The only arthouse we had anywhere near where I lived in North Dakota was the Fargo Theatre about six hours away. It had an organ that they still used for musical interludes between showings and some of the old vintage film equipment on display. They kept the woodchipper from Fargo for the visitor's center but they also had a chainsaw wood cut of Marge on display as well.
There was an awesome multiplex in Bismarck though called The Grand that got most of the Oscar worthy releases that Minot wasn't big enough for. What made it awesome, though, was the decor. It was largely Egyptian themed, had a statue of Heston as Moses and everything, but then one of the screens had a little lobby area outside of it that had vintage film posters and equipment as well. I either never knew or don't remember why it was so kitschy but I loved it so much. Talking about it now makes me a little misty, honestly, one of the few things I wish I didn't have to leave behind with, well, the rest of living in North Dakota.
Here in Denver, we've got a few of note. I love the decor of the Mayan but the seats can be killer for a longer movie (I'm seeing Badlands there tonight, that's about the appropriate length of time my butt can handle). The people in charge of the Chez Artiste are awesome and do handmade collages of facts and trivia for movies that they're playing which I always love. The Sie is where Denver Film is headquartered and is pretty nice too.
What great memories. This makes me remember the Blue Mouse, a literal underground theater in Salt Lake City (it was in the basement), which is where I saw everything from Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources to Hard Boiled to Monty Python revivals. As a "good" Mormon kid I always felt like the Blue Mouse was a little dangerous to my soul, especially because it was inextricably linked to Cosmic Aeroplane, the alternative bookstore-slash-head shop next door. I loved the Blue Mouse.
Dig this program from the late '80s, produced on a typewriter like any other 'zine:
Two Boots Pioneer Theater in NYC was the best thing to experience for a normalized "weird cinema" experience from the infamous Donnie Darko screenings to a projectionist performing a live commentary as a drunk Paul Verhoeven on a whim.
This is a good opportunity to lament the impending demolition of the Main Art in Royal Oak, MI. This theater was renovated at the beginning of the 90s, just in time or the indie film boom, and I have many fond memories of seeing films like Immortal Beloved and Red Rock West there. Very sad to see it go.
But more important to me would be the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor. A true old school movie house with a giant balcony, a full working organ, and lots of taste. I've seen everything there, from Spike and Mike, to Cinematic Titanic, to Laurence of Arabia with live orchestra accompaniment. And it's linked to the University's film program, so it's also where I watched all my Bergman films for my undergrad class. I haven't been back to visit in a long time, but it looks like it's still going strong, thank goodness.
Although it doesn't intuitively fit the criteria for a beloved arthouse theater (for starters, it was a dump), as I moved to Chicago in the mid-90s, the Three Penny on Lincoln felt like a kindred spirit to what the nearby Lounge Axe was doing for the indie music scene. I know I saw many indie films there, though the only one I can specifically recall seeing there, SWINGERS, also feels like a stretch.
The LeFont Garden Hills Cinema in Atlanta. It had a good sized screen and salty popcorn. I saw many a great movie there (including many directed by Pedro Almodovar). Alas, the theater was torn down a few years ago and it's a vacant lot.
I loved The Dundee Theater in Omaha when I lived there, though I haven’t visited in years now that I’ve lived in LA for over a decade. I’m curious about the renovations brought to it by Film Streams.
For me it’s the late, lamented Oak Street Cinema in Minneapolis. When the Uptown (also RIP) was repertory theater, I wasn’t clued in enough (although I had friends take me to see Bringing Up Baby in high school, possibly my first black and white movie 😬 and also did once attend Rocky Horror and Stop Making Sense midnight shows). It opened in 1995, at a time I was getting deeply into movies. It showed an amazing collection of classic Hollywood and foreign art house gems. After a year of going often, I became a volunteer (selling popcorn and soda every other Sunday in exchange for free admission to any shows - one of the best deals I’ve ever been a part of). A year after I started volunteering I met the woman who would become my wife (she was an actual employee) and a few years after that we got married there. Sadly it’s now a condo. One very slight silver lining of the 2008 financial crisis is that it had been slated to become condos at the time but the project stalled out. Because of that delay I was able to take my 5 year old son to see a double feature of the Red Balloon and White Mane. I’m not sure any of it made a deep impression on him but it meant a lot to take him to the theater where his parents met (and spent a lot of time before he was born).
Sorry for the tangential interruption here, but when I read the opening paragraph I had never, ever heard of _Turtle Diary_ (imagine that italicized or bolded, because I can't do that here). So of course I did what any decent cinephile would do and looked it up. Lo and behold, while it was issued on VHS, it never made it to DVD (Blu-ray? Forget about it). So, what's next? JustWatch for streaming, which - I kid you not - does not even list this film at all, even as a movie that is not yet available to stream. Reelgood lists it as such, which just confirms what I had assumed by then.
So add Turtle Diary to the list of films that I wish someone were keeping somewhere of media that will rapidly disappear from existence unless it gets a reissue (or bare minimum, conversion to digital for streaming). I really want to see it but there's barely any chance I could at this point.
The seminal arthouse in Des Moines was The Varsity, but it tended to play a lot of middle-brow Oscar bait and a LOT of "artistic" softcore porn. (If a movie had Laura Antonelli nude, The Varsity would show it.)
The real revelation for me was The Movie 1 & 2, which opened in 1980, as I was transitioning from junior high to high school. Movies 1 was a standard old neighborhood theater with a surprisingly gigantic screen, perfect for showings of Once Upon A Time In The West, Dressed To Kill or West Side Story. The Movies 2 was dubbed The Screening Room, a fifty seat box with a screen smaller than most TVs today and a single Realistic speaker up front. But it had both 16 and 35 mm capability, and in that intimate setting, the images were up close and pristine. In 1981, it went from standard arthouse to repertory theater, and what didn't I see there? Dark Star, The Red Shoes, Nosferatu (Murnau and Herzog both), Forbidden Planet, Paths Of Glory, Persona, Amarcord, Key Largo, Fritz The Cat...everything. Seeing the first Des Moines screening of Eraserhead, in a pre-internet world where it was almost impossible to find out anything about it ahead of time, 50 people packed into one small, pot smoke-filled box, and the collective bafflement and delight as the movie unfolded--it remains the greatest movie-going experience of my life.
As a Madisonian, I'm also sad that The Orpheum and The Majestic no longer show first-run movies. The Majestic does have a recurring "Brew 'n View" even where they screen a classic movie to an enthusiastic crowd. I had a great time watching Wayne's World that way. Downtown Madison is really bereft of movie theaters now. I saw a ton of movies at University Square Four while I was a student at the UW--including my first date with my future wife watching Ghost in the Shell: Innocence--but it was torn down years ago to make way for luxury apartments. So it goes.
Growing up in San Luis Obispo we had the strange tri-plex called The Palm Theaters where they'd show offbeat indie and foreign movies the bigger 7-plex wouldn't show. It's where I got to see classics like Dr. Strangelove and Apocalypse Now for the first time as well as "cutting edge" new indie cinema like Memento.
During the pandemic a friend reached out to do some fund raising to keep the theater alive during the shut downs, but the owner declined. He owns the building and since installing solar paneling on its rooftop he basically future proofed this tiny little theater.
Baltimore had The Charles and it rescued a lot of us from becoming strict blockbuster heads. Went for the first time after leaving a Baptist school to return to public high school where I connected with old friends from elementary. Monty Python and the Holy Grail. About as perfect a choice for that moment as I could ask for. So many would follow. The Hunger, Metropolis, Sotto Sotto, Stop Making Sense, and on and on. Often preceded by a PSA from John Waters warning/encouraging us not to/but definitely smoke. It's still open but is now multiple screens. But it carries on and the world is a better place for it.
As a fellow Dayton native, agree that both the Neon and Little Art Theatre were the best things about growing up there.
Any favorites in NYC? They're slowly dying out, but there are some good spots, like Film Forum and Quad.
The only arthouse we had anywhere near where I lived in North Dakota was the Fargo Theatre about six hours away. It had an organ that they still used for musical interludes between showings and some of the old vintage film equipment on display. They kept the woodchipper from Fargo for the visitor's center but they also had a chainsaw wood cut of Marge on display as well.
There was an awesome multiplex in Bismarck though called The Grand that got most of the Oscar worthy releases that Minot wasn't big enough for. What made it awesome, though, was the decor. It was largely Egyptian themed, had a statue of Heston as Moses and everything, but then one of the screens had a little lobby area outside of it that had vintage film posters and equipment as well. I either never knew or don't remember why it was so kitschy but I loved it so much. Talking about it now makes me a little misty, honestly, one of the few things I wish I didn't have to leave behind with, well, the rest of living in North Dakota.
Here in Denver, we've got a few of note. I love the decor of the Mayan but the seats can be killer for a longer movie (I'm seeing Badlands there tonight, that's about the appropriate length of time my butt can handle). The people in charge of the Chez Artiste are awesome and do handmade collages of facts and trivia for movies that they're playing which I always love. The Sie is where Denver Film is headquartered and is pretty nice too.
What great memories. This makes me remember the Blue Mouse, a literal underground theater in Salt Lake City (it was in the basement), which is where I saw everything from Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources to Hard Boiled to Monty Python revivals. As a "good" Mormon kid I always felt like the Blue Mouse was a little dangerous to my soul, especially because it was inextricably linked to Cosmic Aeroplane, the alternative bookstore-slash-head shop next door. I loved the Blue Mouse.
Dig this program from the late '80s, produced on a typewriter like any other 'zine:
https://archive.org/details/BlueMouseProgram1987/page/n1/mode/2up
Not a lot of good photos I can immediately find of the Blue Mouse, but you can see it to the left of Cosmic Aeroplane in the first of these photos:
https://cosmicaeroplane.wordpress.com/258-e-1st-south/
Two Boots Pioneer Theater in NYC was the best thing to experience for a normalized "weird cinema" experience from the infamous Donnie Darko screenings to a projectionist performing a live commentary as a drunk Paul Verhoeven on a whim.
This is a good opportunity to lament the impending demolition of the Main Art in Royal Oak, MI. This theater was renovated at the beginning of the 90s, just in time or the indie film boom, and I have many fond memories of seeing films like Immortal Beloved and Red Rock West there. Very sad to see it go.
But more important to me would be the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor. A true old school movie house with a giant balcony, a full working organ, and lots of taste. I've seen everything there, from Spike and Mike, to Cinematic Titanic, to Laurence of Arabia with live orchestra accompaniment. And it's linked to the University's film program, so it's also where I watched all my Bergman films for my undergrad class. I haven't been back to visit in a long time, but it looks like it's still going strong, thank goodness.
Although it doesn't intuitively fit the criteria for a beloved arthouse theater (for starters, it was a dump), as I moved to Chicago in the mid-90s, the Three Penny on Lincoln felt like a kindred spirit to what the nearby Lounge Axe was doing for the indie music scene. I know I saw many indie films there, though the only one I can specifically recall seeing there, SWINGERS, also feels like a stretch.
The LeFont Garden Hills Cinema in Atlanta. It had a good sized screen and salty popcorn. I saw many a great movie there (including many directed by Pedro Almodovar). Alas, the theater was torn down a few years ago and it's a vacant lot.
I loved The Dundee Theater in Omaha when I lived there, though I haven’t visited in years now that I’ve lived in LA for over a decade. I’m curious about the renovations brought to it by Film Streams.
For me it’s the late, lamented Oak Street Cinema in Minneapolis. When the Uptown (also RIP) was repertory theater, I wasn’t clued in enough (although I had friends take me to see Bringing Up Baby in high school, possibly my first black and white movie 😬 and also did once attend Rocky Horror and Stop Making Sense midnight shows). It opened in 1995, at a time I was getting deeply into movies. It showed an amazing collection of classic Hollywood and foreign art house gems. After a year of going often, I became a volunteer (selling popcorn and soda every other Sunday in exchange for free admission to any shows - one of the best deals I’ve ever been a part of). A year after I started volunteering I met the woman who would become my wife (she was an actual employee) and a few years after that we got married there. Sadly it’s now a condo. One very slight silver lining of the 2008 financial crisis is that it had been slated to become condos at the time but the project stalled out. Because of that delay I was able to take my 5 year old son to see a double feature of the Red Balloon and White Mane. I’m not sure any of it made a deep impression on him but it meant a lot to take him to the theater where his parents met (and spent a lot of time before he was born).
Sorry for the tangential interruption here, but when I read the opening paragraph I had never, ever heard of _Turtle Diary_ (imagine that italicized or bolded, because I can't do that here). So of course I did what any decent cinephile would do and looked it up. Lo and behold, while it was issued on VHS, it never made it to DVD (Blu-ray? Forget about it). So, what's next? JustWatch for streaming, which - I kid you not - does not even list this film at all, even as a movie that is not yet available to stream. Reelgood lists it as such, which just confirms what I had assumed by then.
So add Turtle Diary to the list of films that I wish someone were keeping somewhere of media that will rapidly disappear from existence unless it gets a reissue (or bare minimum, conversion to digital for streaming). I really want to see it but there's barely any chance I could at this point.
The seminal arthouse in Des Moines was The Varsity, but it tended to play a lot of middle-brow Oscar bait and a LOT of "artistic" softcore porn. (If a movie had Laura Antonelli nude, The Varsity would show it.)
The real revelation for me was The Movie 1 & 2, which opened in 1980, as I was transitioning from junior high to high school. Movies 1 was a standard old neighborhood theater with a surprisingly gigantic screen, perfect for showings of Once Upon A Time In The West, Dressed To Kill or West Side Story. The Movies 2 was dubbed The Screening Room, a fifty seat box with a screen smaller than most TVs today and a single Realistic speaker up front. But it had both 16 and 35 mm capability, and in that intimate setting, the images were up close and pristine. In 1981, it went from standard arthouse to repertory theater, and what didn't I see there? Dark Star, The Red Shoes, Nosferatu (Murnau and Herzog both), Forbidden Planet, Paths Of Glory, Persona, Amarcord, Key Largo, Fritz The Cat...everything. Seeing the first Des Moines screening of Eraserhead, in a pre-internet world where it was almost impossible to find out anything about it ahead of time, 50 people packed into one small, pot smoke-filled box, and the collective bafflement and delight as the movie unfolded--it remains the greatest movie-going experience of my life.
As a Madisonian, I'm also sad that The Orpheum and The Majestic no longer show first-run movies. The Majestic does have a recurring "Brew 'n View" even where they screen a classic movie to an enthusiastic crowd. I had a great time watching Wayne's World that way. Downtown Madison is really bereft of movie theaters now. I saw a ton of movies at University Square Four while I was a student at the UW--including my first date with my future wife watching Ghost in the Shell: Innocence--but it was torn down years ago to make way for luxury apartments. So it goes.
Growing up in San Luis Obispo we had the strange tri-plex called The Palm Theaters where they'd show offbeat indie and foreign movies the bigger 7-plex wouldn't show. It's where I got to see classics like Dr. Strangelove and Apocalypse Now for the first time as well as "cutting edge" new indie cinema like Memento.
During the pandemic a friend reached out to do some fund raising to keep the theater alive during the shut downs, but the owner declined. He owns the building and since installing solar paneling on its rooftop he basically future proofed this tiny little theater.
Baltimore had The Charles and it rescued a lot of us from becoming strict blockbuster heads. Went for the first time after leaving a Baptist school to return to public high school where I connected with old friends from elementary. Monty Python and the Holy Grail. About as perfect a choice for that moment as I could ask for. So many would follow. The Hunger, Metropolis, Sotto Sotto, Stop Making Sense, and on and on. Often preceded by a PSA from John Waters warning/encouraging us not to/but definitely smoke. It's still open but is now multiple screens. But it carries on and the world is a better place for it.