I'll see you at the movies...right?

If it wasn’t enough that the Academy let me down in certain aspects this year, I find out last week that Regal Theaters is filing for bankruptcy and, to stop the bleeding, they’re gonna shut down theaters across the country. Two of them are theaters that I’ve frequented several times over the last couple decades.

The first movie I saw at the Regal Elmwood was Life with Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence. Not a bad start to what would be a long relationship with the theater. Among the highlights: doing a double feature starting with The Simpsons Movie followed by lunch at McDonald’s, then returning for Hot Rod; seeing Scream 3 after watching End of Days at the Super Saver Cinema across the street; going to a late showing of the (underrated) Blumhouse remake of Black Christmas; surviving a heart attack in the midst of my Cats and Dogs/Atlantis: the Lost Empire double; my yearly Comic Book Day ritual of hitting up Queen City Publishing for free comics, driving up to Seeley and Kane’s for more, then going to see Marvel’s latest spectacle and, perhaps my fondest Elmwood memory, the rainy as hell Sunday where I took two buses and a train to get to the theater for a double feature of Fright Night in 2D and Final Destination 5 in 3D.

Later that year, I first attended the Regal Transit where I saw...The Haunting. They can't all be gems, okay? Some much better experiences I had there: going to see Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and that this was the only theater in town playing it made the showing all the more special; just generally making a day of seeing a movie, then shopping at FYE and having lunch at Quiznos, making them all of a piece since they've expired; seeing in IMAX Mission Impossibles Ghost Protocol and Rogue Nation, The Invisible Man and a double feature of The Incredibles movies. This brings up an interesting point given that Transit is the only IMAX theater in the county and possibly this part of the state: will a still-existing theater be adjusted to accommodate this? I probably already know the answer, but really, I want to hope.

And, as long as I’m eulogizing dead movie theaters, I’d like to say a few words about the theater in the Eastern Hills Mall: going to see Black Swan while suffering from the flu, which - I think - enhanced the insanity of the film; hearing about (but never attending) a monthly screening of really bad movies, something, much like The Screening Room and the various monthly attractions at Amherst Theater, that's as close as I'll ever come to having a New Beverly right in my backyard; having my face melted by Snowpiercer, then grabbing lunch/dinner at Red Lobster and, well, this bit has nothing to do with seeing movies, but it was here that I found the flyer for the film class that allowed your boy to get an IMDb page! Another memory I have is leaving the screening of Murder on the Orient Express only to find that my tires were slashed. (I didn’t say they were all good memories.*)

The Regal Theaters close on February 15th. Just enough time to catch Plane and Knock at the Cabin before I say goodbye forever...or until another theater chain moves in on the property.

The story was posted at Facebook, where some people offered opinions to the effect of 'Good riddance! Movies are too damned expensive, anyway. Besides, it's just gonna end up on streaming.' To these people, I offer the following rebuttal as someone respectful of my fellow man: shut the fuck up!

* - This wasn’t even the first time this happened at a movie theater that year. My memories of coming out of a Galleria showing of Atomic Blonde are still vivid. My thinking is that my car belonged to someone whose ex felt they were taking some kind of revenge. It hasn’t happened since, so I can only assume the perpetrator was either arrested or overdosed on something. Good.