By Memoirs From a Picture Show is a semi-regular column from the Merry-Go-Round staff chronicling memories, miracles, and anomalies from our time spent in cinemas around the globe. You’ve read about movies; now it’s time to read about seeing those movies in theaters.
There was no “Barbenheimer.” The 2023 strikes led to a dearth of product. And 2024 has been the worst pandemic year for cinema on record; however, we kept going to movie theaters! Some days they’re so back, and some days they’re more cooked than they’ve ever been, but let us reminisce on the times we shared in these stinky, squeaky, and HEY PUT YOUR FUCKING PHONE AWAY… Where was I going with this? Here are highlights of the 2024 Los Angeles filmgoing experience.
Best Welcome Back: Vista Theater Hollywood
Let’s get the rigmarole out of the way for the out-of-towners: long an architectural Los Angeles staple, and one of the last remaining single-screen theaters, the Vista took on a reputation amongst East Hollywood locals as the cinema to hit up when your neck was too sore from cranking it up at the ceiling-mounted screens of the Los Feliz 3.
Shuttered during the pandemic, the Vista saw itself in precarious limbo: It’s a venue that was long taken for granted, never the site of hip pop-ups nor in association with hometown festivals (who all opted instead for the TCL Chinese Theater for the prestige of “premiering at the Chinese” only to be subjected to the reality that they’d be playing one of the screens in its junky multiplex). The Vista was held up by the community, but the Vista has never been seen in the same esteem as the Arclight Hollywood, the Laemmle Sunset 5, the New Beverly, the Aero, or even the DTLA Alamo Drafthouse in the seven months it was operational before lockdown.
And despite its historical legend, it really got no respect as a proper movie house until Netflix staged a lavish celebration of the Vista in 2019, making it the exclusive home to early, public 35mm screenings of MARRIAGE STORY (a crummy movie that I spent a lovely afternoon with). I’ve lived in Los Angeles all my life; it took Netflix going, “We have a new Noah Baumbach movie, and you have to find parking by the Vista to watch it” for me to go to the Vista for the first time. Now, the Vista is owned by Quentin Tarantino, with an adjoining Pam Grier-themed café and home video microcinema programmed by some of the repertory scene’s most reliable weirdos. the Vista has not only re-established itself as a community hub, but in just a year it’s cemented itself as the premiere first-run paradise it always had the potential to be.
My first re-visit was for January’s exclusive engagement of Jonathan Glazer’s THE ZONE OF INTEREST, where I was ushered into a harrowing two hours with the blissful chimes of Sakamoto’s MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR. LAWRENCE score pulsing from the house speakers. It’s tough to not feel like you’re in a place of worship in a scenario like that. Later I’d return to watch THE WILD BUNCH and MANDINGO on trashed 35mm IB Technicolor prints as part of a mini-fest Tarantino himself had hoisted: a festival where every reel was run through decades worth of gutters. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way: a celebration both lavish and crusty of the medium that foments the awesome respect you’ve got to have for the shepherds of the form. This celluloid has survived upwards of 80 years to live out its purpose in a new century of being projected on a massive vinyl screen. As per cinema’s surprising, inherent modesty, its effectiveness depends on you not spending a second thinking about that little miracle. The rows are wide, the popcorn is salty, and the bathroom floors have been pissed on. Welcome back.
Best Shit Ever: TWISTERS in 4DX
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. I’ve only ever heard horror stories about 4DX (a premium film exhibition that seats you in a theme park chair that synchronously jolts you with hydraulics, water squirts, and high-powered fans) and I trusted absolutely fucking none of them. This tacky nightmare only ever sounded like a dream come true, but not enough of a dream to haul over to Downtown Los Angeles for the nearest location to me. That is until I learned that the North Hollywood Regal had its very own 4DX auditorium (only because I went to watch THE END OF EVANGELION in the screen next door and kept getting spooked by the walls shaking from the warzone of GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE). I was already hearing rumblings that Lee Isaac Chung’s TWISTERS was a euphorically dumb experience in 4DX, so I copped tickets early, and even in just the trailers where DEADPOOL AND WOLVERINE programmed the chairs to make your shoulders boogie to “Like a Prayer,” I almost cried. TWISTERS didn’t just bump me around, no, the entire row levitated and thrashed us about for nearly two hours. I’m kind of astonished that these chairs are legal. As I sway nearer and nearer to the unforgivable light of preferring to watch movies at home, a rejuvenating experience this stupid really opens up your synapses to more ways we can perceive the multiplex as an event destination. TWISTERS was unwatchable dogshit, but I’d pay another $25 to watch it right now in 4DX. I’d pay $500 to watch a replay of the guy in front of me try picking up his soda on the floor as his seat slowly rose so as to mimic the blowing of a dandelion, keep missing it as he only got higher and further from the floor, and then only be able to grab it by the lid so that the full cup spilled all over his feet during the tamest bit of TWISTERS.
Biggest Glimpse of Hope: INTERSTELLAR in 70mm IMAX
This was fucking dope. You know this, you’ve read about this, you tried getting tickets to this. There’s not much left to say about the grandeur of Christopher Nolan’s INTERSTELLAR in 70mm IMAX, an experience so immense that it exponentially improves the silly film you’re sitting in a room with for three hours, but as theater chains continue their painful decade of hemorrhaging, it’s weird how the answers for getting people back in are right in front of us, but the folks with actual financial stakes in the matter couldn’t be bothered to act on them. The basis of every streamer is a big ol’ library of staple legacy content, and it’s bonkers that AMC and Regal haven’t adapted to this model. How the fuck have there not been TWILIGHT marathons? Shouldn’t every Marvel movie be accompanied with a “Previously On” retrospective? One single Christmas movie on Christmas!? CORALINE made dough, and even STAR WARS EPISODE I: THE PHANTOM MENACE dominated its re-release weekend. Fill the fucking screen and eventize. I am but a middling percentage of freaks who frequents the cinema out of a desire to experience the art, because most people (including increasingly more myself) are far more content engaging with the art at home with take-out tastier than any entrees an Alamo could offer and comfort that no number of leather recliners can supply. It’s your fucking home, bro. For many, that’s king. But what happens when you reposition film as your king? Sounds like a stretch, but the sold-out INTERSTELLAR run would argue otherwise.
Most Worth the Hassle: The David Geffen Theater at The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures
If I can avoid mid-Wilshire, I will take all and any opportunity to do so, but god dammit, so many people in their 20s decide to live there. In 2024, I sucked it up, and accompanied my buddy Ryan to a… Oh wow, a screening of BLACK NARCISSUS projected on nitrate with Thelma Schoonmaker in attendance? Okay, you know, when you rationalize it, you actually don’t have to drive that far—including looking for street parking, it’s an extra five-to-10 minutes than a drive to the New Beverly, I can do that. And you don’t have to navigate a maze of box offices and exhibits to get there, there’s a snazzy elevated tunnel right by the entrance, and when you step inside the red velvet wonderland that is the David Geffen Theater, you do feel as though any tribulation to get here would have been worth it. This is what money gets you, let me tell ya.
In a sold-out crowd, all of us gawking at a historical object we shouldn’t be unspooling, let alone projecting with such intense light, I’m unsure if I’ve ever felt more thankful to see, feel, and hear history itself this vividly. With the busted air-conditioning, our plush auditorium felt like a gaggle of archival researchers crowded around a microfilm reader. Theaters around the world exist in daily existential jeopardy; bearing witness to something so irresponsibly privileged and well-funded felt like a vision from an alternate galaxy. The barrier for entry? Roughly $13. Also showing that week in the same space? Iain Softley’s 1995 HACKERS. What a riot, bro hahahah. With the Decurion Corporation kicking the can down the road for a fifth year, the Academy Museum is the closest we will likely ever get to the Cinerama Dome being an operational cultural fulcrum again.
Best Festival: AFI Fest
Right before NICKEL BOYS, I was queued in the Chinese Theater lobby watching the first Dodgers v. Yankees World Series game on my phone. A chic middle-aged couple waltzed in behind me after their dinner, peeking over my shoulder for a few minutes before introducing themselves and watching alongside me. We entered the auditorium and parted ways. I’m sitting by myself still watching the end of the game and, oh shit, Freddie Freeman just smashed a walk-off grand slam to win the game. I hear some mad quick footsteps to my left and look up to see the husband rushing over to watch the moment on my phone—he was searching the rows for me. We dapped each other up, parted ways one last time, and watched NICKEL BOYS with a RaMell Ross and Jomo Fray Q&A right after.
Right before this, I had seen NO OTHER LAND in the auditorium next door at its West Coast premiere; besides American Cinematheque hosting a one-off showing months later, AFI Fest is the only theater in Los Angeles this year that exhibited this documentary straight from the West Bank. It counts for something. I always considered AFI Fest, its attracted audience, and locale to be a fucking horrorshow, but even though you’re forced to exit on Hollywood Boulevard, if you drive in from North Highland and turn into the reasonably priced parking lot, then you get to dodge it altogether. This year, something started clicking: the ease of access, the affordable ticketing, and the sheer mass of talent has turned this into a sneaky MVP that’s quelled a lot of my travel woes. Why go to Toronto when I can wait one more month for AFI? The best Sundance and Cannes stuff that hasn’t premiered yet will be at AFI, and before those screenings you can probably attend the best from Berlin and Telluride. The clientele has chilled out, the film selections have only improved, and the Dodgers won. We’re back!
Burbank’s Finest: AMC Burbank Town Center 6
Okay, here’s the secret to a perfect evening. Take notes. Go to Zono Sushi and order the chirashi. As I type this, it’s still under $20 and it tastes divine. I’m sharing this because I found another great sushi deal in the area so now I feel okay unveiling my secret spot of 25 years. Okay, now, preferably you’re going to want to plan this outing around Barnes & Noble’s 50% off Criterion sale so that you can take a nice walk in the parking lot up to the Barnes and Noble to browse through the 50% off Criterion sale. Right, okay, now you go walk to the underground Burbank 6 (one of the few theaters in the country where literally every row is a good row) and embrace the fact that your phone has no signal. Watch a fucking movie. Debate settled.
Be Careful What You Wish For: Lynch in Los Angeles
The spatial and thematic satisfaction of watching a film in a local moviehouse in the town the story takes place in is one of the motivating factors of getting off your ass and paying for a ticket to watch an old movie readily available on streaming. The New Beverly has wisely turned ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD and other Tarantino favorites into weekly tourist attractions, and lock-in-step with podcast Blank Check’s latest David Lynch mini-series (an episodic, film-by-film critical appraisal of powerful directors’ filmographies—with demonstrated results, Blank Check has proven itself a curatorial boon that boosts programming requests and library check-outs), there were numerous L.A. establishments that supplied a fix of theatrical Lynch. I’d never seen one of my favorite director’s films in a theater before! With all that foregrounding out of the way…
MULHOLLAND DR. at Los Feliz 3? Hell yeah. INLAND EMPIRE at Vidiots? Oh God, no.
Projected on 35, MULHOLLAND DR. produced no post-ironic laughter, zero performative screams at the dumpster creature, and no pick-me sobs at Club Silencio. As I sat with a Lynch novice who’d been put off by his works by all the plot mansplaining they’d suffered through the decade, I noticed everyone at our sold-out show was held in a similarly rapt awakening to the empathetic simplicities of the work. But a few miles away from the titular drive, this film so few of us hadn’t rewatched less than five times was playing like scripture. It was 2001 again.
Compare this to a digital presentation of INLAND EMPIRE at Vidiots in September, where the guffaws and applause breaks reeked of Tim and Eric-poisoned pop culture savants who couldn’t bear to imagine a world where a piece of art was above them. Without you being there, I can only come off as a snob in text, but come on, if you’re reading this then you know too well that there’s a snark epidemic plaguing the country from the Metrograph to the Nuart. Vidiots has been a delightful new addition to the repertory menu (and a long fucking time coming), but from their dearth of analogue projections to catering to a more casual filmgoing audience that will laugh at the screen if something even brushes against their “weird” detectors, it’s been difficult to find reasons to return not only to Vidiots, but the cultural indicators have made it tough to stomach the thought of ever seeing a Lynch theatrically again.
Most Welcoming: The New Beverly Cinema
The city’s most renowned and ridiculed repertory hot spot has utilized its 2020s programming to usher in every facet of filmgoer that was born in quarantine. 2024 saw SLEEPING BEAUTY + CINDERELLA as a multi-day evening show, the TWILIGHT saga served up piecemeal throughout the year, classics paired with legitimate B-sides (THE VIRGIN SUICIDES and STRIKE), and canonical classics plated as full meals that deserve a dedicated night out at the cinema (I’m the chump who most cherished his 35mm viewing of Scorsese’s CASINO in September). You’ve got movies for dudes, movies for girlies, movies for grindhouse junkies, movies for TCM zealots, movies for undergrads, and movies for their professors; while Quentin Tarantino no longer plots the month’s programming choices himself, the New Bev under Phil Blankenship and company’s wing took 2024 to crystalize the cinema’s mission statement. The people are both getting what they want and what they didn’t even know they wanted. That’s art!
Sweatiest Fest: Beyond Fest and American Cinematheque
Before you insinuate, yes, this award is partially fueled by the bitterness of being robbed of THE BRUTALIST tickets after spending 35 minutes in a virtual queue, but when I lost out on the chance to attend the west coast premiere of Brady Corbet’s decidedly non-genre period piece at Beyond Fest, “the highest attended genre film festival” in the United States, I didn’t mope for long. It’s no fault of the hard-working programmers busting their asses to operate a non-profit blockbuster bonanza, but now more than ever, attending a Beyond Fest screening means getting mobbed on all fronts by the Graphic Tee Mafia: the most sporadically employed cinephiles in the land, regularly lining up at brunch for suppertime screenings.
Drive by the Aero on one of its many first-come, first-served sneak preview days and witness outside its doors a nebulous offspring of tailgating and loitering. Let’s say you brave the line and actually snag tickets to one of these things: paying American Cinematheque members flood the theater in their VIP line and leave general admission to be seat fillers. Good for American Cinematheque for getting their much deserved bread, but hasn’t it been long enough that maybe you should realistically set expectations for visitors old and new? Your clientele has not only remained consistent but strengthened in their tenacity to feed their preview screening addictions. I know the studios won’t let you include “If you’re not a paid member nor lining up at 3 p.m. for our 7 p.m. screening, then don’t bother” in the event copy, but may I at least suggest hanging an air freshener on the back of every seat?
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