Next year is poised to be a banner one for New York cinephiles — or, at least, cinemaphiles. Down at South Street Seaport, a luxury iPic dinner movie theater will be opening in 2015, while downtown Brooklyn will be home to the Alamo Drafthouse, a fantastic Texas chain that already has one branch in Yonkers.
But we’re pretty much screwed until then.
By a vast majority, the city’s cinemas are decrepit, grimy, understaffed bus-station facsimiles, undeserving of the ever-higher ticket prices we’re asked to fork over ($14.50 on Fandango) — especially when you tack on the near-ubiquitous online service charge. Don’t want to pay? Have fun waiting in line for the one cashier on duty at 6:30 p.m.
Ironically, 2013 boasted the highest-grossing box-office year on record, with a projected total of $10.9 billion nationally.
Here’s what movie theaters didn’t spend the previous year’s earnings on: making you comfortable.
Walk into just about any major movie chain in Manhattan and you’ll find sticky carpets, broken escalators, stale popcorn — and that’s all just a standards-lowering warm-up for heading into your theater.
They say you can judge a lot about a restaurant by the state of its bathroom. Using this principle, we’re really in trouble. At Times Square’s AMC Empire, where my job often takes me, it’s rare to step inside a women’s bathroom stall and find a working toilet on the first try.
I don’t know how to exactly describe the smell I frequently encounter when walking into a theater — part dirty sock, part low-level depression. When it comes to finding a seat, be prepared to choose stained, broken or squeaky — or go for the trifecta. Speaking of squeaks, my colleague spotted a rat in his theater at the Loews Village just last week.
It’s not unusual for movies to be projected badly. This is a particularly sneaky problem, as people tend to think the film’s just supposed to be slightly blurry in places. One assumes a professional is handling this. But often, one is mistaken.
I’ve seen lights left on well into the movie; watched movies with the sound played too soft (oh, “Les Misérables” wasn’t entirely made up of gentle lullabies?) or others painfully, speaker-blowingly loud.
A few shining exceptions: Midtown’s single-screen Ziegfeld is as classy as ever, while Williamsburg’s Nitehawk Cinema gets raves for its themed eats, and downtown’s IFC and Landmark Sunshine theaters provide a relatively clean and competent experience for the money.
Meanwhile, a special shout-out must go to Brooklyn’s Pavilion Cinema, or, as I regularly refer to it, The Worst Movie Theater in New York. Recently in the news for its lack of heat during screenings of “Catching Fire,” this train wreck features seats with no backs, ripped and taped-up screens, dirt and grease on every surface and fuzzy 3D. But it’s just the most extreme example of a common problem: Theater owners think you will put up with just about anything, and they seem to be right.
I can’t leave out audience members, who are really doing their part to make things suck. That trash isn’t magically appearing, after all. And I don’t know why there aren’t cellphone disablers in every theater — surely this technology exists? — but something must be done to stop the madness. It only takes one person holding what is, essentially, a glaring light source under their face to direct everyone’s attention away from the screen.
But moviegoers aren’t entirely to blame. If your theater looks and smells like Port Authority, why would you act as if you’re at the ballet?
In conclusion, a small and earnest plea: If your next visit to the movies grosses you out, stop a manager and let them know. Together, we can reclaim a habitable environment in which to watch this summer’s crop of comic-book sequels.