Movie Theaters Are Not Just For Blockbusters

The film critic’s gift is also their curse. It’s their very good fortune to spend their life watching, thinking about, and talking about movies. But that good fortune also means, without fail, that every new person he or she meets always asks a variation the exact same question:

“Seen anything good lately?”

It doesn’t matter if the film critic knows a great deal about fashion, or holds a PhD in economics, or would rather talk about how the New York Mets’ shaky pitching staff is imperiling their once-promising 2025 season. (How do you blow leads of four, five, and six runs in three consecutive games? HOW?!?)

No one cares about any of that. All they care about is the last best thing you saw. (I’ll tell you what’s not the last best thing I saw: The New York Mets’ pitching staff!)

When I get asked by a new acquaintance what they should see, I’m always more interested to hear what they’ve seen — and now, in this modern era of at-home streaming, what films compelled them to actually venture out to a movie theater and buy a ticket.

Such responses are always anecdotal, but lately I’ve heard a lot of identical explanations about what it is that motivates film fans to get off their butts, head to the multiplex, and get back on their butts in front of a big screen. Typically, the explanation revolves around massive tentpole films like this summer’s Superman or The Fantastic Four: First Steps. The moviegoers I talk to tend to say those are the movies they believe they need to see theatrically. One person recently told me flat out that for him to buy a ticket “it’s got to kind of be an event.”

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That’s an understandable way of thinking in 2025, after years of Hollywood studios conditioning their customers to view blockbusters like can’t-miss pop-culture events. So much movie marketing these days is built around IMAX and other premium formats, and selling the notion that these event movies must be seen on the largest possible screen. (How many trailers have you watched this summer that used the phrase “Shot For IMAX”?)

When you have so many viewing options at home — classic movies and television shows and streaming originals and YouTube and the phone my metrics tell me you are reading this article on while sitting on the toilet — it’s hard to blame them. The best home theater in the world still can’t compete with the sheer overwhelming scale of the best multiplex. That’s a sales pitch that’s easy to understand and hard to argue with.

But there are a lot of really good films in theaters right now, and many of them fall well outside the “big summer movie” stereotype. They all show what a movie theater can add to a movie besides pure size.

Take The Naked Gun. While director Akiva Schaffer and cinematographer Brandon Trost effectively honor the look of old-fashioned cop movies, I would never claim their spoof sequel needs to be seen in IMAX in order to observe the nuances of its glorious cinematography. Visually, you wouldn’t lose much if you waited to see it when it inevitably debuts on Paramount+. (Then again, that outrageous heat vision gag would be pretty awesome on an 80-foot-tall screen.)

I saw The Naked Gun at a multiplex in Brooklyn over the weekend, in a relatively small auditorium that was about two-thirds full. In other words, this was not a sold-out movie palace with a towering screen and booming Dolby speakers. And yet if you asked me to name the best theatrical experience I’ve had in 2025, The Naked Gun would be my easy number one.

That’s because for 85 straight minutes, the audience of about 50 people never stopped laughing. At times, the crowd was so loud they drowned out the jokes; I’m going to have to see The Naked Gun again just to hear all the stuff I missed. Unless you have a lot of friends and a really big home theater, you will never reproduce the energy at home that’s generated by a couple dozen adults cackling in the dark at Liam Neeson eating chili dogs until he has to race to a bathroom before he craps his pants. To me, this is cinema.

A good audience can add so much to a movie, and not just by laughing at fart jokes. I witnessed a great example of that earlier this week at an 11AM screening of Weapons, the new horror film from Barbarian director Zach Cregger about the aftermath of an entire classroom of children vanishing into thin air in the middle of the night.

At a key moment in the movie, a character discovers a disturbing tableau in a creepy basement. (For those keeping score at home, that’s two Zach Cregger movies and two creepy basements. What creepy basement hurt you, Zach Cregger?!?) This key moment upends everything we think we know about this mysterious disappearance. It is genuinely shocking. And at that exact moment, a voice whispered from the row in front of me: “What the f—!” Seconds later, the character onscreen who stumbled upon this terrible image cried out “What the f—!” 

It was an incredible thing to witness, and it wasn’t the only moment improved by the theatrical setting. Weapons’ quiet moments — Cregger loves to play with silence in his scare sequences — got so pin-drop silent you could hear the people around you breathing, amplifying the sustained tension. Later, the film’s ending drew enormous gales of cathartic laughter and applause. Even the occasional distant cries of infants from the hallways of the Alamo Drafthouse — where all morning movies are “Baby Day” screenings where caregivers are invited to bring their sleeping newborns — enhanced the eerie atmosphere of this tale of disappearing kids. It was almost like seeing Weapons in 4DX.

The night before Weapons I had another additive theatrical experience in a venue that wasn’t all that great for watching movies. That was BAM’s Harvey Theater, where Apple and A24 held the New York premiere for Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest. The Harvey first opened in 1904 and is primarily used these days as a space for live performances. I’m sure it’s an incredible place to see a play or a concert; it’s not an ideal spot to watch a movie, at least in the back reaches of the vertiginous balcony where I was seated. I spent the whole film straining to look forward and down just to get a clear view of the screen.

Most people will watch Highest 2 Lowest at home. It’s not a question of if or when the movie is going to be on streaming; the film will be available on Apple TV+ just three weeks after its debut in multiplexes. Highest 2 Lowest’s posters advertise both premiere dates: “Only in Theaters” on August 15 and “Streaming” on September 5.

But even with the caveat that I did not have the best vantage point in the theater, and even though I could have watched the film at home anytime I wanted in a matter of days, I was glad I saw Highest 2 Lowest on the big screen. The movie really celebrates (and playfully teases) the day-to-day realities of New York City life. In a packed house in downtown Brooklyn, those lines and moments got huge reactions; everything from groans of recognition to spontaneous applause. The attendees weren’t just observing the film; they were participating in it.

At this point, it’s a cliché to complain about poorly-behaved viewers at the theater. They look at their phones, talk over the dialogue, crinkle plastic food wrappers, and eat stinky food they’ve smuggled into the auditorium. (You ever sit near someone slurping soup in a movie theater? I have! Honestly, it was such an impressive feat, I wasn’t mad. Where did they hide all that soup on their way in?!?)

Yes, there is a dice-rolling component to any trip to theater. And you could wait to see any of these titles at home. (In the case of Highest 2 Lowest, you wouldn’t even need to wait all that long.) But all three of these movies, as small as they may be relative to the “event films” that are supposedly the lifeblood of modern theaters, benefit from the big screen. Next time someone asks me about the last good thing I saw, I will have plenty of options to choose from, and a piece of wisdom to share: A really great theater experience can make any movie into an event.