Be FunNovember 13, 2012

The Magic Of The Movies

I’ve been on a pretty good streak of movies the last few weeks: Argo, End of Watch, Seven psychopaths.

I don’t remember the last time I saw three movies in a row, and this past weekend I was counting on Skyfall to push the streak out to four.

You see, before this current streak, my last streak was a bad one that kicked off with Casa De Mi Padre and ended with Jiro Dreams of Sushi. I don’t remember what else came in between those movies, but I know those were the bookends which basically got my movie picking privileges revoked by my friends for a couple of months.

Casa De Mi Padre was so bad I cannot even bring myself to devote another sentence to it, and while Jiro Dreams of Sushi was “critically acclaimed,” let’s be honest, once you’ve seen a guy slice a piece of tuna a couple times, you’ve probably seen it one time too many.

While there’s no shortage of drama, action, and comedy on the screens in the movie theater, if what you’re after is a horror story, your best bet would be to hit up the refreshment stand. You’ll be sure to get the shock of your life.

I mean, I know I go on about Whole Foods, but buying food at the movie theater makes Whole Foods look like a 99 cent store. Hmm, maybe Whole Foods should start screening movies in their stores…

The only other scenario that even comes close to this kind of daylight robbery is buying food at the airport, and even that I don’t think is as bad.

Prior to this last outing, I hadn’t actually bought food in the theater for a while, but I guess being caught up in the whole Bond euphoria, I let my senses get away from me a little bit. I decided to pick up a box of Raisinets and a small drink. What did it cost me? $8.50. I mean forget horror, that’s a tragi-comedy and you just have to laugh.

$8.50 for essentially a small box of cocoa covered raisins and water with sugar in it. As if that’s not bad enough this wasn’t even New York pricing, this was in Jersey!

Now, oddly enough, I don’t know what units of measure they use in movie theaters, but when you order a small drink, why is it like the size of a large anywhere else? I’m a big guy but even I didn’t want that much to drink.

It just made me wonder, who are the people ordering the large sizes? How is it even possible to finish that much soda in one sitting? Is no other state going to follow suit and adopt the Bloomberg ban on soda sizes? If not could they at least have the decency to start selling insulin shots to go along with it.

So why do we do it? I am convinced that the reason is because when we go to the movies, we go there to escape.

Once we walk trough those doors, we know that for the next couple of hours (or four if it’s a Peter Jackson movie) we are going to transport ourselves into this fantasy world and lay all reason and logic to the side. We are going to buy a $10 bag of popcorn, a drink the size of a sub-Saharan family’s water supply for a week and get lost in the plot of Hollywood’s latest offering.

Well, in the end my overpriced snacks didn’t even last through the previews so I was left to watch Skyfall empty-handed. Fortunately, Bond did not disappoint and I am glad to say that the streak is well and truly alive.

As if that wasn’t enough, the proverbial icing on the cake had to be Berenice Marlohe. Once she hit the screen I quickly forgot all about the snacks, or lack thereof.

You can always trust a Bond girl to give you food for thought.

Featured Image by Kenneth Lu on Flickr
Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)