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Describe your favourite movie-going experience of your life

Posted: Sun Feb 03, 2013 7:51 pm
by nauru
Jurassic Park.

I had really bought into the hype around this film, including toys/prizes in cheerios boxes, TV commercials, and because I had just learned about dinosaurs for the first in the second or third grade but only ever seen pictures in books and fossils/skeletons at the museum. From the posters and ads it seemed like the film would be an adventure with moving dinosaurs, little ones hatching from eggs, with a few chase scenes.

So I invited 12 of my friends, aged 9 or 10 to my birthday party followed by watching Jurassic park in the biggest, loudest cinema in the area -- a multiplex with something like 16 screens, all the modern surround sound of the time, etc. We got there early to make sure we could all sit together in the best seats, get the biggest popcorn, candy, drinks and everything. And my parents were there too.

And then the film started. It was okay through the first act, nothing too shocking. But once the rain started things started to get a pretty intense for my 9-year-old mind. By the time the tyrannosaurus was attacking the two kids in the car I was actually hiding behind my oversized bags of popcorn and nervously peering over the top, and so were the two on either side of me. Man was I scared. From that point to the end I felt like I was basically in the film, right there with those two kids. Especially the Tyrannosaurus/jeep chase and the raptors.

At the end of the film I felt like I had survived an incredible adventure. I was wired. I didn't even notice that there were only six of my friends left by the time the lights came on. It was only the next day that my mom told me six of my twelve guests had been too scared to continue watching, and when they asked to leave my dad escorted them one by one to the hallway area where they waited with my mom for the film to be over.

In terms of sheer adrenaline-pumping entertainment, this was easily my best movie-going experience to date.

Re: Describe your favourite movie-going experience of your l

Posted: Sun Feb 03, 2013 9:37 pm
by CMonster
Hands down Spider-Man 3. I went opening night with a bunch of people but the theater was so packed that my best friend and I were forced to sit apart from everybody else. Judging by the reactions of people around us and everybody's after the film, the two of us probably enjoyed it more than anybody else in the theater because the whole time we were basically doing a MST3K in whispers. I've probably never laughed harder at a movie in my life, especially how James Franco became retarded and the horrible emo air hump outside the clothes shop. It's an odd choice, but I've always enjoyed laughing at bad movies and between the film, the friend I was with, and the jokes we happened to make it was a perfect storm of comedy. Admittedly, I usually try to be quiet a movies so as to let other people enjoy the film and we were kinda being assholes that night, but whatever, it was worth it.

Re: Describe your favourite movie-going experience of your l

Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2013 5:11 am
by TheDenizen
Probably the time I punched some kid in the head for throwing popcorn all over the place like an idiot. That was a great day. I couldn't even tell you what movie I was seeing.

Re: Describe your favourite movie-going experience of your l

Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2013 12:22 pm
by TheDenizen
I'm normally a pretty friendly and non-violent person (I've never been in a fight), but that particular kid on that particular day....

anyways, I'll try to think of something better. :D

Re: Describe your favourite movie-going experience of your l

Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2013 12:45 pm
by CMonster
movieboy wrote:
TheDenizen wrote:Probably the time I punched some kid in the head for throwing popcorn all over the place like an idiot. That was a great day. I couldn't even tell you what movie I was seeing.


That said, your forum persona didn't give any indication that you are the kind to be throwing around punches in movie theatres :-)

Have we now discovered the source of the children being killed collection?

Re: Describe your favourite movie-going experience of your l

Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2013 2:36 pm
by begoniabol
2001: A Space Odyssey

I was in the hospital for something (don't worry, nothing serious) and I already bought tickets to see that movie. I was allowed to leave for a night. Went to the place and my boyfriend at the time was waiting for me there. There was an orchestra and chorus, it was absolutely beautiful. Watching my favourite movie, with my favourite person and with a fantastic band; just incredible.
So, movie finished, went back to the hospital. Guard was in a good mood, I was in an even better mood, walking through a dark and empty hospital = awesome. Best movie-going experience of my life. :)

Re: Describe your favourite movie-going experience of your l

Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2013 5:06 pm
by Svengali
Probably Holy Motors a couple of months ago, at the premiere - we were only three people and I had a huge smile on my face for an hour afterwards or so. Other than that, I find the cinema to be a very depressing place. I wonder why I keep coming back.

Re: Describe your favourite movie-going experience of your l

Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2013 5:44 pm
by TheDenizen
CMonster wrote:
movieboy wrote:
TheDenizen wrote:Probably the time I punched some kid in the head for throwing popcorn all over the place like an idiot. That was a great day. I couldn't even tell you what movie I was seeing.


That said, your forum persona didn't give any indication that you are the kind to be throwing around punches in movie theatres :-)

Have we now discovered the source of the children being killed collection?

lol not really.

Hard for me to pick a single "best" experience, as I've seen hundreds of movies at the theater over the years...but seeing Gattaca was really special. I knew nothing about the movie before sitting down in my seat, and it was a huge and entirely empty theater. The place seated several hundred but my gf and I were literally the only people at this particular showing (I think it was a weekday matinee). It was a strange, almost forlorn atmosphere, and added to the movie significantly, which was already a pretty dark and clever scifi feature...

Re: Describe your favourite movie-going experience of your l

Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2013 6:01 pm
by Stewball
2001: A Space Odyssey

While I've been brought to more intense emotional experiences by other movies, this was like several epiphanies all at once: the fantastic improvements in special effects, the social and religious questions it raises, the unique and original visuals, and with all of that set to music which heightened the whole experience, particularly the trip to the moon. Yes, those things individually have been done better since, but not in unison, and not all in unison for the first time--years ahead of its time.

Re: Describe your favourite movie-going experience of your l

Posted: Tue Feb 05, 2013 12:04 am
by djross
In 1998 I was halfway through my PhD on the philosophy and politics of Martin Heidegger, focusing in particular on two of his lecture courses, including the 1942 course entitled Hölderlin's Hymn "The Ister", which recapitulated certain elements from the better known 1935 course entitled An Introduction to Metaphysics. I knew his first two movies, Badlands and Days of Heaven, very well, and knew equally that prior to his filmmaking career he had studied under Stanley Cavell and published a translation of Heidegger's work, entitled The Essence of Reasons. My view of his first two films was that they were both masterpieces, that they both drew heavily on his philosophical education, but that they were both unique and singular aesthetic artefacts. I felt that while there was a general understanding among critics that these films were "philosophical," the profundity with which Malick was addressing Heideggerian questions was not fully appreciated or understood.

Well aware that Malick had more or less disappeared for twenty years, I entered the theatre to see The Thin Red Line with some friends with a mixture of excitement and trepidation (could it really be expected that twenty years later Malick could repeat the quality of his earlier masterpieces?). More important than the fact that the screen was large was the quality and volume of the audio. The opening dark grey-green shot of the gliding crocodile, combined with the accompanying rumbling bass chord, was sufficient to indicate that this was no generic war film (it never could have been). As the movie unfolded, the degree to which Malick was striving for an even more comprehensively philosophical rumination than he had previously accomplished, became clearer and clearer. Reflecting afterwards, it seemed to me increasingly likely that each of the central characters represented positions that could be more or less directly mapped onto those Heidegger develops in An Introduction to Metaphysics (Simon Critchley has made a very good case for a Heideggerian understanding of the film, although my feeling is there is somewhat more left to say). This is not at all to argue that the film is reducible to Heideggerian philosophy, for it also seemed to me that never before had the cinematic medium been used as a philosophical instrument in anything like this way, not just as a vehicle for philosophical questioning, but as a new development not just in cinema, but in philosophy too, raising questions for philosophy. Fifteen years later, the personal consequences of this for me continue to unfurl.