This thread has sort of been done, but not with that exact question.
My best experience will probably never be bettered.
I went to see the re-release of Star Wars in 1997. I went with my brother and his friends. I was probably only 1 of 30-40 people who had actually seen the movie before on the big screen. Obviously 99% of the people at the session had seen the movie before on TV or video.
It was 8.30 on a Friday night. The cinema held 650 people and was sold out. There were I would say over 100 people who had dressed up in costumes to watch.
The lights went down and the movie started- a huge roar.
It was such a great atmosphere to watch a movie.
Second best was Rocky Horror picture Show. A cinema in Auckland used to show it every Sunday night for about 20 years. Hundreds of people would come dressed up and throw rice. A great experience, but the movie is not brilliant.
These are pretty pedestrian, but they do come to mind. . .
I saw Analyze This at the (mostly filled) 900 seat Senator Theater in Baltimore. Sure, a somewhat funny movie, but the audience just loved it. It was like going to see a comic. Everyone was laughing at everything and it just felt like a great vibe filled the room. It’s the kind of experience I think of when people say they like seeing the blockbusters on the big screen, but will save comedies for DVD.
Also, I saw Scream at kind of a junky theater. Remember that horror movies (particluarly teen-slashers) had been in quite the decline when that came out, but I’d always been a Wes Craven fan, so I decided to go see it. I was about 25, but the theater was filled with girls who looked like they were about 13-16. Before the movie started, it was sort of raucous and very yappy in the theater.
That very first scene – when Drew Barrymore gets the call – was just Wes Craven at his best. The theater went SILENT, and to use a clichè – you could have cut the tension with a knife. It seemed like every girl in the theater had completely put herself in Drew Barrymore’s shoes. It made me think, “this is why people see horror movies, and this is why they make them.”
Overall, possibly the best was watching the restored Spartacus in a big, old restored theater with Pepper Mill, who had never seen it before (so I got the first-time-seeing-it buzz by association). One of my favorite flicks, seen complete, as it ought to be seen on the big screeen. Great experience.
A lot of other great cinema experiences were just bits and pieces. When I first saw Star Wars, the afternoon after it had been released, and they played the entire 20th Century Fox overture instead of the abbreviated version they’d been using (except for Cinemascope releases) for my entire life until then, I knew that Lucas was a director/producer who opayed a lot of attention to the small details, and that this would be a helluva film. Even before that “A Long Time Ago in a Glaxay Far, Far Away…” card appeared. (Younger folks might not appreciate this – since Lucas they’ve been using the full overture as a matter of course. But hearing it played at the start of a movie in 1977 was a Big Deal.)
I was expecting The Terminator to be a cheap SF film with guys in rubber masks running around LA shooting at each other. The opening FutureWar sequence blew me away-- the movie was much more intelligent and infinitely more SF-literate than I’d expected. I had a similar reaction to RoboCop, which looked like a stupid premise and a dumber film. But it had solid writing, good knowledge of the literature, and an over-the-top sense of satire.
Seeing “Beauty and the Beast” was my happiest adult in-theater experience. The first musical sequence captured me, and I never wanted the movie to end. (I love that feeling)
I saw **The Sound of Music ** at The Uptown in DC. It is a huge single-screen theater and I got there early to get the perfect seat exactly in the middle, at the right distance away. I even refused to move over a seat for some couple. I know that sounds like an assholic thing to do but I got there probably an hour early to get That Seat.
It was like being in an old-time theater, with the curtains opening, intermission, everything. Wonderful stuff.
I can’t even remember what movie it was, but it was my first date with the girl I met whan I was 16 and dated on and off for 7 years.
We had met the day before and spent the entire evening and night until sunrise sitting up and talking. That day, she had to work most of the day, so when I picked her up, she had had maybe 2 hours of sleep.
We sat down, she laid her head on my shoulder, held my hand and fell asleep. I sat there paralyzed, afraid to wake her until the movie ended. When it did, she woke up, stretched like a cat, leaned over and kissed me.
You know, this is going to sound stupid, but it was the old “Captain EO” 3-D movie at Disneyland. Lights go down, music starts, and then they perch an asteroid about three feet in front of your nose. Spectacular 3-D effects. And that was before Michael got weird.
The first American Pie. I didn’t know what to expect and I don’t think a lot of other people in the full theater did either. In fact, I hadn’t heard of the movie before, we just went to have something to do.
In the first few minutes, when his mom pulls the pillow off his lap and he has his schlong in the sock, the entire theatre went crazy, myself included. I guess the audience was of a generation that thought the Animal House, Revenge of the Nerds, and Porkys they show on cable TV were the way those films were seen in the theater decades earlier.
The old Stanley Theatre in Vancouver – formerly the best movie-house in the city, now reverted to a stage. 1980 – I was ten years old and at the opening of The Empire Strikes Back – with a screening of Star Wars beforehand. I don’t ever expect to enjoy a movie night that much again – but you can’t go home again.
For adult experiences, probably the rerelease of Lawrence of Arabia at the incomparible Princess Theatre in Edmonton, Alberta. The Princess is more beautiful than ever at nearly a century old, and after seeing a movie there, a cineplex outing will always feel impoverished. It feels like an opera house! Domed, frescoed ceiling, art deco details, dramatic sconces, rich red curtains, steep stadium seating – steep enough that everyone is guaranteed a clear view, even with each seat a deep first-class affair big enough to offer full neck-support to the tallest person. Adjustable arm-rests such that people sitting next to each other can both use both armrests, or swing them away if they prefer to cuddle or summat. And, of course, Lawrence of Arabia, on a big, beautiful screen.
I miss the Stanley, which was the last proper theatre in Vancouver – but even the Stanley (as kick-ass as it was) could not hold a candle to the Princess, which is the Platonic Ideal of a cinema.
I have three. The first was seeing Superman (Christopher Reeve version) in the theater. The lines were a block long and everyone was excited and in a good mood. People clapped and cheered during the movie, and I remember it being way more fun seeing it that way.
The second was seeing the original Star Wars trilogy in a restored theater in Austin (the Paramount). The place was full, but everyone was laid back and having a good time, and the theater was the perfect place to host it.
The third was seeing The Runaway Bride and The Blair Witch Project (great double feature, eh?) at a drive-in in Door County (northern Wisconsin). It was fall, so it was chilly. The drive-in was packed, and even though the movies weren’t that good, it was a fun way to watch them. The Blair Witch Project was made creepier by the setting, BTW.
I have way too many to choose from, but the one that sticks out is the first time I saw* The Passion of Joan of Arc *with a full orchestra and choir performing the accompanying music by Richard Einhorn, Voices of Light, at the Chicago Opera House.
I can think of a couple…like Trunk, I saw Scream in a theater with teenage girls, and that was the very best surround sound I ever experienced. It was like people right in the theater were screaming, or something! heh. Actually, it really did add to the experience; every scare got a full scream.
I saw The Blair Witch Project during the initial weekend of its limited release in a little theater in Austin. The theater didn’t have one of those “googolplex”-size screens, so it was pretty intimate. And the theater was decorated strangely, too; I remember a sort of Egyptian theme, and there were standing pillars in the theater as well. Seeing the movie in that environment really added something.
I was in a small theater watching “Weird Al” Yankovic’s movie, UHF when the film came off the reel. Of course, UHF is precisely the kind of movie where it would be natural to have a sequence where the film appears to come off the reel, so I didn’t realize there was anything wrong until the house lights came up.
Eh… what immiediatley springs to mind is when I went to see, eh, K19: The Widowmaker with a friend of mine. We hadnt seen each other in a long time, and we always would go to the movies, so we went, for old times sake. K19 was all that was showing. We were the only people in the cinema, with good reason; the movie was atrocius. But me n buzz had a riot, laughing in the most inapropriate places, and doing the old airplane “drinking problem” gag everytime Harrison downed a vodka onscreen, which is like every five minutes. We were crying with laughter. Good times. Another that springs to mind is when we went to see Enemy at the Gates… again, the only people there. The scene where st petersburg (Or wherever) gets bombed was incredible; I think that the cinema speakers were malfunctioning, it seemed, because this was the loudest thing we had ever heard. The fold-up cinema seats were rattling it was that loud. We just had a ball.
Heh. I saw Earth Girls Are Easy with some friends, on acid, and the film jammed and dramatically burned up. House lights came up, projector was sorted, house lights went down, film resumed.
After the film, one of my friends said that it was a life-changing experience for him, especially the performance aspect of the movie with the simulated technical problems, and how it was a commentary on the blah-deh-blah-blah of conformist society blah-blah-blah entropic forces yadda yadda yadda WHITE LIGHT OF ENLIGHTENMENT CUTTING THROUGH ALL THE TRIVIAL BULLSHIT rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb coagula et solve rumble rumble inadequacy of traditional narrative discourse film’s amazing bright palette suggests an alternate way of life humma humma humma Finland Babes summon kundalini energy and direct the spaceship which represents the physical body blah de blah clarion call to become awakened beings, swimming-pool baptism and rebirth etc… etc… etc…
My best movie experience was my Mom taking me to a theater to see “The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad” when it was first released and I was 5-years-old. Nothing since has come close or had such an effect on me.
