Back To The Big Screen

What’s it going to take to get me back to the movie theater?

Spoiler alert: It may turn out to be…

Spoiler Alert.

A gay male love story with, from what I’ve read, a not-so-happy ending. It sounds to me like it’s right up my alley for a night at the cinema.

My hubby disagrees – he says he’s heard it’s “teary and schmaltzy” – but he’ll go anyway. He’s probably right, but to me those are assets, not detriments.

Still, so much has changed since the last time I went to a theater to see a movie.

I had to check my scrapbooks to find a February 7, 2020, ticket from Fandango to remind myself that I had seen the most recent iteration of Little Women.

I remember liking it, but I’ll be darned if I can remember anything about it. Whenever I try, I remember the mid-’90s version with Winona Ryder and Claire Danes.

Several theaters I used to patronize no longer exist.

About a half-year before the COVID shutdown, the Mission Valley movie theaters – a set of four mid-size screens right across from the N.C. State University campus with a very late ’70s/early ’80s vibe, selling wine and beer to 21-and-older patrons – closed their doors. Flooding from broken pipes proved the final indignity.

During the COVID shutdown in 2020, the discount theater complex the AMC Blueridge 14 went under.

The space was demolished, and now a long string of generic apartment buildings has gone up in its place.

And then this summer, the saddest change happened.

The Rialto, a classic, one-screen theater in Raleigh’s Five Points neighborhood (less than 10 minutes from downtown), announced it was “closing temporarily.”

Its longtime owner, who also owned the Mission Valley theaters for more than a decade, cited market conditions but also his own retiring as factors in the shutdown. He said in August there were hopes for its return by year’s end.

It’s December … and no signs yet of return.

In all that time, our household’s movie-watching patterns have shifted.

Just about every weeknight, my husband watches British mysteries, sci-fi thrillers, spy stuff (Bond and the like) on Netflix or Hulu. On the weekends, I take in an occasional music documentary, romance or drama on those streaming services as well as Amazon Prime.

In a moment of madness during the pandemic, we picked up HBO Max just to see the premiere of Wonder Woman 2 (both of us loved the original). The sequel was a dud, and the streaming service never caught on with us (although it took almost two years for me to realize I was still paying for it and finally unsubscribe).

Our different daily lifestyles made talk of a return to the movies a negotiation.

Going to work each weekday with a few thousand young people and a few hundred adults, I had to get used quickly to relative risk, realistic precaution and resignation to reality. After my summertime reunion with old friends and my return to the bowling alley, the movies seem a logical next step. My husband, 18 years older and retired, has a different set of considerations and a different daily reality.

When he said he’d go to “Spoiler Alert,” the “yes” was a big one.

It will be a few weeks before we can make it happen: I’m still in school through Dec. 21. But in that week and a half before I return to work in 2023, we’ll take in a showing, maybe an afternoon matinee where there’ll be fewer viewers.

That is, if the movie is still around by then. Any other fate would truly be a spoiler alert.

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