Ode to the AMC Loews Spring 10 Theater/Theatre

I think it's time for a movie theater review!

Sometimes you're faced with a dilemma, where you're damned if you do or damned if you don't. Going to this theater (or 'theatre' if you prefer) falls squarely within these bounds.

http://www.fandango.com/springamcloewsspring10_aabnc/theaterpage

It is very difficult to not think of the Loews Spring theater as being 'not depressing.' No, I'm not talking old-style Times Square porn theater type-depressing, but just...saddening.

Not that I've been to an old-style Times Square porn theater, but I've seen enough movies to figure anyone going into one must be borderline suicidal. I mean, come on. (Note: double entendre, entirely unintended.)

Anyway, the place is indeed depressing, but strangely, at the same time, it's one of the better theaters I've been to. How can I explain this paradox of movie-going?

For starters, the place is dead. I'm talking ghost-town, Fuhrer-bunker-after-Hitler-caps-himself dead. You'll be lucky to see maybe 12 other people in the theater at any given time, EVEN on opening night for a "blockbuster film." And that 12 is counting the guy working the ticket booth (usually an 80-year-old man, which is pretty awesome actually), and the two people working the concession stand. Maybe a fourth will be a manager-looking person. Oh wait, sometimes you don't get your ticket at the booth - sometimes you get it at the concession stand. I guess when they're only working three people on the floor, you gotta maximize your labor costs.

This results in a deathly quiet theater. I can't complain too much about this, because I absolutely love the Loews Spring for this reason. I stopped going to big movie complexes many years ago for two reasons: one, Hollywood sucks and maybe produces two good flicks a year, and two, the people that tend to clog them up. Most are nice folks, but there's always, ALWAYS, some horse's ass making noise, talking to the screen, leaving their cell phone on, munching on their popcorn like a cow slobbering on a barrel of apples. I like suspending my disbelief, and honestly cannot fathom how people can do that when they're sitting elbow-to-elbow with total strangers, some of whom smell like fermented bug guts (or is that the candy they're shoveling into their mouths?). The Loews Spring theater is wonderful: you will have NO worries about lines, you will have NO worries about someone sitting right in front of you and blocking your view.

As for the theater itself, it reminds me of a beloved grandmother who's gone senile and was dumped in a mid-range nursing home. It needs attention, but it's not getting it. Several seats are broken throughout the place. And the seats that work are ancient - they probably saw the premiere of the original Star Wars movie. If you're a germophobe, I don't want to even contemplate how many asses have sat in those upholstery-stuffed chairs. Plus, my tailbone aches after about an hour. But hey, it's a trade-off: sure, the bigger theaters are going to be more comfortable, but I'm willing to sacrifice this for the above reasons.

It's fairly clean, too; I suppose Granny never had anything better to do, but when she can manage to keep the artificial butter-like substance that goes on popcorn from coating the theater floor, she's got my vote. This, and when you only have sixteen customers a day to see movies, it's not hard to do that.

Now for the typical male complaint: the fact that they're playing Sex and the City is fairly saddening. I absolutely cannot stand SatC, and I've enjoyed many series that HBO has produced over the years. But...not...this. I've tried...hell, I loved Kim Cattrall in the 80s. But no, not as a fifty-something-trying-to-look-twenty-something-and-ending-up-looking-fifty-something. (Yes, she's 52. And yes, she's absolutely gorgeous for 52. But please, ladies, stop trying to look like you're younger than you are and just be your beautiful self!) And that goes for the other ladies in this flick, too. Sorry...hey, it's just my opinion, and yet I know the movie's probably going to make over 40 million its opening weekend...maybe more like 60. There's a lot of older, wannabe MILFs, married with children that want to strap stank flip flops on their nasty feet and flap their way over to see it. That's another post entirely - gross feet, SatC, etc., so enough of the fishing for pissing people off for now. There's plenty of time for that later!

Back to the theater itself. While I feel that the Loews Spring is something of a hidden gem, the fact that it's always nearly dead worries me that it will probably end up closing its doors sometime in the near future. The strip mall it is in is nearly empty, its concrete facades staring across empty parking lots like ancient Roman buildings. No doubt, my secret movie-watching place will die soon, and that's most depressing of all.

I'm not exactly worried about the place flooding with incoming people, since if you're actually reading this review right now, likely it's because you've been to this theater and know exactly what I'm talking about. (If you haven't, your loss, but you just might have such a place near you.) Hey, maybe it DOES get busier at certain times - maybe I just go at 'off peak' times. If you count 'off peak' as Saturday evenings and usually with seven people or so tops to each theater 'off peak,' well, okay, you have me there.

Regardless, it's a good theater: there's no rush, there's no lines, there's nobody in the way, it's quiet, and service is fairly quick. Try it out. Maybe that extra fifty dollars for one ticket, one small popcorn, one candybar and one small drink will make the difference between them closing their cinematic doors for good or staying open to continue their streak of being a hidden gem of a theater.

I make no claim on being a genius.

I have some good ideas, perhaps a bit of imagination, but I cannot cure cancer, create a car that runs for a month on a gallon of gas, or build a bridge to the moon.

Few people that indulge in blogs, really, dare to state they have the answeres to everything. At the very least, they merely purport to share one opinion within the crushing mass of the Internet, where opinions are, as they say, like assholes: everyone has one. I'm no more or no less such a persona here.

Whether or not you read, agree, disagree, hate, disparage, or love anything I have to say, that's your choice, much as it is mine to merely make mention of a few things every now and then that affect me. Or, more specifically, things that piss me off.

Most anything these days that does such a thing comes as a result of stupidity, ignorance, or people with generally a low-wattage bulb powering the meaty think-sac between their ears. Like I said, I don't claim to have an overabundance of correctness or right answers, but I was raised in a way that makes me very aware of how there are ways to act: right and wrong both.

Unfortunately, it seems more and more people are edging their way to the "wrong" side of the equation, which leaves someone like me...not to mention millions of others who might think this way...to try to balance it out by weighing in our opinions on WHY something is wrong, WHY it's stupid to act a certain way, WHY the world might be better off without hordes of ignorant people, or even debate whether I am myself one of these people.

I don't know. I don't have all the answers. But I sure do have an opinion, and that's what a blog is all about. I hope to update this every day if possible, but I doubt I'll have that kind of time. There's a lot of things I'd love to rant about, but I need to sort them through and start with a bang.

I hope you enjoy reading these as much as I enjoy writing them. I hope I enjoy writing them, quite frankly, because otherwise this is a waste of everyone's time.