What's a movie you enjoyed so much in theaters you saw it multiple times there?
Personally, The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
I knew it was going to be quite the experience before I went for the first time‡ but it was so much fun I had to keep going back bringing friends each time.
It's still a fun tradition to do though we haven't done it since last year, we're probably going to try and go again in a few weeks.
‡ I had seen it many times before going to see it in theaters for the first time.
I have a huge soft spot for the second and third pirates films. I think looking at the first and thinking it could make a great trilogy is totally valid and although they're definitely much more long winded than the first with less lovable characters, they're good films and if I ever revisit the first, I generally revisit the second and third too.
I watched the Dungeons and Dragons movie when it came out and really enjoyed it, but it definitely felt like I was watching a marvel movie, albeit a well written one, Pirates may be the last YA action adventure franchise that isn't just the re-skinned marvel formula, which makes it far more watchable than 80% of the genre since.
Also Pirates 3 is basically the creator of the horrible pressure CGI artists have suffered under for the past 15 years, so take that as you may.
While I enjoy the Pirates trilogy, I feel like they could just as easily have kept it a single movie. It was fine, the story was conclusive enough to satisfy and open ended enough to tickle the imagination.
Not everything has to be turned into a franchise or a ‘verse.
The buildup to this movie was basically the perfect storm. And boy did it deliver. I doubt Marvel will ever be this good again. And actually, the fact that their trying to make every movie now an "Avengers" movie is exactly the reason it's going downhill, in my opinion. Feels like almost every recent Marvel movie (Black Panther 2, Ant-Man Quantumania, Black Widow), they all have to be huge wars with multiple superheroes coming in to save the day. They cant just make a smaller scale superhero movie anymore. There have been a few exceptions, like Shang-Chi, and that one was way better. Avengers Endgame was so amazing in theaters because it was made on a decade of buildup.
The marketing was incredible because it leaned heavily into "What is the Matrix?" and didn't spoil the plot. It made the movie itself amazing, because you had no idea what to expect.
I cringe just thinking about how that movie would be marketed today. The trailer would probably start off with all the action scenes voiced over by Morpheus explaining exactly what the Matrix was, followed by Agent Smith monologuing about how humans are a virus that needs to be wiped out.
Inception. I saw it 4 times in theaters. Every time, I noticed new details. It was such a unique and original story, and it was executed incredibly well. I had never seen a movie where the score was so essential to the storytelling. It's such a dense movie that despite being 2.5 hours, I don't think I could cut 2 minutes out of it without really hurting the pacing or missing necessary moments. Inception is the reason I can understand and appreciate both filmmaking and the composition and arrangement of instrumental music.
Same here. But even after rewatching it so many times, I never realized that the iconic Inception BWAAAH is actually a super-slowed down version of the dream world cue song (Edith Piaf's Non, je ne regrette rien). There’s a really neat analysis done by Rutgers’ Christopher Doll, which explains how Zimmer uses the slowed down motif to signal which dreamscape we are in as the viewer while watching the movie. Link here.
That's exactly what I meant when I said that the score is essential. And it's super fucking cool that the orchestra includes an electric guitar and an electric cello. As much as I love the score for Interstellar, I don't know if Inception's score even can be topped! Star Wars is the only thing that comes close imho.
The glass of milk scene is one of my top two most tense scenes in all of cinema that I've seen. The other being the coin toss in No Country For Old Men.
Barbie. The details in the background of the movie (side comments, set, clothes etc.) capture the female experience better than anything else I've seen.
Cinema around 12 times (best friend was a Cinema manager back then), the rest at home. Occasionally I throw in the Blu-ray and watch it from time to time....
When I was a kid, Nightmare Before Christmas. Must've convinced my parents to take me to see it at least eight times. I've watched it at least once every year since then, and it stayed my favorite movie for most of my life, until Everything Everywhere All at Once finally usurped it almost 30 years later. Saw that in theaters four times.
Oh, and Lord of the Rings. Saw all three in theaters at least three times each. And, for some reason, Superbad. Went to five showings of that.
Odd, Superbad is the only movie I've ever seen twice (or more) in the theaters.
I saw it and thought it was the funniest movie I'd ever seen, then a couple weeks later my buddy wanted to see a movie so I saw it a second time with him. No regrets.
I went to see the original Avatar movie 3 times. First time I unknowingly watched it in 2D. Then I thought “this would be amazing in 3D”. Then I saw it in 3D and it was so fantastic that, a few weeks later, I watched in 3D again.
No regerts.
I wish 3D had stuck around long enough to get a 4k HDR 3D release of it. Ah well, maybe 3D movies will come back again in another 20 years with higher framerates and better displays.
Ain’t gonna happen because there is no such thing as 4K 3D in Home Cinema terms, because unfortunately 4K UHD Blu-ray’s don’t even support 3D. It’s not in the spec.
But yeah, I hope 3D will come back in a few years with much better specs.
The Lord of the Rings / The Hobbit movies. If I could manage it usually would head up to the theater to re-watch every 1-2 weeks.
They were all movies released in December. I still distinctly remember heading up to the IMAX in Manhattan late night after work so the movie would finish up around midnight(?). After watching these movies I'd walk out of the theater into a cold and snowy NYC. Felt a bit surreal, especially after the last 2 Hobbit movies where most of the movies were centered around cold climates.
Spirited Away. Before it won the Oscar it was in limited release in the US. A friend drove me nearly three hours to the closest showing. After the Oscar it came to most theatres. I took other friends to see it on two separate occasions.
Flash Gordon is the one I've seen most in the cinema. I was absolutely captivated by it as a kid. It must have had a decent run in the cinema as I was very young when it was released.
Related story - My folks were picking someone up at the airport around that time. After they met they went for a drink in the airport bar right next to arrivals and I absolutely traumatised every single patron by playing the theme tune by Queen on repeat with my pocket money until it ran out.
edit: To be clear, the damage was done before my folks realised what was going on. Money. Select. Money. Select. They were quite embarrassed.
I watched "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King" a total of 6 times in cinema (and the extended edition countless times on DVD since then) and still think very fondly of the experience.
Just experiencing the awe when the beacons were lit and the camera flew through the mountains and the mind blowing moment when the Riders of Rohan appear on the horizon.
When the extended edition came out on dvd, i watched the whole trilogy at least once a year
I saw The Fellowship of the Ring nine times in theaters. Once i hit time #4 or #5, I realized i had to keep going until I could say i saw it once for each member of the fellowship.
Dang. Upon thinking about it, I don’t think I’ve ever actually done this. Recently, I did rent Beau Is Afraid for 48 hours and watched it 2 nights in a row because it was such a mindf*ck
Jurassic Park, the original Star Wars trilogy when it was released in theaters again before the prequels, Inception, and the newest Mad Max. There were a few others, but those are the ones I remember.
Previously, I had never ever seen a movie in theaters twice. If I had seen a movie once and wanted to watch it again, I could wait to buy it for myself. It just didn't ever make much sense to me as to why anyone would watch the same movie multiple times in like a one-month time span.
And then Everything Everywhere All At Once came out, and I saw it again the week after I saw it the first time, and then I understood. What a fantastic movie.
Back in my be day, theaters had midnight movies. It was something to do if you were to young to go to bars. I remember seeing Rocky Horror and The Song Remains The Same dozens of times
I saw Oppenheimer in IMAX opening day and loved it so much I did it again a week later doing the Barbenheiner. Listening to it's soaring score in IMAX was practically a religious experience
I actually wondered if it was going to sink the first time I watched it. Movie is so well made you didn't even realize what's going to happen until it does.
Captain Marvel, great 90s soundtrack and female superhero amongst a sea of male ones. Not the best marvel movie but enjoyable enough for me to watch twice.
I spent a long time living in places that had saved their one last 'classic' movie theater by turning it into a rerun palace for 'art films', cult classics and other specialty cinema.
Also, I bought the DVD of Baraka that came out in the late 90s or so, and I was so disappointed in how visually awful the digital transfer was at that time, the disc was honestly not even worth watching. Not just because of small screens, the problem was that whoever did the digital transfer had completely fucked up the frame rate conversion in a way that caused every one of the many time-lapse sequences to move with a really annoying jitter. There was no possible playback setting or processing to fix it either, the process had removed information making it impossible to smooth or recover, at least back then.
So that junk DVD motivated me to just keep grabbing anyone I could, or no one if no one was around, and going out of my way to see the movie every time it came to a big screen within an hour of me. Now it's been years since my last watch... I'm not sure how much more I could take of it now that it's so clear the human race already sold out its long term survival for short term gain.