Many years actually.

Everything I want to see I can stream.

The cineplex showed a half hour of advertisements before the show started. G-R-R-R!
The week before we saw Orwell 2+2=5 at an independent theater. I will highly rec that one.

Also, The Lost Bus was very well done.

You only had a half hour of ads? I went to see the Bruce Springsteen biopic last week and was subjected to ONE HOUR of advertisements (including movie trailers), played at maximum volume. It was sheer torture. Never again. (The local "art" houses like Landmark and Laemmle are better, but not much.)

I saw that in a theater, at a matinee where my friends & I were the only people there. I would have liked to see the Springsteen movie, but it's gone from the theaters. Oh well, it'll be on a streaming service or HBO soon enough. Other than that, there's not much that's worth spending money on, IMHO.

I have a large 4K TV, and access to streaming services and cheap popcorn.

Movie theaters? What's that?

Last edited Mon Nov 17, 2025, 12:06 PM - Edit history (1)

The Little Women remake ( which we disliked), and a very recent one about formation of and making of first album by Led Zeppelin, which we enjoyed. Nothing has really seemed worthy of going to the movies for outside of those 2.

Theaters kinda suck. The snacks are too expensive. The tickets are too expensive. I can't pause a film when I have to pee.

The problem is, nobody wants to go to theatres anymore when they can stream it a few weeks later (or in the case of us hardcore cinephiles, by the DVD)

Last edited Mon Nov 17, 2025, 12:28 PM - Edit history (1)

Where are kids going these days, on dates?
Dinner & a Movie!

But, what would you do on Date Night if there are no movie theaters?

Netflix & Chill is Millennial/Gen Z speak for date night.

Date night for me is getting out of the house and doing something special with someone.

But, that's just me.

to pee. And then have to go one more time before we leave because I got my soda refilled.

I like the cinema but, yeah, it's dying. The last time we went it was 50 bucks for 2 tickets, popcorn, soda and a snack. I can get a large screen TV on Craigslist for free.

the collective experience, the big screen, big sound, it's more of an experience than watching something on TV with a pause every time someone has to pee or get something more to drink or whatever.

I go to a theater in Cedar Rapids that keeps prices reasonable.

We have a movie theater in our little town, but I found out that the new owner is a nutjob style of MAGAt, so we won't be going there anymore.

For me it has a lot to do with nostalgia. The smells and sounds, and even just getting my rear end off the couch and having a bit of an adventure. It was always a safe and happy place for me. And not to get too maudlin, after my hubby died, I would go to a movie by myself just to escape and laugh or cry in the dark with no required explanations. It was therapeutic.

So much fun!!!

People talking, getting up and down to the restroom or for snacks, and for this we pay a premium price? Pffft.

Last movie I saw in a theatre was the last LOTR film. The Hollywood 10 theatre had been divided to make it the Hollywood 20, so it was a tiny theatre. Some jackass janitor kept opening the door—broom in hand—and repeatedly stood there with the door open as he watched for 10-15 minutes at a time, totally fucking up the lighting.

There are damned few movies I even care to see anymore, let alone pay for. I ditched satellite almost 12 years ago because DirecTV laughed at me for asking why we couldn’t pay a la carte for channels instead of paying for 1500 that we NEVER watched. Fine. I’ll just put on my eyepatch and scrounge if there’s something a actually want to see.

I much prefer to read anyway—an average of 250-350 books a year (nah, I don’t pay for those, either, thanks to freebie lists).

Hollywood really screwed themselves, IMHO. TV even more so.

For the same pool of actors? Creativity is thrashed out. Acting is a lost art. Money moves the product.

But, I'm one of Hollywood's most doubtful non-fans.

the Cinematography is being shortchanged in post production CGI.
Movies are no longer "haptic"; backgrounds are out of focus and rather two dimensional. With few exceptions (like Cameron's Avatar movies), the viewer is not actually immersed in the movie, they do not get the feeling they can stand up and walk into the scene.
The human brain does recognize the difference between a narrow, fuzzy, dreamlike atmosphere and the scaled out perceptions of distance.
If it's a dream, the viewer can get nit-picking or bored. If it seems real, if you see pedestrians, vehicles and signage several blocks down on a city street, or can think you might make out the occasional squirrel or deer in the forest a hundred or so hundred yards in the distance, or in a distant plain background, see a hawk swooping and searching for rabbits, you're more likely to pay attention to the scene for a longer time.
You experience distance. You experience adventure.
You're not stuck sitting in front of a box, waiting for the scene in the box to end so you can go pee.

That's the benefit of going to a theater to see a movie where the Cinematography is on point.
Otherwise, just stream it.
On edit -James Cameron has proved CGI and green screen is not the problem with theatrical movies or digital filming. Poor post-production and filming short-cuts is the problem.

As does the one with George Clooney and Adam Sandler, Jay Kelly..

There are a bunch of Award Season movies coming out in the next few weeks that will only be in theatres briefly before coming to Netflix and other streamers in December/January.

I’m looking forward to them.

But until recently, none of the new films released has interested me.

... was the only one I HAD to see... others, I wait to watch at home. I have no interest in “After the Hunt,” starring Julia Roberts; “Christy,” with Sydney Sweeney; and “Die My Love,” - but I would see SUPERMAN again!

Every corpuscle of the American media is laser focused on Mount Trumpsuvius’ latest foul gaseous emission has really cut into the diversions and simple pleasures of everyday life.

I can download tens of thousands of shows and movies right onto my living room TV, for the monthly cost of going to maybe a couple of theatrical movies.

I've got "watchlists" of hundreds of films. When will I find time to watch them?

It's like being locked overnight in a Baskins-Robbins. How many flavors can you try in a night? How much can you eat before you get sick?

I think entertainment consumers are being balkanized by so many choices. Each person can find scads of what they personally like. Why try something new and exotic when there is an endless supply of your favorite comfort foods already in your pantry?

Now for my oldtimer rant. The town I grew up in could get one TV station (CBS) and had one movie theater. You watched what was available, and what was available to everyone was the same thing. You watched a lot of diverse shows, because that was what was showing. Turn on the TV, you may get romance, comedy, action, soap opera, sports. You had no choice. Go to the movies, you see the one movie per week that came around. Everyone you talked to talked about the same show everyone saw on TV last night, the same movie everyone went to last weekend.

Now, everyone is traveling down their own personal entertainment tunnel. Of course, this pertains to news as well. Everyone can find their own news sources that cater to their personal interests and feeds their pre-existing bias.

Think of the shared cultures of the decades. The fashion, the music, the movies, the politics of the 60s. The 70s, the 80s, the 90s. And then what? What is the dominant culture of the Aughties? The Teens, the Twenties? That shared culture is hard to identify. It seems to be a chaotic hodge-podge of the past decades' cultures.

There isn't one. Everyone has their own limited entertainment and news bubble they occupy, stuffed with their own preferences and favorites. A tv show with a few million viewers is a ratings winner. Our shared culture is splintering.

Will this be a good thing or a bad thing? Hard to say. Of course, many people were left out of our "shared culture" all along. Now I reckon nearly everyone can find a comfort space.

I think the "shared culture" of the past is kind of illusion. There were fewer choices and that meant that there was more of a sense of shared experience but from "Blackboard Jungle" (1955) onward producers learned how to make money servicing genre-preferences.

The culture of the 2000s to the present is fragmented as you point out. It is much more focused on individuals, more tribal. One of the more fascinating developments for me is to see kids pursuing health at all costs -- diet, gym-going, alcohol-free. That reverses some declines of the recent past. Cynicism is more embraced and I think, if not taken to excess, that is healthy also. Having that built-in BS detector will serve these kids well in the AI future.

Despite all the hand-wringing about how social media has given kids (and adults) the attention span of a gnat, we see a huge rise in long form interviews and podcasts. "60 Minutes" gave us 10 minutes with someone -- now podcasts give us 3 hours with the promise that by the third hour the guest will let their mask slip. They will run out of canned lines and facades and get real. That is big shift in media-driven culture.

10/10

Otherwise, I'm not going back to the movie theaters. I'll just watch at home.

The number of inconsiderate assholes who think they are home when they burble their brainless bullshit throughout the movie I paid to see boggles the mind.

Get some 500lb guy named Tiny to throw their talkative carcasses out of the theater, and I'll start showing up again.

It seemed like every time I went to the theater I'd find myself a comfortable spot just to have some big doofus sneak in after the movie started and sit RIGHT in front of me! The aggravation is just not worth it.

Kinda hard for a big doofus sneaking in after the movie starts to block your view when his head is three feet below yours.

We went to see a movie, Nuremberg, last week, first time in years.

Between the water price, the ear-shattering volume (I wear hearing aids, had to turn them down from the get-go), and the absolutely frigid air in there (and yes, I did bring a sweater-still frigid), I've pretty much sworn off the movie theater.

There are so many shows and movies that go right to streaming. Endless things to watch.

And with movies that are at the theater, it's not longer several months to wait to rent them, they're usually available to stream within a month or so of screening. And yeah, new movies are like $19.99 to rent at home, but it's still cheaper than going to the theater and spending $25 for 2 tickets, plus another $20 on popcorn and soda. Plus, my TV is better picture quality than movies and the sound quality of my Dolby Atmos system isn't far off. So we're staying home, watching from the comfort of our couch with cheaper snacks and the ability to pause the movie to use the rest room when we like. That$19,99 makes sense, and if it's not a movie we really want to pay that much for, wait a few weeks and it will be $5.99.

It used to be like 8 months between a movie's theatrical release and the home video release. Now it's like 6 weeks. I was on a flight to Colorado a few weeks ago and it was shocking that Mission Impossible and Sinners were choices, both 2025 movies.

And as for the theater industry - there used to be 6 movie theaters in my area in a very short drive. 3 of them permanently closed, and the other 3 are barely hanging on by a thread. One converted to a Tesla dealership ( ) and the other one converted to becoming a church (a MAGA one, no less ). The ones that are still open are barely surviving.

It will be absolutely wild when the box office numbers are no longer relevant.

They did move to offering all leather recliners in my area, and they're more comfortable, but it's sill tough to justify the expense. And they make next to nothing on the movies, so the snacks are their only real income. It's sad in a way, the movie theater was an American institution for 100 years.

When my wife and I have gone in recent years, it's not been pleasant. Smelly and crowded. Temperature control not correct, too hot too often. Last one we went to was during a heat wave and it was packed inside and just got way to warm. And we're more cognizant of people coughing and spreading their colds and flus since Covid.

It's just an idea whose time has gone. People have 65" or bigger crystal clear TVs in their home as a norm. Most households at least have a decent sound bar with a sub. Visually and sound quality, it's a very similar experience. So we'd rather have myself in my recliner, and my wife on our big leather couch with the dog curled up at her feet. Popcorn and treats are in the kitchen cupboard.

And I think the greed hurt Hollywood, pushing these movies out to stream so quickly is for short term profits, but is basically ending theaters long term.

The movie theater's end was definitely predictable.

1. Going to theaters is really expensive.

2. COVID killed 1/2 of the movie theaters in the country.

3. Streaming is finishing the job.

I was looking for a movie a few weeks ago to see midday on a work week while I got my car inspected and was surprised the local downtown multiplex only had showtimes after 6pm on a few weekdays and then something like noon to 9pm on the weekends. It has seven screens but was only showing three movies so half of the theatres must be empty even on the weekends.

3 of them permanently closed. 1 of them converted to a Tesla dealership ( ) and the other converted to a MAGA church ( ). And the three that remain are barely hanging on by a thread. Industry consolidation and excessive greed killed the theater industry.

..which attracts some kind of audience, apparently -- but it guarantees I won't be going. There is very little out there for grown-ups.

- Edison's patent trolling "Trust", 1907
- the introduction of Broadcast radio, 1922
- the Great Depression, 1932
- the Hays code, 1934
- the commandeering of studios during WW2
- the Paramount decision, 1948
- wide adoption of broadcast television, 1953/55
- collapse of the studio system, 1963
- death of big budget musicals, 1968
- death of the Western genre, 1970
- VHS tapes, 1977
- Laserdisc, 1978
- Movies on cable TV / Showtime / HBO 1980
- wide adoption of video games, Atari 1983
- AOL / internet, 1995
- TOR and peer-to-peer file sharing / digital piracy 1999
- the rise of MCU, 2008
- "Woke", 2013
- SARS-Cov2, 2020
- AI, 2024
- Rachel Zeigler's 'Snow White' remake

And yet here we are. Goetz says "no hits" yet ?? One Battle $200M, Demon Slayer $730-million and last weekend alone "Now You See Me Now You Don't" did $75M

Goetz better push the book hard and fast because the weekend before Thanksgiving is the always the beginning of real movie season. Movies released this week take prime position for box office $$ and Oscar noms:

"Wicked For Good" opens this Friday 11/21. How much will it do? Well, Exactly one year prior, "Wicked" opened on 11/22/24 and raked in $758-million.

Spielberg's Shakespeare biopic fantasy "Hamnet" likewise opens 11/21. Many others are cued up.

The box office failure of a Julia Roberts film that scored a "C-" from audiences and a 37% from critics is meaningless. Hardly "the end of Hollywood!!1!"

Other things DU hates that most people enjoy: Eating out and leisure travel (of ANY KIND, but especially cruises).

I used to work on film releases. CW holds that the theater business was (in the 1980/90s) disproportionally driven by males 14 to 24 YO who see on average 6+ film per year in a theater. The weakest demo was people 50YO or older who see just 1.4 films per year and have a mode average (most common answer) of zero films.

And the past is tough to complete with. Movies WERE better in the past.

I couldn’t disagree with you more. While I do like many older films, there’s no way you can argue they were better. Filmmaking has vastly improved. So have storytelling methods. The difference today is simply over saturation. There are too many being made right now, so of course many are bad.

Top Grossing films of 1985:

Back to the Future
Rocky IV
The Color Purple
Cocoon
Witness
Breakfast Club
PeeWee's Big Adventure

Top Grossing Films of 2024:

Inside Out 2
Deadpool & Wolverine
Moana 2
Despicable Me 4
Kung Fu Panda 4
Sonic the Hedgehog 3

Agreed. It’s called “laziness”, or “getting old”. I’m 58 and realized recently that all that streaming rots the brain. I canceled all of it. I go to movie theaters all the time! It’s awesome! I am a huge film fan and techy. I have a projector at home, but there’s nothing like the theater!

Spoiler alert: No, it’s not! lol

then, I remember being on a ferry between Wales and Dublin and how sick I got every time I went inside. We spent the entire time on the deck, because of my nausea. So, a cruise seems like a long shot for me!

But yeah, I've seen that...I still love seeing a big screen movie.

‘Wicked: For Good’ Is Fandango’s Biggest PG Pre-Seller Of All Time & Highest Overall For 2025
“Audiences are in for a true cinematic event as they return to Oz, experiencing it on the biggest screen possible as it was meant to be seen.”
https://deadline.com/2025/11/wicked-for-good-advance-sales-1236616664/

‘Now You See Me’ Makes Magic With $75.5M Global Debut, ‘One Battle’ Tops $200M & ‘Demon Slayer’ Storms China To Reach $730M WW – International Box Office
https://deadline.com/2025/11/now-you-see-me-running-man-one-battle-demon-slayer-box-office-1236619151/

There was only one private theater here in Los Angeles that I could go to without issue until they started blasting the sound as well. Cell phones were never a problem there though.

I can't enjoy a movie that's making my ears bleed. I also need subtitles to understand the actors (mumblespeak) for most things anymore.

when MFer and his Media Minions have put us on a daily diet of real outrage, anxiety and stress.

I've probably seen 30 or so good movies in theaters. Not sure what you consider a good movie.
Here's a partial list of mine

Left Handed Girl
Nuremberg
One Battle After Another
Sorry Baby
Sinners
Misericordia
Blue Moon
Urchin
The Naked Gun
She Rides Shotgun
East of Wall
Bugonia
The Life of Chuck
The Materialists
Roofman
Caught Stealing
Last Breath

Things seem to stay in theatres for only about 3 weeks, if that.

Last movie I saw in the cinema. But that was… 2024? ‘23? I know since 2019, I’ve only seen JOKER, The Batman and Mario.

What's changed is home theater technology. Solid 4k tv, surround sound, and access to thousands of movies? It's a lot easier to stay in instead of spending money. And many young people have zero issue ahoying it up.

Expense. It's crazy expensive now. We only go when there's a perceived benefit to the big screen, some spectacle. "Event" movies. Superman was our last one. Going to see Wicked next week.

Watching a troubled couple trouble over their troubled marriage troublingly? That can wait six weeks for streaming so I can half watch it under a blanket on the couch while idly scrolling through Reddit reviews of the movie I am currently watching - just as Cecil B. DeMille intended!

I think one of the big problems is the compartmentalized marketing. A lot of these movies mentioned, After the Hunt, Christy, etc. I never even heard of until the fact they failed was in the news. (And Die My Love was marketed for maybe a week, because Pattinson/Lawrence were being vaguely amusing during the PR rounds). Glen Powell was on SNL promoting Running Man, and that was the first time I'd ever heard about it.

Our collective attention is splintered to bits, so studios have to decide where to spend their advertising dollars. I'm not sure who these marketing dollars target, but I legitimately have never heard of so many of them.

But Wicked? One Battle After Another? Yeah, I've heard about them. I'm actually ready to stop hearing about Wicked if we're being honest, lol.

I think films are not as good as they used to be, and the reason might have a lot to do with the other reasons you mention. It is easier for a Hollywood distributor to release a mediocre movie on 10,000 screens after a huge promotion, than to promote and make a great film last in 500 screens nationwide. Plus, the longer a film plays in a theatre, the less money the distributor makes. So, who cares about the actual quality of the film, when the theatre chain makes more money with popcorn, and when on the first weekend of release, the distributor makes 90% of the intake!
Small film production companies come up with very good films every now and then, which play at Film Festivals, sometimes don't get distributed (so don't even stream...) and might play at very tiny independent theatres if we're lucky.

I'm middle-aged now (40s), and I hear a lot of my peers wax nostalgic about their growing up movies. Sixteen Candles, Ferris Bueller, Pretty in Pink, etc. Or action films from the era like Lethal Weapon or Rambo or whatever.

Those kinds of movies still exist just fine. The sensibility and style has simply changed. We don't have Arnold or Sylvester, but we've certainly got John Wick. Flow is probably one of the best animated films I've seen in the past 20 years - and animation has been pretty solid this whole time. You've got your blockbusters, etc. We're about to get another sword and sandals epic in the Odyssey (after an "only ok" Gladiator 2).

It depends what a "good" movie is to someone.

I try to go back and watch old movies when I can. Friends give me lists of "Classic, you have to see it!" Sometimes they're really good. Sometimes you can tell it worked at the time but wouldn't work now. Acting styles, writing, characterization, etc.

I think it's that cultural tastes are constantly changing, but ours do so only begrudgingly as we age. Which is fine. There's still a lot of new content to sink my teeth into and old content on streaming when there isn't.

I just saw the new Frankenstein last weekend. It was . . . fine.

First of all, nothing beats watching film in on a huge screen in a movie theatre...to be isolated in the dark with the film, with perfect sound and presentation, and a bunch of strangers immersed in the same experience, beats streaming at home any time for me.
Second, the films mentioned, like "After the Hunt", and "Die My Love", are from mediocre to awful (I haven't seen "Christy&quot . Where I live, there is a repertory movie palace that shows old films, and it is always packed.
So, my guess, is what makes a film good is not the amount of special effects, explosions, car chases, gun battles or sex scenes. What makes a film good is the story, the screenplay and the dialogue. Watch a film by Billy Wilder, and you will see what cinema can be...("Sunset Boulevard", "Double Indemnity", "Some Like it Hot&quot or by Alfred Hitchcock ("Rear Window", "Shadow of a Doubt", "Vertigo", etc.) and many more...
Why are films so uninteresting these days? I don't really know...I think special effects take too much importance for action films, that mostly end up in battles, with guns or space ships, and more intimate movies supposedly tackle important subjects, but a film is not a lecture, should "show" instead of "tell", and the story should matter most.
Just my 2 cents as a film and theatre maniac...

Serious question. Probably differs by location (more expensive in LA, cheaper in Jacksonville). I haven't gone to a movie in a theater in a decade at least.

It costs a huge amount of $$ to go to a movie theatre, even more if you indulge in concessions, and on top, you have to sit through 1/2 hours of previews, and myriad of ads.

ADHD is endemic now.

from Guillermo del Toro is a cinematic thing beauty. Totally worthy of a BIG SCREEN viewing.

That seems to be what people want. After all, who wouldn't want to see the 73rd installment of The Avengers?

Interest in movies hasn’t waned, interest in going out to a theater to see them has. I’d much rather sit in my own home, with my own snacks/drinks and the ability to pause if necessary than go out to a theater and have people talking, phones ringing, $15 popcorn and so on and so forth.

The only time I go to a theater now is when Tarantino puts out a film. And there’s only one left now.

Streaming has taken the theater out of the picture.

That's the cost of a MATINEE movie at my closest theatre if booking through the app with "convenience fees." Ridiculous.

Very few notable movies lately.

Comic book crap and graphic horror... that's about all.