Movie Week IV, Day 7

May 11th, 2011 · No Comments



AMC Avco Thor Wednesday, 5/11/11, 7:00 pm

Price: $14.50 ($11.50 + a $3 surcharge for 3-D, outrageous) Concessions: Red Vines, mmm. Audience: 15 people, in a theater that seats about 500. Trailers/advertising: Lots. The inevitable “First Look” junk, including a behind-the-scenes for The Smurfs in which everyone involved looked like they were having their teeth pulled in order to say something good about the film; ads for the Dish Network (is their slogan really “Let’s watch TV”?), the show “Falling Skies,” Geico, Gillette, the History Channel, Lowe’s, the Green Hornet DVD, Sprint, “The Voice,” Honda, Gatorade, Coke, please make this stop… Then trailers for Captain America, Super 8 (thank you, J.J. Abrams, for showing real Super 8 cameras, reels, projectors, and so on even though 99% of the target audience has no idea what they look like), Cowboys and Aliens, Colombiana, Don’t Be Afraid of The Dark, Conan the Barbarian, and Immortals, the last two of which were in 3D and looked absolutely awful in every way. Projection: Real D digital 3D

I’ve only ever paid attention to this theater when flying (or crawling) past it on Wilshire. It’s a big building, facing right out onto the extremely busy five-lane thoroughfare that is Wilshire Boulevard, with nothing around it, no crosswalks nearby, and a strange sense of isolation. It was pretty empty when I was there, with one staffer selling tickets, taking tickets, and manning the concessions stand. On the plus side, there was a giant cardboard hammer of Thor in the lobby.

The movie was fun, I guess, but dragged every time they had to go back to the gold lamé world of Xanadu Asgard, and the 3D did absolutely nothing for it. Chris Hemsworth was good, Natalie Portman may be the only big-time actress of her generation who can actually seem plausible as an astrophysicist, and the fish out of water scenes were fun, but it could have been so much better.

Tags: Film · Los Angeles ·