nice 20-screen stadium-seated multiplex nearby.
Non stadium: About 1/3 from the front, cenetered left to right
stadium first full elevated row, centered left to right
(the stadiom seating around here seems to have a bunch of normal seats, then the entrance hall, then a partial row, and then a fuull row
Always somewhere between rows 2-4 (depending on how big the house is). Always slightly off the middle (usually left but sometimes right). Most arthouses and rep houses don’t have stadium seating so that’s never a consideration. In fact, most people tend not to sit very close in non-stadium seating theatres, so I’m usually away from the rest of the crowd (ie. the talkers, the wrapper crunchers, etc.)
Stadium seating is essential, because I’m short, and in standard seats I ALWAYS end up behind some 6-foot schmuck, generally one who sways back and forth as he watches so I can’t even lean over and watch through the ‘window.’
Assuming stadium seating, there is only one correct seat: the exact center of the theater. If it is taken, then the seat closest to it that does not involve sitting next to a stranger.
In non-stadium seats, as close to the middle as I can get, but on an aisle so I can see the screen.
Traditional seating (single level): Just far enough back so that the movie screen encompasses slightly less than my entire feild of vision, centered left to right.
Traditional seating (two levels): Front row of the balcony, centered left to right.
Stadium: One row below centered vertically and centered horizontally.
You don’t even want to know the whole crazy theory I have about where to sit in a movie theater to maximize your enjoyment of the film.
Trust me.
Suffice it to say that I normally sit 1/2 to 2/3 back from the screen. And I’ll second that “as far away from teenagers as possible” statement made earlier. Though, as I get older, I find I have to be careful, because films aimed at people my age and up (I’m thinking here of things like Gosford Park) attract exactly the wrong other type of clientele … the kind that will sit next to his date and ask occasionally in a normal voice, “What did he say?”
Fortunately, my new home has a nice 20-screen stadium-seated multiplex nearby. 