Culver Plaza Theatres The Adjustment Bureau Tuesday, 5/10/11, 7:25 pm
Price: $8.00 Concessions: None Audience: five people, in a theater that seats about 150. Trailers/advertising: A series of out-of-focus and off-center trivia slides, followed by trailers for Cat Run, Hanna, Beginners, and Paul. Projection: 35mm platter, slightly out of focus and dark
I’ve only been to this theater once before, and the experience was on par with the look of the place, run down and unloved. The same was true tonight; the place looks like it’s abandoned, but is somehow still running. It’s important to have theaters like this in town, places to catch movies after they’ve left the multiplexes, but it’s just such an unappealing place to see a film, it’s hard to get yourself to go sometimes.
The best thing about this theater is the giant mural in the entrance, a fascinating amalgamation of stars from dozens of movies, which people were pointing out and trying to identify as I walked in tonight. The rest of the theater is decorated with black and white photos of Hollywood royalty, which wouldn’t seem so out of place if the theater weren’t always showing such dregs.
It’s a bit of a shock to realize that an $8 ticket now somehow qualifies as a “discount” theater. I can say that at least the seats have cushioning all the way up to the top so your neck doesn’t get get cut into (see Day 4), but other than that, the theater was an un-surprising disappointment. The film was slightly out of focus, and it didn’t seem like there was enough light passing through it to get a good picture, which was unfortunate. The sound was pretty poor as well, and their system was plagued by a hiss coming out of the left speaker the entire time. As for the movie itself, I didn’t find it as disappointing as the President apparently did; Matt Damon is (almost) always fun to watch, and John Slattery and Terence Stamp in fedoras can’t be all bad.
I walked out after the film to take a photo of the place with its neon aglow, but I guess they turned it off at some point during the screening, since there weren’t any more movies starting after mine ended. Sad.
