LISTS My 10 Favorite Cinema Experiences
As cinemas reopen, a little trip down memory lane with indelible theatrical experiences.
Not too long ago, I wrote about my first and (at the time) last cinema visits (the latter is no longer valid, thanks to Visions du Réel). Now cinemas are reopening in most countries, and Cannes just announced a new film in its selection (Paul Verhoeven’s Benedetta, which was supposed to play at the festival back in 2019 but got postponed when the director’s health impacted the post-production process). This got me thinking about my ten all-time favorite experiences inside a cinema, which I’ve decided to list here.
1. IMAX premiere of Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Since 2014, I’ve always seen the April/May Marvel Studios release with one of my cousins, and it’s fair to say we were greatly looking forward to Avengers: Endgame. Wishing to make the most of it, we went to the IMAX premiere in Helsinki, at the recently built Finnkino cinema in the Itäkeskus mall. The excitement was palpable throughout the screening, and you could tell everyone in the theater had grown fond of these characters, a feeling that culminated in everyone going crazy when Steve Rogers picked up Mjolnir. And then, during the closing credits, there was widespread applause when the signatures of the original six appeared on screen. Fingers crossed my cousin and I will get to see at least one of the Marvel releases together this year.
2. Cannes screening of Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
To call it the hottest ticket at that year’s Cannes would be an understatement, especially since it had fewer screenings than most other movies (due to Tarantino’s aversion to digital, there was no DCP available for the customary catch-up screening in the Salle du Soixantième). Due to this, and because Cannes has a hierarchy when it comes to press badges (my category is second-to-last in the pecking order), I started queueing at 1.30 PM, a full three hours before the beginning of the first press screening in the Salle Debussy. The movie itself was a glorious experience, but the waiting was its own little event, especially as we started to get bored roughly an hour in: to kill time, I sent a voice message to a friend who was slightly ahead of me in the queue, doing my best rendition of the Cave of Wonders from Aladdin: “Only one may enter here…”
3. Venice screening of Machete (2010)
Machete premiered at the 2010 Venice Film Festival as a midnight screening. I had to actually get a ticket (and pay for it, because of a technical glitch) for that screening, as the preview was restricted to daily press (save for 2014, I’ve always had a Periodicals badge). Money well spent, since Robert Rodriguez, Jessica Alba and Danny Trejo were in attendance. Right before the movie, Trejo opened his tux, showing off a range of knives, because of course he would. Then came the exhilarating experience of the film itself, with rapturous applause when the closing voiceover said “Machete will return! In Machete Kills! And Machete Kills Again!”.
4. Finnish premiere of Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Another cinema outing with my cousin, who at this point had already become my main moviegoing partner when I’m in Finland (so far, 2020 has been the only year without a cinema visit since we first met). We went to the first public screening in Helsinki, and evidently all the comic book fans in the city had converged on this showing: when Howard the Duck popped up in the post-credits scene, everyone went crazy. Now, when are we getting a Howard movie?
5. Piranha 3DD (2012)
Having enjoyed Alexandre Aja’s Piranha 3D (2010), I decided to give the sequel a chance despite his lack of involvement (with hindsight, not the best decision: the best bit of the movie is the bloopers in the end credits). I went to BioRex in Porvoo, where the movie had been playing for three days. The staff were overjoyed, because I was the first person to actually purchase a ticket for that film, as everyone else was busy watching The Dark Knight Rises. They even offered me free popcorn, which I declined. Not the wisest choice, once the movie began. And apparently, I was the only one who saw it all week, because after seven days it disappeared.
6. Locarno screening of I Hired a Contract Killer (2006)
My first time at the Locarno Film Festival, in 2006, coincided with an Aki Kaurismäki retrospective, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The most memorable screening was I Hired a Contract Killer, a dark comedy starring Jean-Pierre Léaud and set in London. Kaurismäki showed up, unannounced, to introduce the screening, and immediately made us laugh when he claimed to have shot the movie in Paris (“I didn’t? You sure?”). He then exited after delivering this heartfelt message: “I hate my movies, and I hate the audience. Enjoy the film. Ciao.”
7. Cannes screening of The Image Book (2018)
Usually, if you want to make sure you have a seat for a Cannes screening, it’s good form to show up at least an hour before (notable exceptions: Cannes Classics and the short film competition). Not so for Jean-Luc Godard’s latest: a group of friends and myself got in immediately with only fifteen minutes to spare, and the Bazin theater was half empty. On my right was a group of younger French journalists, who presumably had heard of Godard but never seen any of his films, because mere minutes after the start of the film I could hear them say “What the hell is this?”. I giggled, but I also felt sorry for them: you really don’t want that to be your first Godard experience, especially under the stressful conditions of a film festival.
8. Tag (2018)
Between Locarno and Venice, I usually spend a week or so in Finland, with a cousinly movie outing if the schedule allows for it. In August 2018, that meant watching Tag, the R-rated comedy starring Ed Helms, Jon Hamm and Jeremy Renner. Now, the Finnish age rating was 16, which meant viewers aged 13-15 could watch the movie with their parents. As a result, there were a few families at the screening. However, because the main rating was 16, it also meant we could get red band trailers, which we did: it was for a movie called The Happytown Murders (a painfully unfunny Muppet spoof of the film noir genre). One mother in the audience reacted to the trailer’s climax (pun very much intended) by very loudly proclaiming “This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen!”
9. Night Visions screening of Dead Snow 2 (2014)
The Finnish premiere of Dead Snow 2 – where Nazi zombies fight Soviet zombies in a Norwegian town – occurred at the Night Visions festival, with co-writer and cast member Stig Frode Henriksen in attendance. At the post-screening Q&A, I asked him if they had considered naming the Soviet leader Kinski, since the Zombie leader was called Herzog (as in Herzog vs. Kinski, a notorious director/actor feud in European cinema). His response was “Damn, we should have thought about it!”
10. Annecy screening of Hotel Transylvania 3 (2018)
The Annecy International Animation Film Festival is always a fun experience, because it’s one of the few places on Earth where the likes of Brad Bird and Genndy Tartakovsky get treated like rock stars. The latter was in attendance for the world premiere of Hotel Transylvania 3, accompanied on stage by giant puppets representing the characters, and cries of “Genndy! Genndy! Genndy!”. That would have been enough, but then the movie itself decided to use the Macarena as a plot device, and it brought the house down. Granted, you have to be a certain age to appreciate it (as I verified when I saw the movie again in Geneva, with an audience consisting of very few adults), but it was awesome nonetheless.