Tag Archives: Bar Harbor

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At The Theater 2011 #9: Submarine

There’s a lot to be said for a great movie theater. When I’m in Los Angeles, I feel the need to see a movie at the Arclight. And when I travel to Bar Harbor, ME, I need to see a movie at Reel Pizza. I have never made a trip to Bar Harbor without seeing at least one movie at Reel Pizza.

I was looking forward to seeing Horrible Bosses or Midnight in Paris at Reel Pizza when we arrived in Bar Harbor. Unfortunately, I read the schedule wrong and those two movies weren’t showing up until later in the week, so we had our choice of Tree of Life and Submarine.

I didn’t know anything about Submarine before heading into the theater. I’d only seen the poster, which is pretty much just the face and torso of a Welsh teenager. But I did hear things about Tree of Life, mainly that it was long, boring and hard to understand. So Submarine it is!

Submarine is great. I definitely recommend watching it. If you like the humor that comes from awkward situations, like the kind found in Louis C.K.’s show Louis, I think you will enjoy Submarine a lot. Submarine captures the awkwardness of being a teenager, especially an unpopular one, very well.

Ah, young love. Young, awkward love.

If you have quick eyes, you might be able to catch Ben Stiller’s cameo in the movie. It’s faster than Rebecca Romajin’s cameo in X-Men: First Class.

I thought this was Ben Stiller. But it’s not.

My favorite pizza at Reel Pizza is the Hawaii 5-0. We had a larger group with us in Maine this time around, so we ventured out of our usual and added a large Godfather to our order. The Godfather pie is good, but I think the Hawaii 5-0 is still king there.

For more on why you need to see a movie at Reel Pizza, please check out my reviews of Inception and Oceans.

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At The Theater #27: Oceans

How awesome is the pizza at Reel Pizza? So awesome that I thought about checking out The Karate Kid here just to get the pizza again. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing The Karate Kid, so I was happy to see it replaced by Oceans before we left Bar Harbor.

Despite what you may have heard, Oceans is not the prequel to Ocean’s 13.

And despite it being made by Disney, don’t be fooled into thinking this a movie you should take your lil’ precious to. I base this on the six year old sitting next to us who wanted to be anywhere but in this theater watching this movie. At least that’s what I picked up from her actions: banging her head into the back of her seat, talking loudly about random stuff, wandering back and forth from her mom’s seat behind our couch to the easy chair next us, and nearly climbing over the back of the occupied couch in front of us.

Bar Harbor is the perfect place to see Oceans. The beauty of the sea life is astounding to watch and if you’re like me, you’ll be sitting there in awe, thinking…dinner. Oh, how lucky I was to see this in Maine.

If you’re ever in Maine, do yourself a favor and go to Red’s Eats for a lobster roll. You will be happy.

My mouth was watering by the end of Oceans. Mmmm, those fighting crabs would look delightful in cake form.

Or made into stuffing and then coated around a halibut as I would discover less than 24 hours later.

Even lobster ice cream is delicious.

The one downside to Oceans, and it’s only a downside if you’re seeing it at Reel Pizza, is that it’s only 1 hour and 15 minutes long, which means no intermission. No intermission means we couldn’t get that second pizza we were planning to order.

That smoked salmon and mussels pizza would have been thematically delicious.

There’s another movie theater in downtown Bar Harbor. I’ve never seen a movie there. It looks like a cool, old style movie house. Unfortunately they were showing The Last Airbender all week, which is well below even The Karate Kid on my list of movies to see. Maybe next time, other Bar Harbor movie theater.

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At The Theater #26: Inception

SPOILER WARNING – I’m going to talk about Inception in detail here, including the ending. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, you might want to skip this post until you see it.

Inception is a total mind-fuck. I think this was well expressed by the audience at the theater where I saw it. As soon as the credits rolled, there was a loud wail of anguish from people in the crowd. This wasn’t the same wail of anguish you’d hear at a Last Airbender screening; it wasn’t coming from a poor quality standpoint. The camera just stays on that damn spinning top for so long, then it starts wobbling and…black.  Was Leo awake? Was he still dreaming? To quote a teen in the lobby after the movie: “Christopher Nolan must die!” Again, I think this was coming from a different place than when that was said about M. Night Shamalan from teens after seeing a different movie across town.

 Random Thought #1: The snow-scape dream fortress looked a lot like the sniper board in Metal Gear Solid for the PS1. 

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I really liked Inception. It was like a combination of Lost’s sideways reality, The Matrix and The Sixth Sense. For a very exposition-heavy movie, I think Nolan did a good job of interspersing the exposition so that Inception didn’t feel weighed down by it.

I liked the open-ended ending. At first it looked like that top was going to keep spinning forever and he was still dreaming. But then it starts wobbling and I really hoped it would fall down, because I wanted a happy ending for the guy. But it ended before we could get our answer. Does it even matter? Leo walks away from the top before it stops spinning. It’s as if he said, “this is my real world,” reunited with his kids. If you wake up in heaven, do you question it? Leo risks everything to return to his family, and in the end he’s satisfied that he’s reunited with them to the point that he doesn’t even glance back at the top. But we do. Not that we have a choice, the camera is staring right at, spinning and wobbling away.

 Random Thought #2: Joseph Gordon Levitt in this movie has caused me to want to start wearing vests.

I want to see this movie a second time, largely to watch the wake-up scene on the plane again. I don’t remember what the order was of people waking up. Maybe that gives us some clue as to whether or not Leo was actually awake in the end. Was he the last one to wake up? If he wasn’t, I think would lean heavily towards him being still asleep. Everyone else should have made it out of the dream before him, right?
Inception reminded me a lot of The Matrix, to the point that I’m really hoping they don’t mess up any sequels the way that the ball was completely dropped with the two Matrix sequels. Then again, I have faith in Christopher Nolan. The Dark Knight was my favorite movie of 2008, so I know the guy can do sequels well. But really, I can’t even see where you’d go with this movie in a second one. It works so well on its own. We don’t need Inception 2: The Search for Leo.

Tuesday Night Movies is on a road trip! We saw Inception at Reel Pizza in Bar Harbor, Maine. I love this movie theater. This might be my favorite movie theater. It’s this or LA’s Arclight.

What makes Reel Pizza so great? Basically, it’s the concession stand. While other theaters have branched out from popcorn and candy to include nachos and pretzel bites, you can order pizzas at Reel Pizza. The topping list is extensive. Don’t feel like pepperoni tonight? Why not go for mussels, artichoke hearts or goat cheese? Need something to wash it down with? How about a beer? That’s right, beer. And it’s good beer too. They offer Guinness and selections from local breweries, all for cheaper than what a Bud Light would run you in NYC.

The two theaters were designed with the concession stand in mind. Each row of seats has a counter in front of it to put your pizza tray and beer. The first three rows of taken up by couches and easy chairs. These seats are usually the first to go. TV trays are available for viewers lucky enough to snag these seats. When your pizza is ready, a BINGO board on the side wall silently announces your number to let you know that your pizza is waiting for you in the lobby. They even throw an intermission into each movie so that you can grab another beer, or if you’re hungry, another pizza.

 The Reel Pizza bingo board of pizza readiness.

I haven’t been to Bar Harbor without going to Reel Pizza. If you’re there, it’s a must-stop-at destination.