I had not been to a movie theater for more than four years Nov. 29 when I went to a preview showing of Godzilla Minus One. The last time I saw a film on the big screen, it had been Star Wars IX: The Rise of Skywalker. In the last two months, I’ve now sat inside a movie theater seven times, including twice this past Sunday afternoon.
I missed the experience and loved being there all seven times. It’s easy for me to sink into a story watching TV or reading a book or listening, but the nature of a theater makes the immersion that much easier.
Godzilla Minus One moved me so much, and it’s so built for that immersive experience — you need a big screen to show a 200-foot-tall monster, right? — that I went back three times for another ride on the emotional roller coaster. Then Toho pulled out a black-and-white version of the same movie — with a statement by director Takashi Yamizaki that it was a painstaking reprocessing of the images, not a gimmick — so I went for a fifth time.
Mostly it felt like a trip back home to the days when we didn’t have a color TV so everything we saw was in black and white — an interesting experiment, but sorry, kind of a gimmick. The good news is the story is worth watching five times, so I still had a great time.
The theater’s schedule was nicely aligned for me to see Godzilla Minus One Minus Color right after an 85th anniversary showing of my all-time favorite, The Wizard of Oz. (Today is the last day your local theater might be showing Oz, by the way. Check the listings, it’s worth reimagining your Wednesday for.)
Even after all the time that has passed since 1939, The Wizard of Oz is a perfect movie. The actors’ performances, the songs and music, the settings, the special effects, the writing, the pacing, the humor, the pathos — all perfect.
The year 1939 delivered an astonishing number of timeless films — I daresay you could go at least a month watching a different movie from 1939 each night and be wildly entertained every night. Of all those great and timeless movies, none shines brighter than The Wizard of Oz, and on the big screen in a darkened theater, it shines brightest of all.
My seventh movie theater visit was to see The Marvels — a movie set in outer space almost demands to be seen on a big screen — and as I suspected, it is a much better film than one might expect given how much it underperformed at the box office. I think people are just tired of superhero movies at the moment. (Frankly, Avengers: Endgame was such an epic experience that everything that followed has paled in comparison.)
I think I’ll probably cool it for a while — for one thing, the price of tickets and snacks anymore is such that seven trips to the movies cost north of 150 bucks, I’m guessing — but I’m not going to let four years slip by before I go back, ever again. What was I thinking?
