Saturday Night at the Movies

Ads with high production values and slightly racy content. No booster seats. No trips to the toilet at the best part. No snooze during the bit where they can't find the unicorn. 

It's been so long since I went to a grown-up movie in the cinema, I had forgotten what it's like. 

Of course it's a cliché to talk about "living your life to the full" or "making the most of the time you have" when you have been faced with your own mortality, but sure it's inevitable. Our brains are simple things, and if you tell them they can't have something than they suddenly really really want it. 

So I have decided to start going to the cinema again. When a movie comes out that I want to see, I'm not going to just read the previews and reviews and watch the promo chatshow appearances, and then regret that I didn't go, and then watch it four years later on a Bank Holiday Monday on RTE, and curse the ads. 

I am just going to go. 

The only realistic way to do that is to go by myself, because organising a babysitter adds a layer of complication that will make me simply give up. Besides, I am the right kind of movie-watcher. I like to sit, rapt, from the beginning to the very end. Zero chat. Zero noisy sweets. Zero texting or tweeting. And despite the dodgy pelvic floor, no bloody going to the toilet. (What the heck? I mean, what the actual heck is wrong with grown adults that they can't sit still for two hours?)
So I am much better off by myself, where I can sit in the spot of my choosing and isolate myself from the poor quality movie-watchers. 

I went last night. I brought camomile tea in a travel mug, and two triangles of Toblerone in a little plastic bag. My mother's training has not been wasted. ("The price of that popcorn! Sure you could go to Paris for a week for that money!" And she could, too.)

A wave of nostalgia and emotions surged over me as the opening credits rolled. Not least because I was watching the sequel to a movie I had watched probably ten times on a grainy VHS in our near-slum of a flat in college. It was probably the first movie I saw that made me realise that science fiction can be more about humanity than alienity (em, err?)
My point being that the story was touching and moving and thought-provoking, and not (just) about shooting people with far-out guns. 

I don't really know what I thought about Bladerunner 2049, from a critical perspective, because I was so immersed in the whole cinema experience. The sounds, the taste, the smell - I'd forgotten the beauty of it all. 

So another one to add to the list of Stuff I Am Going To Do Because I'm Not Currently Dying - regular trips to the local cinema. Next time I'm going to bring my slippers.