Tell me a story

I don’t remember when my dad began regularly taking me to movies. My earliest movie memory dates back to 1990, when we saw Dick Tracy at the Loews Cineplex Cinema 5 in Fresh Meadows, NY. I would have been seven years old then. The reason I probably remember that is because my mom came with us. Usually it was just my dad and I off to the picture shows by ourselves.

As I got older we settled into a routine of seeing a movie about every other weekend. Our regular spot was the Sunrise Multiplex Cinemas in Valley Stream, NY near the Green Acres mall. Some weekends we’d watch whatever kids movies I really wanted to see, some weekends we saw a more adult movie, sometimes one of my friends would come with us. A couple of times we even split up so that he could see a movie I wasn’t old enough to see (like 1992’s The Crying Game), though I think sometimes he just couldn’t bear the thought of seeing my movie (like 1993’s Super Mario Bros).

At some point we learned about movie hopping: we’d see one movie, hide in the bathroom or visit the concession stand, and then walk into another screening room. In August of 1995, after we saw The Usual Suspects for the first time, we movie hopped right back into the same room to see it a second time. After two viewings I still didn’t quite get it—I was twelve years old—but I knew I was seeing something brilliant. I can still remember how, a month later when we were watching Se7en and Kevin Spacey walked onto the screen, my dad shot up in excitement. He might have tapped me and said something like, “It’s him!” I’ll be damned if to this day I don’t have a special little place in my heart for Kevin Spacey because of that.

It’s unnecessary to say that I’m the movie fan I am today because of him (my dad, not Kevin Spacey, although Spacey is good too). Sitting on a soft red chair in a darkened theater, watching the MGM lion roar or hearing the opening drum beats of the Fox Searchlight animation, my entire attention would hone in on that screen, and for the next hour and a half I’d become someone completely new. I’d fall in love a hundred times, go on a hundred adventures, solve a hundred mysteries, come of age a hundred times, and all while shoulder-to-shoulder with my father.

The last movie I remember seeing with him was The Talented Mr. Ripley on January 2, 2000 at Green Acres Cinemas (a five minute walk from Sunrise Cinemas). He’d already seen it once himself and, having completely adored it, just had to take my sister, Tania, and me to see it too. I think the movie triggered an itch in him to see more of the world. He began urging us to do the same. Three years later I was studying abroad in London, and he was taking a trip that included stops in London, Paris and parts of Africa. I won’t say Mr. Ripley made that happen, but the movies we saw certainly affected our lives, if just by seeing them together. This site is my testament to that. My dad would have been 63 this past September 18th. I dedicate this month with MoviePass to him.

My dad at the London Bridge

I caught seven movies at the theaters in September: The World’s End, Elysium, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Short Term 12, The Grandmaster, Don Jon, and Prisoners. I saw Ain’t Them Bodies Saints at the E-Street Cinema in D.C. Unfortunately, MoviePass doesn’t work at E Street, but earlier in the year I’d bought some bulk vouchers—5 tickets for $40. There are some restrictions on when you can use them, but they come in handy.

I paid full price to see Short Term 12 at the Bethesda Row Cinema because I really wanted to see this limited release movie, and I didn’t want to travel far to see it an independent theater chain that accepted MoviePass. All the rest of the movies I saw with MoviePass.

(Click the above to see trailers)

Subtract my $30 MoviePass fee and bam! that’s $33 in savings. No complaints there, my friends. But what’s even more exciting than saving that much money is the fact that I visited two new movie theaters in September:  City Cinemas Village East in New York City where I saw the unfortunately ponderous The Grandmaster and the Uptown Theater in Washington, DC where I was bemused, beguiled and bewitched by Prisoners.

Both cinemas are throwbacks, complete with a palatial main screening room that houses orchestra and balcony seating, with the Village East seating roughly 1,000 and the Uptown seating 840. Stepping into either theater is like stepping back in time. Both began showing films in the late 30’s and have passed through many hands but still retain their early grandeur. In my July MoviePass recap, I mentioned how I fell in love with Angelika Film Center in Fairfax, VA due to its sleek, clean, and hi-tech beauty, but these old-school theaters are even more impressive. They are tributes to the grand spectacles that motion pictures are.

City Cinemas Village East

AMC Loews Uptown

All in all, a good month for movies, a good month for reminiscing.

September 2013 MoviePass Savings:

Total MoviePass Savings: