I love movies. At my old job my work friends and I would discuss movies pretty much every day at lunch. I’ve been in plenty of late night booze infused arguments with friends about movies. However, I don’t go to the cinema as often these days. A big reason for this is the rude crowds that attend the movies, or at least show up to the movies I go to see. Either its talkative teens or someone who just can’t go a couple of hours without looking at their phone. Luckily, I may have found the cinema that I actually look forward to going to.
The Alamo Drafthouse is a small movie theater chain in Texas. For my Cincinnati friends, best way to describe it is imagine a hybrid of The Esquire and the old Mount Lookout Cinema Grill. Along with being a movie theater, the Alamo offers a full dinner menu, and as the name implies, a great beer list. Obviously it is dark in the theater, so you might want to avoid ordering something that is messy. I went with the Porky’s Pepperoni Pizza, which was pretty good. I mentioned the Cinema Grill, while similar, the set up of Alamo is much better. I always found the wait staff at Cinema Grill to be a bit obtrusive, not really the case at the Alamo. Yeah you notice them, but I never felt distracted by them. The Alamo is like the Esquire in that they both play mainstream movies but also have fun events as well. Apparently my birth year of 1982 was a great film year, as the Alamo will feature various ’82 films this summer. Tonight they have a Beastie Boys Rap-a-long which benefits the American Cancer Society.
Now the absolute best thing about the Alamo Drafthouse is any of those talking and texting shenanigans I pointed out earlier are not tolerated. They make it clear right before the movie starts that if someone complains about your talking/texting once you get a warning, twice you are booted. You might remember this video from the Drafthouse a couple of years ago which went viral:
Overall I really enjoyed my first visit to the Alamo Drafthouse. Anytime there is a big movie I want to see, I will be seeing it there. But I’ll probably still visit regular theaters too when I’m just in the mood to see a matinee with a bucket of popcorn and a liter of soda. Oh and one more thing, if you haven’t seen The Avengers yet, go see it now! One of the best superhero movies I have seen and is just a lot of fun, especially the last hour.
