AMC Century City 15 Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps Saturday, 9/25/10, 11:00 am

Price: $7, their discounted “A.M. Cinema” price. Concessions: None Audience: 75-100 people, probably, which seemed pretty good for a Saturday morning. Trailers/advertising: The terrible “AMC First Look” ad/trailer package was going when I came in, with ads for TV shows, movies, Coke, Jimmy D’s sausage (when did they change their name from Jimmy Dean’s?), and more. Then trailers for The Dilemma, How Do You Know, The Debt, The Next Three Days, Red, Unstoppable, and Love and Other Drugs. Phew Projection: Digital, complete with jaggy titles; it still hasn’t achieved 35mm image quality.

Aimee and I went to this theater once before, so it’s not completely new to me, but it isn’t a go-to place for new movies. It’s an AMC theater, which hasn’t really meant much recently, but with this one, which is fairly new, they’ve tried to up their game. It was re-done in 2006, replacing the 14 screen theater there before, and in 2009, they went to an assigned seating policy like the ArcLight Hollywood and the Landmark Westside. In 2010, they went all-digital; this was the only digital presentation of the week, which was pleasant but definitely not representative of where things are today, or where they are going.

The movie was diverting enough, but I kept feeling like all of the moments I should have been struck down by the brilliance of Oliver Stone’s dialogue and the power of Michael Douglas’ delivery, I was just put off by how unconvincing it sounded. Things are strange when you don’t mind Shia LaBeouf and Michael Douglas grates on you. More Frank Langella, please!