I've been trying to get caught up on this year's movies. For various reasons, my moviegoing has been way down this year. I blame most of it on 3-D. I mean, I LOVE popcorn movies. Love them. But in the last three years or so, I've had to put up with those damned glasses that don't fit over my own glasses and a ridiculous surcharge for the experience and a splitting headache afterward. If I choose to see a given movie in 3-D, that is. And this is even with the so-called "good" 3-D, as opposed to the after the fact 3-D conversions. It gets worse, though, because even when the movie is shown 2-D, there's a penalty. My local multiplexes--there are only two within reasonable driving distance because I live in the sticks--don't change out the damned 3-D lenses for 2-D showings, which darkens the picture. I saw both Captain America and the last Harry Potter in the theater and regretted it. I didn't write about either film, because I don't feel I could give them a fair shake based on what I could actually see on screen. My local art house is excellent, I should add, but they can only show so much, and often fairly late in the release calendar. Some movies never make it here at all. So, for the first time that I can remember, I'm preferring to see movies on video. This wounds my love of cinema, part of which is a love for the communal experience of sitting in an audience of strangers. Cinema is like church to me. I feel like an apostate these days. But it is what it is, I guess.
I probably could have seen The Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011, directed by Rupert Wyatt) in the theater. It wasn't a movie that was released in 3-D, and probably would have been shown on a projector that didn't have the lens. I don't remember why I skipped it in the theater. Spite, I imagine.
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