Tag Archives: Arclight

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New Favorite NYC Movie Theater

New York City, say hello to your new favorite movie theater. It’s the AMC on Broadway and 84th. “Wait a second, I’ve been there before. It’s nothing special,” you might say. Oh, but it is. The theater has been completely overhauled and is now AWESOME.

You’ll notice the changes as soon as you walk in. The concession area is updated and modern, with a self serve ICEE machine, and that “what-crazy-combination-can-you-come-up-with?” 100-choice soda fountain.

Gone are the cramped seats, which have been replaced with rows of oversized, cushioned recliners. The chair are comfortable! And when I say, they go back, I mean they go back. I’m not talking about reclining like coach seats on a plane. I’m talking about reclining like your dad’s Barcalounger, with a footrest and everything. The aisles are huge, like exit row huge. This is the movie theater equivalent of sitting in first class.

Now this is a movie seat.

Now this is a movie seat.

This is the view from the seat while it's fully reclined. There's no problem seeing the screen.

Even when your seat is fully reclined, you have a great view of the screen.

Most importantly, when you buy your tickets in advance, you select your seats! Yes! I have wanted New York City movie theaters to embrace this for years, ever since my first trip to the Arclight in LA. It is the best! Now you no longer need to arrive at the movie theater an hour beforehand to find five seats together. Unlike the Arclight, the ticket was the same price as other AMC theaters. There was no upcharge for selecting your seat.

I hope AMC does a good job of upkeeping this theater. Those reclining seats are awesome, but the control buttons look like they’re easily broken. And I hope the ushers enforce the assigned seating. I saw some self-enforcement going on when I saw Gravity there this weekend, but that was for a weeks old movie in a barely full theater. A blockbuster on opening night might be a different story.

The 84th St AMC seems to still be a hidden gem. Check it out now before people realize how awesome it is to see a movie there.

 

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At The Theater 2011 #2: Thor

If there is an award for the movie trailer that served its movie the least at next year’s Tuesdees, Thor’s trailer is definitely going to win. When I watched it during the Superbowl, I immediately thought “There’s a movie I can skip.” And I love comic books. Love them. Granted, I was never a big Thor fan, but the end of Iron Man 2 and knowing that Joss Whedon is directing the upcoming Avengers movie had me interested in seeing Thor. Until that trailer was released. The trailer for Thor makes it look as cheesy as a Kraft factory.

Anthony Hopkins is an awesome Odin.

But then a week before Thor was released, people who saw sneak previews of it started talking about how good it is. People whose opinion I respected were telling me to go see this movie. And all I could think was, “Really? This movie? No, clearly you mean some other Thor movie.”

They definitely didn’t mean this Thor movie.

Finally the praise that just kept getting stacked on top of more praise got to me and I grabbed a bunch of friends to go see it the Saturday night of opening weekend.
Quick math problem: A group of seven people are seeing Thor, a major summer blockbuster, at 9 PM on the Saturday night of its opening weekend. How early do you show up to the theater? Note: This is New York City; there aren’t any Arclights here where you can reserve your seats in advance. So, how early do you show up? 45 minutes early? An hour? We stopped for pizza on the way to the theater and showed up a little less than 30 minutes early.

I know. We were screwed. There was no way we were all sitting together, or if we were it was going to be in the first two rows.

Except, when we walked into the theater, there were four people in the theater. Four people! Four people! Is the recession that bad?

Some of you are thinking, “What? Four people? Impossible, I say!” A few of you though are thinking, “Oh, so you saw it at the Battery Park Regal?”

You guys, the Battery Park Regal is my new favorite theater. It’s clean. It’s empty. It’s really, really empty. No joke, all the Foursquare tips for the place are “Don’t tell people about how empty this movie theater is.” But I have to say something. Because I don’t want this movie theater to fail. So please go see a movie there. It’s the anti-Court. St.

This is about how crowded the theater was when we walked in.

Thor was great. I loved it. I’m not a huge Thor fan and I wondered how they would make him interesting. But they did. How? Slapstick. I was very surprised by how much slapstick comedy made its way into Thor, but I’m all for it. Maybe the Asgard scenes would have been more enjoyable if they had the level of slapstick that the Earth scenes did.

Still the best Thor movie.