The first movie I remember seeing at the Tivoli - a beautifully restored movie palace on the Delmar Loop - is Gosford Park. It was nominated for several Oscars, including Best Picture, so in my yearly quest to see all the Best Picture nominees before the Academy Awards ceremony, my mom and I found ourselves headed to the Tivoli on an early afternoon near the beginning of 2002. We were running a little behind, so my mom dropped me off in front of the theater with some money while she found a parking spot. I somewhat meekly made my way up to the box office, said "Two for Gosford Park," and expected them to turn me down. (I was fifteen at the time, and Gosford Park is rated R.) Much to my surprise, they sold me the tickets, and when my mom came, I quietly exclaimed, "They sold me the tickets. They thought I was 17!" That experience, combined with the beauty of the old-fashioned movie palace and its location on the Loop, made me fall in love with the Tivoli and it's still my favorite place in the St. Louis metro area.
From there, I discovered the Hi-Pointe, Plaza Frontenac and Chase Park Plaza - the other theaters that showcased independent and foreign films in the St. Louis area. The amount of time I spent in those theaters and the Tivoli (along with the cineplexes, for that matter) exponentially increased in this decade, especially when I turned 16 and got my driver's license.
As far as independent theaters outside of St. Louis go, the greatest (or maybe second-greatest) discovery I made my freshman year of college was probably Ragtag Cinema in downtown Columbia. On one Sunday afternoon, I decided to explore the area and check out Ragtag for the first time. So I somehow made my way up Tenth Street and found myself sitting on a couch in the middle of a room with a bunch of strangers, watching Maria Full of Grace. I thought the movie was good, and I loved Ragtag pretty much instantly. Sunday afternoons at Ragtag quickly became a staple of my college schedule, and they remained so through my junior year.
While the decade's most important movie-going experiences came to me in the form of independent theaters, I also did have a few memorable experiences at the cineplexes, most notable at midnight screenings. Off-hand I can only remember what I've seen starting in the summer of 2005, but I'm fairly certain I also saw the midnight screenings of The Matrix Reloaded along with the second and/or third X-Men movie(s). So from the summer of 2005 through summer 2009, this is what I saw alongside crowds of movie fans (as far as I can remember): Batman Begins, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Bourne Supremacy, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Superman Returns, Spider-Man 3, Shrek 3, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Sex and the City, The Dark Knight and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
Of all those shows, Batman Begins is probably the one that stands out the most in my mind. I had been a Batman fan my entire life (and still am), starting with the Tim Burton movies and "Batman: The Animated Series," which aired when I was a kid. To say the previous Batman film, 1997's Batman & Robin, was a disappointment is probably an understatement, so I was hoping for better than that at the bare minimum. As a fan of Christian Bale, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Gary Oldman, I was also fairly excited and hopeful. The first viewing of the trailer for Batman Begins amped up the excitement and the hope. It was well worth the excitement - the film was the best superhero movie I'd seen, and I was so taken by it that I stayed up after I got back from the midnight show to write my review. All of the hope and excitement that were brewing due to that film, combined with the buzz surrounding Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker, also led to a very anticipated midnight screening of The Dark Knight three years later. You can bet I'll have more on these two films when I write about my favorite movie franchises of the decade.
Going back to midnight showings as a whole, I love them because they are when the true, hard-core fans come out. Even if the movie isn't that great, the collective experience of going to a midnight screening and seeing honest fan reactions is something that is truly unparalleled.
Between the discovery of independent theaters and midnight shows, the 2000s were definitely full of memorable movie-going experiences.
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