going to the movie essay

7 big lessons I’ve learned from a life of moviegoing — and why I’m overjoyed to return

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Midway through the 1982 screen musical “Annie,” the characters stop and do something that’s incidental to the plot but essential to their pleasure: They go to the movies. It’s the 1930s, and hard times are sending audiences to the pictures in droves, though few can afford to go in such style as Annie and Daddy Warbucks, chauffeured by town car to Radio City Music Hall. Before the curtains part on “Camille,” a splendid weepie starring Greta Garbo at her finest, they’re treated to a proper billionaire’s welcome, first from a receiving line of ushers and then a chorus of Rockettes: “Let’s go to the movies / Let’s go see the stars,” they sing. “Red lights holler, deep Depression / What do we care? Movies are there!”

Indeed they are. And it’s wonderful to have them back, more than a year after the pandemic’s spread led to theater shutdowns nationwide . For those of us fortunate enough to make a living writing about the movies, it was as if the best office in the world had closed indefinitely. For anyone who simply loves going to the movies, it was as though a bright light had been snuffed out. Newfangled streaming services and antiquarian DVD libraries kept a lot of us sane without being in any way a meaningful substitute.

Now theaters have reopened, and months after being fully COVID-vaccinated, I’ve started going back to them — tentatively at first, but soon with growing confidence and a joy that has yet to subside. I started off slow, with a couple of press screenings held in nearly empty theaters and with tight safety precautions in place. A few weeks ago I bit the bullet and headed to my local Pasadena arthouse, the Laemmle Playhouse 7, to catch the scintillating, newly restored 1969 French thriller “La Piscine.” (By delightful coincidence, I ran into a friend. We recognized each other even with our masks on.)

And as I write these words, I’ve just managed to score a coveted ticket to see Martin Scorsese’s “New York, New York” at the recently reopened New Beverly Cinema, where it will have three showings next weekend. I may walk out of the theater humming Kander and Ebb, but on the way I’ll probably be singing along with the Rockettes: “Let’s go to the movies … ”

My affection for “Annie” has dipped over the years but I’m still fond of that interlude: Seeing it for the first time as a wide-eyed child myself, I couldn’t help but share in Annie’s kid-in-a-candy-store exuberance. It invested the act of moviegoing with a sense of extravagance that couldn’t have felt further removed from the Anaheim Hills strip-mall multiplexes where I spent much of my youth. For me, the closest thing to Radio City-style magnificence was in the movie palaces that once dominated downtown Los Angeles — most of which had long since closed by the time I was old enough to visit L.A., let alone call it home.

Still, moviegoing in this city has often afforded its own bonuses, a few friendly perks to remind you that you’re there to experience something special. You may not be greeted by the Rockettes, but you could still count on a snappy intro at the ArcLight Hollywood, with a promise to ensure top-notch picture and sound quality. You could look forward to Rob Richards’ live organ music at Hollywood Boulevard’s El Capitan and rich, scholarly appraisals of classics and undersung gems at the Billy Wilder Theater in Westwood or REDCAT downtown.

Those pleasures have been suspended, some permanently. ArcLight Cinemas and Pacific Theatres have made their closures permanent, to the devastation of local moviegoers. Repertory theaters are still slowly figuring out their reopening plans. The last time I was at the El Capitan, for an early mid-May screening of “Cruella,” the organ was nowhere in sight. I trust it’ll be back, along with so much that we used to take for granted at the movies — a sense of easygoing communion and delirious abandon as we surrender our impatience, our anxiety and, yes, even sometimes our critical reservations to bask in the images on the screen before us.

I’ve learned a lot from going to the movies over the years — about life, about art and the space where the two collide — and most of what I’ve learned is deeply rooted in my memories of specific moviegoing experiences. Allow me to share a few of those lessons, and also to ponder how some of them might change in a post-pandemic era of moviegoing. I know you have your own memories, and I invite you to share them with me. As we return to theaters, weary, wary and hopeful, it’s more important to cling to them than ever.

1. If you haven’t seen certain movies on the big screen, you haven’t seen them.

It seems fitting to start with the picture that tops most best-of-all-time lists (even if “Vertigo” dethroned it years ago in the decennial Sight & Sound critics’ poll ). I was a kid when I first rented “Citizen Kane” from my public library, eager to see what I’d been told represented the apex of the motion picture medium. What I saw — a fuzzy VHS copy of a movie that talked fast and moved faster — was disappointing, even mystifying. It would be a few years before I watched Orson Welles’ masterpiece again, this time in a proper theater, and found it as hypnotic and revelatory an experience as it was always meant to be. My age and readiness mattered, of course, but seeing the movie as it was made to be seen mattered more.

The formal ingenuity that made “Citizen Kane” such a pioneering technological feat is too often spoken of in terms of its surface trickery rather than its immersive power. Welles doesn’t just fool the eye with his dazzling technique; he brings you deep into Charles Foster Kane’s public and private worlds, engulfing you in the shadows of Xanadu and sweeping you up in the chatter and bustle of a Manhattan newsroom. For all its intricately criss-crossing timelines, Welles’ filmmaking pulls you into a kind of dream state. Gregg Toland’s images, with their lustrous interplay of light and shadow, don’t merely tell or decorate the story; they are the story.

Seen on a TV screen, “Kane” is still one of the medium’s great crackling entertainments. Seen in a theater, it exerts an almost physical weight, a gravity that pulls your gaze to the screen and seals it there. And it doesn’t really yield its depths until it’s first been appreciated — imbibed, savored, consumed — as a visual object. Not every movie works this way, or needs a big screen to cast its spell. But the most transporting ones always will.

2. A movie worth seeing is worth seeing all the way through, with eyes wide open.

From the sublime (“Kane”) to the ridiculous, or maybe the sublimely ridiculous: In 2004, I found myself in a theater — not by choice — to see the romantic comedy “50 First Dates.” As a burgeoning non-fan of Adam Sandler ( “Punch-Drunk Love” having been the exception that proved the rule), I fully expected to hate it — and I did, for about 10 minutes. Then Drew Barrymore showed up, and the entire movie seemed to reshape itself, as though energized by her incandescence. The adolescent meanness and vulgarity receded. Sandler deepened in Barrymore’s presence, and she became slyer and spikier in his. Their love story was utterly disarming in its sweetness. A shot of a tumbling pineapple halfway through almost brought me, embarrassingly, to tears; by the end, I was practically swimming in them.

No one, of course, needs to watch “50 First Dates” in a theater to enjoy it; it holds up just fine on the small screen. But if I’d stumbled on it for the first time on Hulu , I might well have shut it off after five minutes. I wouldn’t have stuck with it — much less fallen for it — if I hadn’t seen it in a theater, where my only choices were to walk out or give it my full if begrudging attention. To go to the movies, whether you go in a mood of excitement, reluctance or dread, is to invest your time, embark on a journey and surrender some measure of power and control. It means putting the ball in the movie’s court — and giving the movie the best possible chance to make a case for itself.

Will we keep letting the movies make that case? Or will we allow our increasingly fragmented viewing habits, our preference for convenience over commitment, to set the industry’s agenda? With the pandemic still raging and theaters still reopening, it may be too soon to tell, though early box office successes like “A Quiet Place Part II” and opening disappointments like “In the Heights” have already set forth competing industry narratives of encouragement and alarm. I hope for the best and fear the worst.

3. There are few experiences more cathartic, or humbling, than seeing a great horror movie with a crowd.

Horror movies were among the first to welcome me back to theaters, or at least limited-capacity press screenings, namely the pretty good “A Quiet Place Part II” and the pretty forgettable “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It.” But I don’t think the movies will feel really and truly back until I’ve had an experience comparable to the one I had in 2003, when the Japanese thriller “Audition” arrived in L.A. theaters.

At the time I was a senior at USC and incredibly squeamish about horror movies (I’m only slightly less so now). But the must-see excitement around Takashi Miike’s latest work, which had generated much acclaim and notoriety on the festival circuit, was enough to temper my dread with excitement. Once I heard that “Audition” would be playing at Flagship Theatres, a squeaky-chaired, sticky-floored movie mecca located just off campus, I headed to a midnight show with a few brave friends I’d arm-twisted into coming along.

What makes “Audition” so diabolically effective is that for roughly its first hour, it plays like a sedate, melancholy family drama about a lonely widower seeking a new wife. Sounds innocent, right? Not exactly. As Miike’s movie pursued this deceptively gentle premise to its chilling nightmare-logic conclusion, my companions and I sank deeper and deeper into our seats (“I hate you,” one of them kept hissing at me), peering at the screen through our fingers. At a certain point — around the time the acupuncture needles came out, or maybe it was the piano wire — a guy seated a few rows away stood up and stumbled toward the exit, wailing, “I can’t take this anymore, man!” I chuckled. I sympathized. And while I’m still not entirely sure how, I stayed.

4. Being a good moviegoer sometimes means risking a little conflict.

I’ve written before about the necessity and occasional danger of asking your screening companions to put their phones away. Confrontation has its risks; choosing your battles is important. But so is reminding (and in some cases, informing) others that continually lit-up screens and ringing phones pose a very real distraction to those around them.

Over the years I’ve politely asked countless moviegoers to put their phones away, most of whom have quickly done so. I once asked an ill-mannered magazine editor to quit texting his way through Gaspar Noé’s “Climax” and got a torrent of expletives in return (plus a few post-screening insults for the road). I’ve told people to stop taking photos and even videos during a Cannes Film Festival screening of “Force Majeure,” an AMC Atlantic Times Square showing of the documentary “Amy” and a Laemmle Glendale showing of “Mandy.” (Someone really wanted a freeze-frame of Nicolas Cage screaming on the toilet in his underwear — and to be fair, who could blame her?)

Is there any reason to hope that the post-pandemic generation of moviegoers will be a more considerate one? The reluctance of so many Americans to wear face coverings for the sake of public health doesn’t bode well, and if we’re going to have to start admonishing moviegoers for flouting mask requirements and using their phones, even I might be tempted to throw in the towel. I’m reminded that one of the more emphatic lessons of “Climax” is that “Life is a collective impossibility,” a maxim akin to Sartre’s pronouncement that “Hell is other people.” Moviegoing, for all its pleasures, has too often confirmed these cynical truths.

5. After a quarrel, the movies are a great way to cool down.

Speaking of conflict: Once, after being caught in the middle of an ugly argument between friends, I took one of them aside and, rather than trying to talk about it — neither of us wanted to — we headed straight to the movies. It was early 2002, and we wound up seeing “A Beautiful Mind.” I didn’t much care for it, for pretty much the same reasons so many critics didn’t care for “A Beautiful Mind” : Whether as biography or drama, it felt too airbrushed and sanitized, too calculated by half. Nonetheless, in ways I’ve never fully acknowledged, I was grateful for its existence that night — for its gently nostalgic glow, for its precision-honed Hollywood uplift, for Russell Crowe’s elegant mumbles and darting eyes. We weren’t looking for art; we were looking for distraction, for comfort — and we found it.

6. A movie makes a great date — or even an almost-but-not-quite date.

This one seems obvious to the point of cliché, though my own experience involved a less-than-obvious choice of movie. In November 2006, the American Cinematheque hosted a theatrical run for “Los Angeles Plays Itself,” Thom Andersen’s great, ornery essay film on everything the movies have gotten wrong about the city most closely identified with their making. It was a rare opportunity to see it and I asked my best friend, who had a particular enthusiasm for the history and architecture of the city, if she wanted to join me. That I’d fallen in love with said best friend some time earlier was a not-inconsiderable factor.

And so off we went to the Egyptian Theatre, to spend three hours wrapped up in Andersen’s stimulating, voluminous arguments about Hollywood’s distortions and misrepresentations of L.A. — sorry, Los Angeles — and another hour or so talking about them on the drive home. Except we didn’t really talk about the movie; we talked about us, the future, when we might see each other next. “Los Angeles Plays Itself” may not be a conventional date or even almost-date movie, but it’s one I always look back on as a weirdly auspicious beginning. (Reader, I married her.)

7. The most memorable moviegoing experiences will always carry an element of the impractical.

If moviegoing is destined to become an ever more counterintuitive pastime, I can take some consolation in the fact that some of my happiest times at the movies were counterintuitive to begin with. Movie love can encourage a kind of mania in its adherents, a willingness to turn a night’s entertainment into an event or even an endurance sport. That’s true of cinephiles making a daylong pilgrimage to see Béla Tarr’s 7½-hour “Sátantángo” on the big screen, as I did two years ago, or fantasy enthusiasts lining up with friends at midnight for the first showing of a new “Lord of the Rings” movie, as I faithfully did at Universal CityWalk for three years straight.

But I don’t think I’ve ever had a more uniquely wondrous experience at the movies than I did in the fall of 2014, when the Miami Beach Cinematheque kindly hosted me as a guest for its Speaking in Cinema series. It was, among other things, a marvelous introduction to a community of critics, programmers and movie buffs, and after the main event and afterparty were over, a bunch of us stayed behind for the after-afterparty: an impromptu private screening of Tsai Ming-liang’s new movie “Stray Dogs.”

For a group of seasoned festivalgoers, there was nothing so odd or extreme about a midnight show of a glacially paced, visually stunning art film from one of Taiwan’s finest directors. How, then, to explain the element of daring in the air that night, the collective sense of “Screw sleep, let’s do this” excitement? I think it’s that as we settled into our seats, chugged our espressos and surrendered to Tsai’s bleak, glorious vision, we knew we were doing something only a small, self-selecting group of people would probably ever consider doing. If that sounds exclusive or elitist, hell, maybe it is. Moviegoing can be one of the great communal experiences; it can also be something intensely specific and personal, an experience whose pleasures are savored by a privileged few. That night was a test of our dedication and an affirmation of our love — for this medium we call cinema and the dark, cavernous spaces where it still lives.

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Justin Chang was a film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 2016 to 2024. He won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in criticism for work published in 2023. Chang is the author of the book “FilmCraft: Editing” and serves as chair of the National Society of Film Critics and secretary of the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn.

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Essays About Movies: 7 Examples and 5 Writing Prompts

Check out our guide with essays about movies for budding videographers and artistic students. Learn from our helpful list of examples and prompts.

Watching movies is a part of almost everyone’s life. They entertain us, teach us lessons, and even help us socialize by giving us topics to talk about with others. As long as movies have been produced, everyone has patronized them.  Essays about movies  are a great way to learn all about the meaning behind the picture.

Cinema is an art form in itself. The lighting, camera work, and acting in the most widely acclaimed movies are worthy of praise. Furthermore, a movie can be used to send a message, often discussing issues in contemporary society. Movies are entertaining, but more importantly, they are works of art. If you’re interested in this topic, check out our round-up of screenwriters on Instagram .

5 Helpful Essay Examples 

1. the positive effects of movies on human behaviour by ajay rathod, 2. horror movies by emanuel briggs, 3. casablanca – the greatest hollywood movie ever (author unknown).

• 4.  Dune Review: An Old Story Reshaped For The New 2021 Audience by Oren Cohen

5. Blockbuster movies create booms for tourism — and headaches for locals by Shubhangi Goel

• 6. Moonage Daydream: “Who Is He? What Is He?” by Jonathan Romney
• 7. La Bamba: American Dreaming, Chicano Style by Yolanda Machado

1. My Favorite Movie

2. movies genres, 3. special effects in movies, 4. what do you look for in a movie, 5. the evolution of movies.

“​​Films encourage us to take action. Our favourite characters, superheroes, teach us life lessons. They give us ideas and inspiration to do everything for the better instead of just sitting around, waiting for things to go their way. Films about famous personalities are the perfect way to affect social behaviour positively. Films are a source of knowledge. They can help learn what’s in the trend, find out more about ancient times, or fill out some knowledge gaps.”

In this movie essay, Rathod gives readers three ways watching movies can positively affect us. Movie writers, producers, and directors use their platform to teach viewers life skills, the importance of education, and the contrast between good and evil. Watching movies can also help us improve critical thinking, according to Briggs. Not only do movies entertain us, but they also have many educational benefits. You might also be interested in these  essays about consumerism .

“Many people involving children and adults can effect with their sleeping disturbance and anxiety. Myths, non-realistic, fairy tales could respond differently with being in the real world. Horror movies bring a lot of excitement and entertainment among you and your family. Horror movies can cause physical behavior changes in a person by watching the films. The results of watching horror movies shows that is has really effect people whether you’re an adult, teens, and most likely happens during your childhood.”

In his essay, Briggs acknowledges why people enjoy horror movies so much but warns of their adverse effects on viewers. Most commonly, they cause viewers nightmares, which may cause anxiety and sleep disorders. He focuses on the films’ effects on children, whose more sensitive, less developed brains may respond with worse symptoms, including major trauma. The films can affect all people negatively, but children are the most affected.

“This was the message of Casablanca in late 1942. It was the ideal opportunity for America to utilize its muscles and enter the battle. America was to end up the hesitant gatekeeper of the entire world. The characters of Casablanca, similar to the youthful Americans of the 1960s who stick headed the challenge development, are ‘genuine Americans’ lost in a hostile region, battling to open up another reality.”

In this essay, the author discusses the 1942 film  Casablanca , which is said to be the greatest movie ever made, and explains why it has gotten this reputation. To an extent, the film’s storyline, acting, and even relatability (it was set during World War II) allowed it to shine from its release until the present. It invokes feelings of bravery, passion, and nostalgia, which is why many love the movie. You can also check out these  books about adaption . 

4.   Dune Review: An Old Story Reshaped For The New 2021 Audience by Oren Cohen

“Lady Jessica is a powerful woman in the original book, yet her interactions with Paul diminish her as he thinks of her as slow of thought. Something we don’t like to see in 2021 — and for a good reason. Every book is a product of its time, and every great storyteller knows how to adapt an old story to a new audience. I believe Villeneuve received a lot of hate from diehard Dune fans for making these changes, but I fully support him.”

Like the previous essay, Cohen reviews a film, in this case, Denis Villeneuve’s  Dune , released in 2021. He praises the film, writing about its accurate portrayal of the epic’s vast, dramatic scale, music, and, interestingly, its ability to portray the characters in a way more palatable to contemporary audiences while staying somewhat faithful to the author’s original vision. Cohen enjoyed the movie thoroughly, saying that the movie did the book justice. 

“Those travelers added around 630 million New Zealand dollars ($437 million) to the country’s economy in 2019 alone, the tourism authority told CNBC. A survey by the tourism board, however, showed that almost one in five Kiwis are worried that the country attracts too many tourists. Overcrowding at tourist spots, lack of infrastructure, road congestion and environmental damage are creating tension between locals and visitors, according to a 2019 report by Tourism New Zealand.”

The locations where successful movies are filmed often become tourist destinations for fans of those movies. Goel writes about how “film tourism” affects the residents of popular filming locations. The environment is sometimes damaged, and the locals are caught off guard. Though this is not always the case, film tourism is detrimental to the residents and ecosystem of these locations. You can also check out these  essays about The Great Gatsby .

6. Moonage Daydream:  “Who Is He? What Is He?” by Jonathan Romney

“Right from the start, Brett Morgen’s  Moonage Daydream  (2022) catches us off guard. It begins with an epigraph musing on Friedrich Nietzsche’s proclamation that “God is dead,” then takes us into deep space and onto the surface of the moon. It then unleashes an image storm of rockets, robots, and star-gazers, and rapid-fire fragments of early silent cinema, 1920s science fiction, fifties cartoons, and sixties and seventies newsreel footage, before lingering on a close-up of glittery varnish on fingernails.” 

Moonage Daydream  is a feature film containing never-before-seen footage of David Bowie. In this essay, Romney delves into the process behind creating the movie and how the footage was captured. It also looks at the director’s approach to creating a structured and cohesive film, which took over two years to plan. This essay looks at how Bowie’s essence was captured and preserved in this movie while displaying the intricacies of his mind.

7. La Bamba:  American Dreaming, Chicano Style by Yolanda Machado

“A traumatic memory, awash in hazy neutral tones, arising as a nightmare. Santo & Johnny’s mournful “Sleep Walk” playing. A sudden death, foreshadowing the passing of a star far too young. The opening sequence of Luis Valdez’s  La Bamba  (1987) feels like it could be from another film—what follows is largely a celebration of life and music.”

La Bamba  is a well-known movie about a teenage Mexican migrant who became a rock ‘n’ roll star. His rise to fame is filled with difficult social dynamics, and the star tragically dies in a plane crash at a young age. In this essay, Machado looks at how the tragic death of the star is presented to the viewer, foreshadowing the passing of the young star before flashing back to the beginning of the star’s career. Machado analyses the storyline and directing style, commenting on the detailed depiction of the young star’s life. It’s an in-depth essay that covers everything from plot to writing style to direction.

5 Prompts for Essays About Movies

Simple and straightforward, write about your favorite movie. Explain its premise, characters, and plot, and elaborate on some of the driving messages and themes behind the film. You should also explain why you enjoy the movie so much: what impact does it have on you? Finally, answer this question in your own words for an engaging piece of writing.

From horror to romance, movies can fall into many categories. Choose one of the main genres in cinema and discuss the characteristics of movies under that category. Explain prevalent themes, symbols, and motifs, and give examples of movies belonging to your chosen genre. For example, horror movies often have underlying themes such as mental health issues, trauma, and relationships falling apart. 

Without a doubt, special effects in movies have improved drastically. Both practical and computer-generated effects produce outstanding, detailed effects to depict situations most would consider unfathomable, such as the vast space battles of the  Star Wars  movies. Write about the development of special effects over the years, citing evidence to support your writing. Be sure to detail key highlights in the history of special effects. 

Movies are always made to be appreciated by viewers, but whether or not they enjoy them varies, depending on their preferences. In your essay, write about what you look for in a “good” movie in terms of plot, characters, dialogue, or anything else. You need not go too in-depth but explain your answers adequately. In your opinion, you can use your favorite movie as an example by writing about the key characteristics that make it a great movie.

From the silent black-and-white movies of the early 1900s to the vivid, high-definition movies of today, times have changed concerning movies. Write about how the film industry has improved over time. If this topic seems too broad, feel free to focus on one aspect, such as cinematography, themes, or acting.

For help with your essays, check out our round-up of the  best essay checkers .

If you’re looking for more ideas, check out our  essays about music topic guide !

Home — Essay Samples — Arts & Culture — Theatre — Watching Movies at Home vs. Theater:

Watching Movies at Home Vs. Theater:

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Published: Sep 7, 2023

Words: 692 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

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Watching movies at home, going to the theater, making an informed choice, advantages:, 1. preference for cinematic experience:, 2. social or solo viewing:, 4. movie release schedule:, 5. distractions:.

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Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, chaz's journal, great movies, contributors, reflections after 25 years at the movies.

This is absolutely one of my favorite articles Roger ever wrote about the movies, originally published in 1992.—Chaz Ebert

For many years I remembered the name of the first film I ever reviewed, but now I find it has left my mind. It was a French film, I remember that much. I watched it from a center seat in the old World Playhouse, bursting with the awareness that I was reviewing it, and then I went back to the office and wrote that it was one more last gasp of the French New Wave, rolling ashore.

I was more jaded then than I am now. At the time I thought that five years would be enough time to spend on the movie beat. My master plan was to become an op-ed columnist and then eventually, of course, a great and respected novelist. My reveries ended with a deep old wingback chair pulled up close to the fire in a cottage in the middle of the woods, where the big dog snored while I sank into a volume of Dickens.

I now find that I have been a film critic for 25 years. I am not on the op-ed page, have not written the novel, do not own the dog, but do have the cottage and a complete set of Dickens. And I am still going to the movies for a living. My mother never knew how to handle that, when her friends asked her, "And what about Roger? Is he still just...going to the movies?" It didn't seem like a real job.

There is something not natural about just...going to the movies. Man has rehearsed for hundreds of thousands of years to learn a certain sense of time. He gets up in the morning and the hours wheel in their ancient order across the sky until it grows dark again and he goes to sleep. A movie critic gets up in the morning and in two hours it is dark again, and the passage of time is fractured by editing and dissolves and flashbacks and jump cuts. Sometimes I see two or three movies a day, mostly in the screening room upstairs over the White Hen Pantry. I slip downstairs at noon for a sandwich, blinded by the sunlight, my mind still filled with chases and gun duels, yuks and big boobs, cute dogs and brainy kids, songs and dances, amazing coincidences and chance meetings and deep insights into the nature of man. Whatever was in the movies.

"Get a life," they say. Sometimes I feel as if I have gotten everybody else's. I have a colleague who describes his job as "covering the national dream beat," because if you pay attention to the movies they will tell you what people desire and fear in their deepest secrets. At least, the good ones will. That's why we go, hoping to be touched in those secret places. Movies are hardly ever about what they seem to be about. Look at a movie that a lot of people love, and you will find something profound, no matter how silly the film may seem. The real subjects of " Wayne's World " are innocence and friendship. That's what you get for your seven dollars.

In the past 25 years I have probably seen 10,000 movies and reviewed 6,000 of them. I have forgotten most of those films, I hope, but I remember those worth remembering, and they are all on the same shelf in my mind. There is no such thing as an old film. " La Dolce Vita " is as new for me as " Basic Instinct ." There is a sense in which old movies are cut free from Time. Paul Henreid and Curt Bois have died recently, and that means all of the major characters onscreen in " Casablanca " are dead, and the movie floats free of individual lifetimes. It no longer has any reference to real people we might meet at a gas station or the Academy Awards. It is finally all fiction. "Basic Instinct," on the other hand, involves careers that are still developing, people who are standing behind the screen, so to speak, peeking at the audience from the wings.

I look at silent movies sometimes, and do not feel I am looking at old films, I feel I am looking at a Now that has been captured. Time in a bottle. When I first looked at silent films, the performers seemed quaint and dated. Now they seem more contemporary than the people in 1980s films. The main thing wrong with a movie that is ten years old is that it isn't 30 years old. After the hair styles and the costumes stop being dated and start being history, we can tell if the movie itself is timeless.

What kinds of movies do I like the best? If I had to make a generalization, I would say that many of my favorite movies are about Good People. It doesn't matter if the ending is happy or sad. It doesn't matter if the characters win or lose. The only true ending is death. Any other movie ending is arbitrary. If a movie ends with a kiss, we're supposed to be happy. But then if a piano falls on the kissing couple, or a taxi mows them down, we're supposed to be sad. What difference does it make? The best movies aren't about what happens to the characters. They're about the example that they set.

"Casablanca" is about people who do the right thing. " The Third Man " is about two people who do the right thing and can never speak to one another as a result. The secret of "Silence of the Lambs" is buried so deeply that you may have to give this a lot of thought, but its secret is that Hannibal Lecter is a Good Person. He is the helpless victim of his unspeakable depravities, yes, but to the limited degree that he can act independently of them, he tries to do the right thing.

Not all good movies are about Good People. I also like movies about bad people who have a sense of humor. Orson Welles , who does not play either of the good people in "The Third Man," has such a winning way, such witty dialog, that for a scene or two we almost forgive him his crimes. Henry Hill, the hero of " GoodFellas ," is not a good fella, but he has the ability to be honest with us about why he enjoyed being bad. He is not a hypocrite. The heroine of " The Marriage of Maria Braun " does some terrible things, but because we know some of the forces that shaped her, we understand them, and can at least admire her resourcefulness.

Of the other movies I love, some are simply about the joy of physical movement. When Gene Kelly splashes through " Singin' in the Rain ," when Judy Garland follows the yellow brick road, when Fred Astaire dances on the ceiling, when John Wayne puts the reins in his teeth and gallops across the mountain meadow, there is a purity and joy that cannot be resisted. In "Equinox Flower," a Japanese film by the old master Yasujiro Ozu , there is this sequence of shots: A room with a red teapot in the foreground. Another view of the room. The mother folding clothes. A shot down a corridor with a mother crossing it at an angle, and then a daughter crossing at the back. A reverse shot in a hallway as the arriving father is greeted by the mother and daughter. A shot as the father leaves the frame, then the mother, then the daughter. A shot as the mother and father enter the room, as in the background the daughter picks up the red pot and leaves the frame. This sequence of timed movement and cutting is as perfect as any music ever written, any dance, any poem.

I also enjoy being frightened in the movies, but I am bored by the most common way the movies frighten us, which is by having someone jump unexpectedly into the frame. The trick is so old a director has to be shameless to use it. Alfred Hitchcock said that if a bunch of guys were playing cards and there was a bomb under the table and it exploded, that was terror, but he'd rather do a scene where there was a bomb under the table and we kept waiting for it to explode but it didn't. That was suspense. It's the kind of suspense I enjoy.

Love? Romance? I'm not so sure. I don't much care for movies that get all serious about their love affairs, because I think the actors tend to take it too seriously, and end up silly. I like it better when love simply makes the characters very, very happy, as when Doris Day first falls for Frank Sinatra in "Young at Heart," or when Lili Taylor thinks River Phoenix really likes her in " Dogfight ."

Most of the greatest directors in the history of the movies were already well known when I started as a critic in 1967. There was once a time when young people made it their business to catch up on the best works by the best directors, but the death of film societies and repertory theaters has put an end to that, and for today's younger filmgoers, these are not well-known names: Bunuel, Fellini, Bergman, Ford, Kurosawa, Ray, Renoir, Lean, Bresson, Wilder, Welles. Most people still know who Hitchcock was, I guess.

Of the directors who started making films since I came on the job, the best is Martin Scorsese . His camera is active, not passive. It doesn't regard events, it participates in them. There is a sequence in "GoodFellas" that follows Henry Hill's last day of freedom, before the cops swoop down. Scorsese uses an accelerating pacing and a paranoid camera that keeps looking around, and makes us feel what Hill feels. It is easy enough to make an audience feel basic emotions ("Play them like a piano," Hitchcock advised), but hard to make them share a state of mind. Scorsese can do it.

Which of today's actors will become immortals? Not very many. Nicholson and De Niro, and not many women, because Hollywood no longer has a lifetime of roles for them. Compared to the great movie stars of the past, modern actors are handicapped by the fact that their films are shot in color. In the long run, that will rob most of them of the immortality that was obtained even by second-tier stars of the black-and-white era. Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet are, and will remain, more memorable than most of today's superstars with their multimillion-dollar paychecks.

Color is too realistic. It is too distracting. It projects superfluous emotional cues. It reduces actors to inhabitants of the mere world. Black-and-white (or, more accurately, silver-and-white) creates a mysterious dream state, a simpler world of form and gesture. Most people do not agree with me. They like color and think a black-and-white film is missing something. Try this. If you have wedding photographs of your parents and grandparents, chances are your parents are in color and your grandparents are in black and white. Put the two photographs side by side and consider them honestly. Your grandparents look timeless. Your parents look goofy.

The next time you buy film for your camera, buy a roll of black-and-white. Go outside at dusk, when the daylight is diffused. Stand on the side of the house away from the sunset. Shoot some natural-light closeups of a friend. Have the pictures printed big, at least 5 x 7. Ask yourself if this friend, who has always looked ordinary in every color photograph you've ever taken, does not suddenly, in black and white, somehow take on an aura of mystery. The same thing happens in the movies.

On the other hand, I am not one of those purists who believes the silents were perfect, and sound ruined everything. To believe that, I would have to be willing to do without Marilyn Monroe singing "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend." Groucho Marx saying, "This bill is outrageous! I wouldn't pay it if I were you!" Robert De Niro asking, "Are you talkin' to me?" Sound is essential, but dialog is not always so. The big difference between today's dialog and the dialog of years ago is that the characters have grown stupid. They say what is needed to advance the plot, and get their laughs by their delivery of four-letter words. Hollywood dialog was once witty, intelligent, ironic, poetic, musical. Today it is flat. So flat that when a movie allows its characters to think fast and talk the same way, the result is invigorating, as in " My Dinner with Andre ," or the first 30 minutes of " White Men Can't Jump ."

Home video is both the best and the worst thing that has happened on the movie beat since I've been a critic. It is good because it allows us to see the movies we want to see, when we want to see them. It provides an economic incentive for the prints of old movies to be preserved and restored. It brings good movies, new and old, to towns without good movie theaters. I get letters from people who live miles from any good-sized town, but rent the new foreign films through the mail.

Home video is bad because it has destroyed the campus film societies, which were like little shrines to the cinema. If the film society was showing Kurosawa's " Ikiru " for a dollar and there was nothing else playing except the new releases at first-run prices, you went to "Ikiru" and then it was forever inside of you, a great film. Today, students rent videos, usually not very good ones, and even if they watch a great movie, they do it alone or with a few friends. There is no sense of audience, and yet the single most important factor in learning to be literate about movies is to be part of an audience that is sophisticated about them.

I also hold it against home video that it has destroyed most of the repertory theaters. When I started as a film critic at the Sun-Times, there was a theater named the Clark, on the corner that is now an extension of the First National Bank. It showed a different double feature every day of the year, 22 hours a day. That's where I saw " Sunset Boulevard " for the first time, and " All About Eve ." On the other hand, when I started in 1967, there weren't many film festivals, and not many art museums that took film seriously. Today every medium-size city has a film festival, where if you are lucky you will see a wonderful film you have never heard of before. And a lot of museums have excellent film centers.

What I miss, though, is the wonder. Anyone my age can remember walking into a movie palace where the ceiling was far overhead, and balconies and mezzanines reached away into the shadows. We remember the sound of 2,000 people laughing all at once. And the screens the size of billboards, so high off the floor that every seat in the house was a good seat. Today you walk into a shoebox and peer around the head of the person in front of you, and in the quiet moments you can hear the sound effects from the movie next door, right through the wall. "I lost it at the movies," Pauline Kael said, and we all knew just what she meant. Now we can't even give it away.

But all is not lost. Scorsese is not the only great director to come along since 1967. There are Altman and Coppola, Herzog and Fassbinder, Tavernier and Stone, Lee and Jarmusch. I went to Cannes last year and there was a 23-year-old kid there named Singleton who had made a movie, and he came out of thin air, but his talent was real. Things are opening up a little. In recent years we've started getting important films from blacks, Hispanics, women, and other groups that essentially made no films at all, when I started reviewing.

When you go to the movies every day, it sometimes seems as if the movies are more mediocre than ever, more craven and cowardly, more skillfully manufactured to pander to the lowest tastes, instead of educating them. Then you see something absolutely miraculous. Something like " Wings of Desire ," or " Do the Right Thing ," or " Drugstore Cowboy ," or " Gates of Heaven ," or " Beauty and the Beast ," or " Life Is Sweet ," and on your way home through the White Hen Pantry you look distracted, as if you had just experienced some kind of a vision.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Short Essay and Outline "The Hazards of Movie Going"

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Outline for an One-Paragraph Essay

• Thesis Statement: _______________________
• _______________________
• Restate topic: _______________________

Sample Outline for a One-Paragraph Essay

This is in relation to “The Hazards of Movie Going” (the paragraph)

• Thesis Statement : I love going to the movies but there are problems going there.
• broken seat
• sticky floor
• kids running
• noisy teenagers
• makes noises dropping cups and popcorn tubs
• cough and burp
• elbowing one another
• Restate topic : I prefer staying at home where it is comfortable and safe.

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"Going to the Movies" - Toth

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Why people still go to the movies

Table of Contents

From the onset of this research, there will be several factors that can anticipated that causes people to go to the movie theatre prior undertaking the research, the following hypothesis can be stipulated and can be approved or disapproved after the research has been done and analyzed.

• People go to the movies because of the wide screens at the movie theatre displays. Most moviegoers visit the movie theatres because of the large screen that the movie theatres have. Unlike at home where one does not enjoy the luxury of space, the choice of television set size is determined, whereas in a movie theatre one can find big screens the size of a huge billboard and coupled with the three-dimension effect.
• The presence of company. Unlike in the convenes of a home, where one can watch a movie alone or in a company of view friends, a movie theatre attracts so many people and when one is in a big company, the act of watching a movie itself becomes so interesting.
• Enhancing concentration. When one watches a movie at home, he or she might face a lot of distractions within the house that causes one to lose concentration of a movie, but while at the movie theatre one focuses concentration only to the movie and cannot be distracted by anything else.
• A way of having fun and being out of the house. Most people go for movies because they h]just want to break the monotony of being always at the house or when not in the house they are working, going out for movies is an enthusiastic way of breaking the boredom of the routine activities. Movies also provide a good way of taking loved ones out during evenings (Krosnick, 2018).

Implications of the hypothesis

The hypothesis are only what can be anticipated before conducting the research and will largely play a part in designing the questionnaire for the study. Therefore, the serious implications that can arise will mostly do with how to balance the questionnaire. This is because, when having a glimpse or idea of how the outcome might look like, the chances of biases in designing the outcome and finally cooking the results will be high(Drost, 2011).

Methods of determining reliability and validity of data collection methods

In research, reliability of data refers to the extent to which the data collected can be depended to justify the outcome of the research whereas validity refers to the extent to which the data collection method represents a true figure of the exact event under study.

In order to determine the reliability of the data collection method, the research will subject the data collection method to an internal consistency reliability. This is one of the common ways in research for determining reliability of data collection method. The method is incorporated in a computer software and it works by measuring the likelihood or consistency in which respondents in the study respond to a given similar set of questions. Internal consistency reliability method works in calibration of 0.0 to 1.0, with a result of 0.70 being the most reliable outcome. Anything below 0.0 or above 1.0 suggests that the data collection method is not reliable.

On the other hand, to determine validity of the data, the researcher subjects the data collected to a series of correlation coefficient, and any disparity that can arise between the information will render the method unreliable and ultimately the research will not be useful in finding out the phenomena under study (Drost, 2011).

How the research can apply to my previous or current work experience

Conducting a study into a particular area of interest does not only help one to gain insight into that matter alone instead it shapes one’s mind to understand the varying nature of events that surrounds. This research mostly deals with human behavior, how people behave in certain ways and how people have different taste and preferences. In my career as human resource specialist and working with airlines, I face a lot of challenges on every typical day, the challenges emanate due on how to deal with people with varying nature who wants to use the service of the airlines. The outcome of this research therefore will provide an opening eye on how people think and relate to matters that are at their disposal. It also helps me not to assume or take things just the way they are until an insight analysis of the matter is done (Klassen et al. 2012).

• Drost, E. A. (2011). Validity and reliability in social science research. Education Research and perspectives, 38(1), 105.
• Klassen, A. C., Creswell, J., Clark, V. L. P., Smith, K. C., & Meissner, H. I. (2012). Best practices in mixed methods for quality of life research. Quality of Life Research, 21(3), 377-380.
• Krosnick, J. A. (2018). Questionnaire design. In The Palgrave Handbook of Survey Research (pp. 439-455). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
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Kevin costner’s $100m movie ‘horizon’ ends theatrical run with huge financial loss.

Kevin Costner got dealt a major blow by theatergoers this summer.

His Western film “Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter One,” which cost $100 million to make, made only $32 million during its theatrical run, which came to an end last week.

According to Box Office Mojo , the film domestically earned around $11 million the weekend it debuted in theaters on June 28.

The movie’s gross domestic total was about $29 million when it closed in theaters last week.

Internationally, “Chapter 1” made over $3.6 million — bringing the film’s worldwide box office total to $32.6 million.

It’s been confirmed by Costner, 69, that he spent $38 million of his own money to make the first installment in the planned four-part film series.

“That’s the message I want my kids to understand about who I am: that I do what I believe,” the actor told GQ in May when he was promoting “Horizon.”

“I have fear like everybody else. I don’t want to be humiliated.” 

Costner’s film completely bombed upon its release less than two months ago. It struggled with fans and critics, earning a 49% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes .

In his review, The Post movie critic Johnny Oleksinski wrote , “I could not fathom committing another 540 minutes of my time to this bloated ego trip.”

He added: “It’s hard to believe  Costner left ‘Yellowstone’ to make such an embarrassing, poorly told mess … There are more than 20 named roles scattered all over the place — the San Pedro Valley, the Montana Territory, the Western Santa Fe Trail — and viewers strain to care much for any of them, so bland and animatronic they all are.” 

The Oscar winner addressed his film’s flop performance this past weekend, saying that he’s “faced life with people being dismissive of me” in an interview with “E! News.”

“But they can’t be dismissive of ‘Horizon,’ because now it’s out of their hands,” Costner said. “And they might point to the finish line — well, this is what it did at the box office — but I know that this movie is going to play for the next 50 years.”

The failure of “Chapter 1” also resulted in the next sequel losing its theatrical release date, which was scheduled for Aug. 16 .

“Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 2” — which Costner also helped fund — will now premiere at the Venice Film Festival  on Sept. 7, where the first movie will also screen.

In a previous interview with Deadline , Costner revealed he took out a mortgage on his 10-acre home in Santa Barbara, California, to help pay for some of the “Horizon” film series’ budget.

“I’ve mortgaged 10 acres on the water in Santa Barbara where I was going to build my last house,” he said. “But I did it without a thought. It has thrown my accountant into a f—king conniption fit. But it’s my life, and I believe in the idea and the story.”

In addition to Costner, “Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1” also stars Sienna Miller ,  Sam Worthington ,  Luke Wilson  and  Giovanni Ribisi , who will all be in the sequel.

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Essay on Impact of Cinema in Life for Students and Children

500 words essay on impact of cinema in life.

Cinema has been a part of the entertainment industry for a long time. It creates a massive impact on people all over the world. In other words, it helps them give a break from monotony. It has evolved greatly in recent years too. Cinema is a great escape from real life.

Furthermore, it helps in rejuvenating the mind of a person. It surely is beneficial in many ways, however, it is also creating a negative impact on people and society. We need to be able to identify the right from wrong and make decisions accordingly.

Advantages of Cinema

Cinema has a lot of advantages if we look at the positive side. It is said to be a reflection of the society only. So, it helps us come face to face with the actuality of what’s happening in our society. It portrays things as they are and helps in opening our eyes to issues we may have well ignored in the past.

Similarly, it helps people socialize better. It connects people and helps break the ice. People often discuss cinema to start a conversation or more. Moreover, it is also very interesting to talk about rather than politics and sports which is often divided.

Above all, it also enhances the imagination powers of people. Cinema is a way of showing the world from the perspective of the director, thus it inspires other people too to broaden their thinking and imagination.

Most importantly, cinema brings to us different cultures of the world. It introduces us to various art forms and helps us in gaining knowledge about how different people lead their lives.

In a way, it brings us closer and makes us more accepting of different art forms and cultures. Cinema also teaches us a thing or two about practical life. Incidents are shown in movies of emergencies like robbery, fire, kidnapping and more help us learn things which we can apply in real life to save ourselves. Thus, it makes us more aware and teaches us to improvise.

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Disadvantages of Cinema

While cinema may be beneficial in many ways, it is also very damaging in various areas. Firstly, it stereotypes a lot of things including gender roles, religious practices, communities and more. This creates a false notion and a negative impact against that certain group of people.

People also consider it to be a waste of time and money as most of the movies nowadays are not showing or teaching anything valuable. It is just trash content with objectification and lies. Moreover, it also makes people addicts because you must have seen movie buffs flocking to the theatre every weekend to just watch the latest movie for the sake of it.

Most importantly, cinema shows pretty violent and sexual content. It contributes to the vulgarity and eve-teasing present in our society today. Thus, it harms the young minds of the world very gravely.

Q.1 How does cinema benefit us?

A.1 Cinema has a positive impact on society as it helps us in connecting to people of other cultures. It reflects the issues of society and makes us familiar with them. Moreover, it also makes us more aware and helps to improvise in emergency situations.

Q.2 What are the disadvantages of cinema?

A.2 Often cinema stereotypes various things and creates false notions of people and communities. It is also considered to be a waste of time and money as some movies are pure trash and don’t teach something valuable. Most importantly, it also demonstrates sexual and violent content which has a bad impact on young minds.

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7 reasons you should still go out to the movies

Despite the plethora of on-demand options at your disposal, we offer these suggestions for why a trip to the cinema is still the best movie experience

These days there are plenty of ways to watch films without schlepping to the movie theater , and lots of them are even legal. While we understand the appeal of curling up on the couch with your Netflix subscription, let's be realistic—there are some experiences that you can only get within the walls of your local cinema. Here are the reasons we still plunk down our hard-earned cash to take in a new movie in the plush seats of a chilly, dark theater. RECOMMENDED:  The best movie theaters in Chicago

Avoid spoilers and be part of the conversation.

Let's face it, social media has taken over the world such that no one can really keep a secret anymore, especially if that secret is something along the lines of "OMG, can you believe that [SPOILER] was the killer in [MOVIE YOU WERE TOTALLY GONNA SEE WHEN IT WAS AVAILABLE ON NETFLIX]?!?!?!" If you want to be party of the latest pop culture conversations with your pals, you actually have to consume the latest pop culture in a timely fashion, which, when it comes to movies, means you're probably gonna have to leave the comfort of your couch on a Friday (or Thursday) evening.

Your home theater might be good, but it's not that good.

Maybe you've dropped a small fortune on a 90-inch 3D TV, complete with surround sound and Blu-ray player, but there are some theater experiences that just can't be replicated in a home theater. Spectacles like Gravity or the breathtaking skyscraper climb scene in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol belong on a screen that will never be able to fit inside your house.

Movies are made to be seen in a theater.

A great film will always be amazing, no matter where and how you see it, but filmmakers always intend for their movies to be seen in a darkened theater, on that big screen where you can't pause in the middle of the climactic scene just so you can go put your laundry in the dryer.

Food and drink options have gotten better.

Everyone loves to groan about the cost of movie snacks, but at least the choices have been improving. More theaters in the area are branching out from popcorn and nachos and including meal items like burgers, chicken fingers and fries as well as healthier options like prepackaged cups of hummus and pretzels. But who cares about food when you get enjoy a cocktail with your film? More and more area multiplexes have bars in the lobby where you can order a tasty beverage and take it into the theater with you.

You don't have to stay up late for those midnight movies anymore.

Whether your nerd poison was Harry Potter , Lord of the Rings or Marvel-flavored, you know that gathering with a bunch of like-minded obsessives for the first screening of a highly-anticipated flick is a very special experience. People dress in costume, make special t-shirts and everyone who's there has one thing in common: They really want to see this movie. There won't be any mid-movie texting here. What there will be is a crowd of people hooting, hollering and going berserk at all the same fan-favorite moments you love. Simply put, it's a lot of fun. And these days, you don't have to worry about dragging your sleepy-eyed carcass into the office Friday morning because studios are now releasing these films on Thursday nights as early as 7pm. So you can geek out with having to worry about passing out the next day.

Support the types of movies you love and maybe more of them will get made?

The movie biz is just that, a business, and bigwigs in charge decide what movies to make based on what does well at the box office. So vote with your dollars and let them know what you like. If not, they'll keep giving us new iterations of Teenage Mutant Transformer Rangers From Space .

It's all about the shared experience.

When you watch a movie at the theater, you're sharing it with everyone around you. There's nothing quite like a room full of people laughing, crying or gasping at the same moments as they journey through a story together.

Been there, done that? Think again, my friend.

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Essay of the Week: Going to the cinema alone or with friends?

I love going to the cinema on my own, but some people are scared to do it. In this band nine sample essay, I look at the good and bad points of solo cinema trips.Our band nine sample essays give you the opportunity to learn from successful essays that show off the best structure, vocabulary…

In recent years, more and more people have started going to the cinema on their own rather than with their friends. What are the advantages and disadvantages of this approach? 

These days, there are more ways than ever to watch the latest blockbuster movie. In this essay, I will evaluate the trend of people making solo trips to movie theatres. First, by looking at the advantage that it is easy to organise, and second, by looking at the lost social connections that come with watching a film alone. 

One advantage of organising a trip to the cinema on your own is convenience. First, because people prefer different genres of films, it can be difficult to find something that everyone will enjoy watching. Furthermore, even if you find a movie everyone wants to watch, it can be difficult to find a time that everyone is available. Conversely, when making a trip to the cinema on your own, you can see whatever you want whenever you want and you can even make very last-minute plans. 

However,  although their lives are more convenient, solo moviegoers also miss out on a lot of the pleasure of going to the cinema. For example, it is more enjoyable to make an evening out of it and have dinner together first. In addition, if people attend a film alone, they do not get the pleasure of discussing the film afterwards. Given the cost of attending the cinema, it might not be worth going if you are going to miss out on these additional aspects. 

In conclusion, there are pros and cons to viewing a film on your own. While it may be more convenient, it is also much less social and enjoyable than going with your friends.

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Watching a Movie at Home or Theater: An Exciting Adventure or the Ideal Place Essay

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Introduction

It saves money, it guarantees comfort, opposing opinion, works cited.

For a long time now, going to the cinema has always been an exciting adventure. When most people think of a nice place to relax and enjoy time with friends and family, they mostly think of going to a movie theater. In general, a movie can be an impeccable way of spending leisure time, which is particularly true if there is not much action to take part in where people live. In regards to watching films, not many people seem to agree that cinema is the ideal place. Some people believe that sitting in the comfort of their home while watching movies is a better choice than visiting film houses. In this essay, one will be enlightened why watching movies at home is better than going to the movie theater

By watching movie at home, one will save a fair amount of money. In today’s society, money is everything, and people improvise different ways of acquiring, or saving it. Going to the movies might sound like a simple act of fun, but in reality, one ends up spending a lot of money. The cost of paying for tickets tends to grow annually as people visit cinemas. For someone to take his or her family and loved ones to pass time in theaters might be quite expensive. It is because, apart from entrance fees, other expenses which may be incurred are car fuel, parking charges, buying of snacks, plus other hidden additional costs (Meyer 46). When comparing it to watching a movie at home on one’s television, or doing video streaming on iTunes and Netflix, the video streaming option is by far way much cheaper.

Nevertheless, there are some minor drawbacks about watching movies at home. The first one is that the latest and highest-ranked movie releases get to the film and theaters first. It usually takes a long time before they extent to people’s homes. Second, at the cinemas, the quality of the film is of a higher quality and it is supplemented by the surrounding effects. Despite that, streaming at home remains the best option because one will save money, which can be utilized in catering to other family affairs and development.

Streaming movies at the comfort of one’s home gives the kind of comfort which cannot be found anywhere else, not even in a movie house. Almost everyone hates the front rows in cinemas, where they have to stretch their necks for a better view. Continuous straining can damage one’s neck after three or so hours of watching the favorite show. None of these issues will ever occur when people stay at the luxury of their own homes to watch movies. In the house, someone sits comfortably in their couch, wraps himself up in blankets, and watches all day long. It also means one has the freedom to choose the type of film they would like to watch and when to watch it (Gil and Gutierrez-Navratil 740). At home, the movie lover is at liberty to pause, eat anything the way they like or move around to attend to other matters without worrying about annoying or distracting anyone.

The safest place one can watch a movie is their home. Whenever people are in public, they have to share practically everything with everyone else. There are those individuals who might be annoying, particularly in the film houses, where rather than maintaining silence, there are those who cannot stop talking or speaking on their phones. Such actions can keep one’s attention away if he or she is the person who finds it difficult to focus on presence. Nevertheless, not everyone who goes to movies has good intentions. It means that one has to be careful and aware of his or her surroundings at all times. It is because issues such as people losing their personal belongings, for example, phones are widespread in movie halls (Peterson 452). A more recent risk which has made going to movies a personal risk is the Covid-19 pandemic. People are advised to keep social distance due to the rapid spread of the disease. To avoid the risk of exposing themselves to the virus, a significant number of movie lovers have resorted to watching at home. Clearly, staying at home and watching one’s favorite movie will keep you safe from undesired incidents.

Some opposing opinions claim that going to the cinema helps one to watch the movie with more clarity on a large screen. It also offers surround-sound which enhances one’s overall experience. However, home technology has undergone much development, and people now have high definition (HD) televisions. They also have excellent sound equipment, as well as remote monitoring gadgets. With all of these, it does not make a logical difference to seek theatrical experience in a public theatre.

All these explanations are a clear proof of how one might well be better off relaxed in the comfort of their home to enjoy the movie experience with more flexibility. Instead of going to the cinema, one should buy their favorite classic films and spend time with their families in the luxury of their homes. Watching movies is considered to be one of the best forms of entertainment. It only makes it better if one has the power over what, how and when to watch it. Furthermore, with advanced technology having reached people’s homes, many prefer to watch movies in their houses.

Gil, Ricard, and Fernanda Gutierrez-Navratil. “Does Television Entry Decrease the Number of Movie Theaters?” Economic Inquiry , vol. 55, no. 2, 2016, pp. 736-756. Wiley . Web.

Meyer, Birgit. “Watching Movies in Ghana”. Anthropology News , vol. 58, no. 2, 2017, pp. e44-e50. Wiley . Web.

Peterson, Elizabeth. “Hometown Show: Early Movie Theaters in Eugene and Springfield”. Oregon Historical Quarterly , vol. 117, no. 3, 2016, p. 452. Oregon Historical Society . Web.

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IvyPanda. (2022, February 26). Watching a Movie at Home or Theater: An Exciting Adventure or the Ideal Place. https://ivypanda.com/essays/watching-movie-at-home-or-theater/

"Watching a Movie at Home or Theater: An Exciting Adventure or the Ideal Place." IvyPanda , 26 Feb. 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/watching-movie-at-home-or-theater/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'Watching a Movie at Home or Theater: An Exciting Adventure or the Ideal Place'. 26 February.

IvyPanda . 2022. "Watching a Movie at Home or Theater: An Exciting Adventure or the Ideal Place." February 26, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/watching-movie-at-home-or-theater/.

1. IvyPanda . "Watching a Movie at Home or Theater: An Exciting Adventure or the Ideal Place." February 26, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/watching-movie-at-home-or-theater/.

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The ‘Orgasm Gap’ Isn’t Going Away for Straight Women

A new study suggests they still have fewer orgasms during sex than men do, even with age and experience.

By Catherine Pearson

Sex researchers and therapists have long known that women in heterosexual relationships tend to have fewer orgasms than men do. A large new study suggests that this “orgasm gap” persists — and does not improve with age.

The Numbers

The research, published recently in the journal Sexual Medicine, found that across all ages, men of all sexual orientations reported higher orgasm rates during sex — from 70 to 85 percent — compared with 46 to 58 percent for women. Lesbian and bisexual women between ages 35 and 49 reported higher orgasm rates than their heterosexual counterparts.

The analysis included data from eight Singles in America surveys, which are funded and conducted by Match.com annually in collaboration with The Kinsey Institute, the sexuality and relationships research program at Indiana University. The sample included more than 24,000 single Americans between the ages of 18 and 100.

Researchers were especially interested in the question of whether orgasm rates vary by age. Amanda Gesselman, a research scientist with the Kinsey Institute and lead author on the study, said she thought the team might find evidence that the orgasm gap narrows as women develop confidence and learn what they like (and, perhaps, their partners develop skills to help pleasure them).

However, while older gay and bisexual men and lesbian women did have higher orgasm rates, “we really didn’t see evidence of closing the orgasm gap overall,” she said, adding that she hopes future studies will explore the age-orgasm connection further.

“We really, as a society, sort of prioritize men’s pleasure and undervalue women’s sexual pleasure,” Dr. Gesselman said. “And I think that contributes to consistent disparities.”

The Limitations

Emily Nagoski, a sex educator and author of the book “Come Together” — who did not work on the new study — said a limitation of the study was that the survey asked: “When having sexual intercourse in general, what percentage of the time do you usually have an orgasm?” But it did not provide a more specific definition of what “sexual intercourse” means.

Research shows the majority of women require some form of clitoral stimulation in order to orgasm. So if straight women defined “sexual intercourse” as vaginal penetration alone, it makes sense that there was a significant gap in orgasm rates, she said.

A more revealing question might be, “What percentage of the sex you have do you like?” Dr. Nagoski said. “Orgasm is not the measure of a sexual encounter. Pleasure is the measure of a sexual encounter.”

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The whale ending & real meaning explained.

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Is The Whale Based On A True Story?

10 movies franchises that are now unrecognizable from their first movie, “i think he wanted reaction”: how tom cruise's love scene in 1988 comedy went wrong recalled by co-star.

• The Whale's ending is devastating as it sees the end of Charlie's life. He tried reconnecting with his daughter Ellie, but it was always one-sided.
• Ellie was cruel to Charlie throughout the movie, but there is hope she could finally see in herself what Charlie did all those years.
• The Whale tackles themes of redemption, being oneself, and dealing with grief. Brendan Fraser showcased that and ultimately won an Oscar for his performance as Charlie.

The Whale ending brought the powerful and intense drama to a conclusion that requires some more analysis. The movie has Brendan Fraser in an Oscar-winning role, as a teacher who battles with an eating disorder that has left him at over 600 pounds and on the verge of death. All he wants in life is to reconcile with his daughter and possibly help her, knowing she has a hard life of her own. However, The Whale 's ending brings about a bittersweet resolution for the two characters.

The Darren Aronofsky movie ends with the heavy implication that Charlie has died. He tried reconnecting with his daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink), and he did everything he could to make progress throughout the film. However, this was always one-sided, and in the end, he refused to give up on his daughter and tried to give her the one thing she asked for the first time she appeared in the movie. This all led to The Whale ending where Charlie finally seemed to die and pass on to the other side.

Darren Aronofsky’s critically acclaimed The Whale features a stunning lead performance from Brendan Fraser, and it has an interesting backstory.

Why Charlie Kept The Moby Dick Essay For So Long

The essay highlights qualities in his daughter that he wished he had.

Throughout The Whale' s story, Charlie is shown reading from a Moby Dick essay which calms him and brings him solace. The Whale ending explained that the essay was written by Ellie, and he considered it the most honest piece of writing he ever read .

Charlie held that close to his heart because it was honest in a way he or his students never were.

Charlie was constantly frustrated with the students he taught online because they would give him generic responses or write what they thought would please him enough to get a good grade. Ellie’s essay had an opinion and a strong perspective that conveyed how she felt about the novel and Captain Ahab. Charlie held that close to his heart because it was honest in a way he or his students never were.

What Happened With Ellie In The Whale?

Ellie's final scene with her father could give her hope.

...there is hope she could finally see in herself what Charlie did all those years

The Whale was met with a lot of controversy with how Charlie is depicted and the insulting way Ellie interacts with him. The first time she appeared, she told him that he disgusted her , regardless of his appearance, and said if he loved her, he would walk to her without assistance, which she knew he couldn't do, and he sadly fell, breaking his table. She kept returning because he promised to write an essay for school for her and offered her all his money, which totaled over $120,000 since he never spent money on anything but food and rent.

When Charlie's ex-wife Mary showed up to talk to him about their daughter, Ellie's dark and cruel side appeared again. Mary (Samantha Morton) and Charlie divorced when Charlie left them for a student named Alan. Mary severed Charlie's contact with Ellie and wanted to raise her on her own which didn't work out well. When Mary lashed out at Charlie at the end, she admitted that Ellie had turned into a "monster" and was cruel to her fellow students and others. This was also shown when Ellie drugged her father and took photos of him to share online.

Ellie was still working through her problems at The Whale’s end. Ellie refused to reconnect with her dad , even at the end, but she did one thing that might be a glimmer of hope. Knowing he didn't have a lot of time left, Charlie asked her, before she left for the last time, to read her Moby Dick essay to him again. Ellie read the essay and Charlie rose and attempted to walk like at the beginning.

It was full circle, as he wanted her essay to be the last thing he heard before he died . When he rose to walk, he floated into the white sky, and it seemed he died. With Ellie reading to him as he died, there is hope she could finally see in herself what Charlie did all those years.

Sadie Sink was nominated for a Critics' Choice Award for her performance.

How Did Thomas Affect Charlie In The Whale?

Charlie plays into the movie's theme of forgiveness.

Another character in The Whale cast that plays a role in Charlie's final days is the missionary, Thomas. It's revealed in The Whale 's ending he wasn't really a missionary after having a lapse in his faith, stealing money from his youth group, and running away from home. However, this all crashed down on him when he admitted this to Ellie. What he didn't know was that she was recording what he said. At the same time, she took pictures of her dad to humiliate him and she sent the recording to Thomas' parents and former church to humiliate him.

Charlie could see the good in anyone, even when their intentions were evil.

This backfired, as his parents offered to take him back in, and he found forgiveness . This also allowed Charlie to see what he wanted, as he told Mary that Ellie was a good person because she helped Thomas reunite with his parents. Charlie could see the good in anyone, even when their intentions were evil. Even when Ellie lashed out at her dad, humiliated people around her, and lived a self-destructive life, Charlie could only see the eight-year-old girl who wrote an essay about Moby Dick .

Why Charlie Finally Shows His Face To His Students

Charlie exposed himself as he faced his end.

As The Whale ending explained, Charlie really wanted to die. He had the money for a hospital stay but refused to spend it and lied to the only person who cared about him. He didn't care about his life anymore and just wanted to save his daughter. As he told his wife, he just wanted to do one good thing in his life. Charlie saw all the lies - from himself, his daughter, the missionary, and more - just caused more pain.

He was tired of lying, and he decided that he would finally be honest. After lying to his students about his laptop camera being broken, he finally let them see what he looked like, showcasing Brendan Fraser's transformation in The Whale role . His students were shocked at his appearance and he broke his laptop, severing his final ties with the outside world .

How The Whale Compares To The Play (Biggest Differences)

The movie ending adds a more hopeful message.

Playwright Samuel D. Hunter also wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation , making The Whale fairly loyal to the original play. However, one of the biggest differences between the movie adaptation and the play is director Darren Aronofsky's more hopeful ending. This was executed in the visual appearance of the two endings.

As The Whale ended, Charlie went into a white light and the last thing he saw was an image of him, his wife, and their daughter on a beach from the past. It was a sign of hope. The stage play kept showing how bad things were getting until Charlie died, and it all went black and deathly silent. Despite the heartbreaking tone of the movie, it at least ended on a more positive note.

The Real Meaning Of The Whale’s Ending

Charlie's purpose is linked to ellie's journey.

The film suggests redemption has to be earned... but that it must also come from the desire to make amends.

The Whale tackles many subjects, including abandonment, loss, broken families, sexuality, and the need for connection. The film’s most powerful theme is redemption. However, as with The Wrestler' s ending and Black Swan 's ending , Darren Aronofsky left viewers wondering what happened when the movie ended.

The Whale ending explores Charlie’s desire to help Ellie find happiness before he dies . This is the only way he feels will absolve him of his past mistakes. Thomas also wants to be redeemed by bringing Charlie back to religion and puts forth tremendous effort to do so. The film suggests redemption has to be earned, and Charlie works hard for it, but that it must also come from the desire to make amends, to begin with.

The Whale also touches upon the theme of being oneself, no matter what others think. Charlie feels a lot of shame — be it because of his sexuality or weight — and he hides a lot, fearing judgment despite his own compassion for others. However, the ending implies there is beauty in honesty — with others and oneself — and being unafraid of boldly being true to oneself.

Crucially, The Whale also explores the variety of ways an individual might deal with grief, be that in losing a significant other to death or dealing with the absence of a parent. Everyone handles it differently, and Aronofsky’s film showcases the breadth of experiences.

Brendan Fraser Won An Oscar For The Whale

Fraser's win completed his hollywood comeback.

Brendan Fraser took the dramatic role in The Whale and delivered a critically acclaimed comeback performance . In Charlie's interactions with Liz, he shows his undying optimism in the people around him, even as he hates himself. When he talked to his daughter Ellie, he saw the good in her, even as she did everything in her power to hurt those around her. As a reward for this performance, Fraser picked up his first Oscar nomination for Best Actor.

He received the same nomination from the Golden Globes, but he lost out in that ceremony to Austin Butler ( Elvis ). Despite that loss, Fraser rebounded at the Oscars and took home wins at other ceremonies like the SAG Awards. On top of Fraser, Hong Chau also received a nomination for Best Actress in a Supporting Role and The Whale won the Oscar for Makeup and Hairstyling.

How The Whale Ending Was Received

The reaction to the whale's ending highlights the divisive response to the movie.

Brenda Fraser's lead performance in The Whale and the performances of the rest of the cast were praised, but the movie did receive a rather mixed reaction from critics. The Whale earned a 64% on Rotten Tomatoes , making it one of Darren Aronofsky's most poorly reviewed films to date. However, the movie also holds a 91% audience score as well as a 7.6 IMDb score, showing a strong divide. The reception to The Whale's ending seems to highlight that divide further.

There are some who see the ending as a bittersweet moment of redemption for Charlie after living with so much pain. Many audiences spoke about the emotional experience of the movie and the ending continues that tone with it being a tragic moment of Charlie passing on, but comes at a moment of him achieving that connection to his daughter that he sought for so long .

However, others felt that the ending leaned into melodrama, with the quick shot of Charlie apparently being lifted to heaven feeling over-the-top. With Aronofsky's The Wrestler delivering a similar ending that subtly hints at its protagonist dying as the screen cuts to black, some viewers felt the filmmaker did not have the same faith in his audience this time around, with no subtlety to be found.

The movie has also been criticized for how it depicts an obese person and the ending has been criticized as feeding into that notion . Beth Younger of Salon wrote about the movie's depiction of Charlie's weight, suggesting it is depicted as monstrous and disgusting. She interprets the ending of the movie as suggesting Charlie's death allows him to escape the burden of his obese body, a feeling other viewers of The Whale have echoed.

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Directed by Darren Aronofsky, The Whale is based on a 2012 stage play of the same name by Samuel D. Hunter. The film star Brenden Fraser as Charlie, a reclusive and obese English teacher who, faced with his own mortality and guilt-ridden over his past, attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter Ellie, played by Sadie Sink. The film was part of Fraser's comeback to acting and earned him an Academy Award for Best Actor.