For those not following my Twitter feed and who were wondering why there were no updates last week, I had to stay in bed a couple of days because of a stomach virus. The rest did me good and I’m pretty much back to normal, which means that My Filmviews will return back to its regular schedule.
So what do I have in store for you this week? You can look forward to the last battle of the bad guys in round 1 and the start of round 2, new reviews of 30 Minutes or Less, Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, Point Blank and A Dirty Carnival. On Friday a new installment of the weekly “The Many Faces of…” is scheduled, so I’m back in full force.
Now for this week’s Monday Question. We all visit the cinema quite often, which means sharing a space together with a couple of hundred other people, who might not have the same movie watching habits as you do. This sometimes can result in a great experience, but there are times that you have a hard time getting through a movie because someone is annoying you by using the phone or for other reasons. So today’s question is:
What was your worst movie going experience?
I have to say that in general I don’t go to cinemas at the busy times, so haven’t had bad experiences for a while. The last time I can remember of people ruining my enjoyment of a movie was already 5 years ago in 2006. I went to see Babel (great movie, which I gave an 8/10) starring Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett which is a complex story basically spanning the world (set in Japan, Marocco, Mexico and the US). To the left of me were two young guys probably not used to these type of movies. They kept talking loudly for most of the movie and laughed like little kids if there was nudity. These days the movie theatres I go to have a great system where you can send a text message of a disturbance, which will then be investigated, but that system wasn’t in place at the time. I did give them various looks and asked them to be more quiet, but to no avail. Now Babel is a long movie (over 2 hours) and luckily these two probably thought not enough was happening and they decided to leave halfway through, but it did ruin a big part of the movie for me.
So what is your worst movie going experience?
I have been pretty lucky lately, But No Country for Old Men was ruined for me by really bad sound, and poor projection. I was gutted because I Love the Coens.
I am so glad you are well again matey. You have been missed.
That’s kind of you Scott! I missed out on a lot of blog posts if I check my mailbox and it will be hard to catch up on all of them 😉
I never had that happen, but that must be really annoying, especially with such a great movie.
At Pathé de Munt once there were a couple of guys beaming with such laserpointers (those you use when giving presentations) on the screen. They did that for a couple of times, in the end with loud yells of ‘quit doing that’ from all over the audience. I texted Pathé and a couple of minutes later they were removed from the theatre.
I don’t understand what the fun of that is, but I love the fact that Pathé deals with these situations in such a great way with their texting system.
I’ve been very lucky and can’t recall a single time where a movie was ruined by outside factors in theater. Had some projection issues with The Dark Knight that was taken care of fairly quickly, and half the subtitles were cut off from Alice in Wonderland for some reason. But neither impacted my enjoyment of the respective films any. Never had any problem with people talking or texting during films. I guess Swedes (or at least those in my part of the country) are relatively respectful and considerate when at the cinema. I’ve heard plenty of horror stories from Americans online.
That’s nice to hear, over here it usually depends on the type of movie and which cinema. Based on that you know if people are going to be a bit annoying.
I’ve only been to the cinema once while I was in Sweden, but can’t remember much of it. I think I saw one of the American Pie movies.
Well, some of my bad experiences in cinemas happen when I was in a bad mood. So, should definitely clear my head before going there.
But there was a time when I watched Avatar together with some friends. The date was set-up to make sure everyone could come, but we end up sitting three seats in front of the screen. It was a 3D cinema, and I wear glasses. It was a bad idea to watch with 2 glasses at the same time, and watched a movie very close to the big screen. For a while, I felt like I want to throw up, and I had to make excuse to go to the bathroom. I ended up buying an overprice candy in the snack bar in the cinema to kill the throw-up feeling. I got back to my seat and had to rest my eyes most of the time. Never going back to the 3D cinema again, bad option for those who wears glasses 😀
I’ve never had issues with 3D when I wore my glasses, but then I have to admit I haven’t gone to too many of them. I can imagine sitting that close would make you want to throw up with all the movement and 3D your eyes have to focus on…
My worst experience is tame in comparison to others, but it actually happened this past weekend. I went to see The Descendants, got there a little early even, but walked into a packed theater. There was nowhere to sit except for the very first row, which was unbelievably close to the screen. It made the experience uncomfortable, but the movie was good enough that it didn’t distract me as much as I thought it would.
Yeah, I hate sitting in the front row, you really get the feeling you missing out on so much!
I remember sitting in the front row of X-men, and is the reason I hated it for so long. I also sat in the front row the first time I saw Gladiator and that was amazing! It felt like I was in the battles!
It probably has to do with the speed of the action, which is slightly lower paced for Gladiator….
Hi Nostra, I think the most annoying time at the movies is when you sit close to noisy people, especially a big family who are all noisily chewing their popcorn and make comments. I can’t remember a specific time though.
Yeah, I can’t stand that either!
Hi Nostra, glad you’re feeling better 😀
I agree with Andina, some of my bad experiences in cinemas have happened when I was in a bad mood. Little things always become even more irritating!
I’m happy I do too, I even passed out once which was scary.
So when you are in a bad mood you probably shouldn’t go to the cinema or just see a very happy movie 😉
My most recent bad experience was a screening of Avatar – a group of young teens waltzed in and sat in the very front row or a not-packed cinema, where they proceeded to spend the film slapping each other, texting, yelling out, throwing things at each other and generally behaving badly in a dark cinema. So, I got up, went down the front, stood in front of them (in full view of the entire cinema) and waited until a quiet moment of the film – and screamed at them to shut up or get out. I just stood there berating them for about ten seconds, until they got up and left. As they slunk out, I got a nice little clap from an appreciative audience.
Now that I think of it, it wasn’t a “bad” experience be definition – more like a bad-experience-made-good.
Screw those turds and their inability to consider others. Why should they spoil MY film-going experience?
Awesome story, makes you a movie theatre hero! 🙂