Several years ago a Smith student told me she watched “Lawrence of Arabia” on her cell phone. “That’s too bad,” I replied. “You missed a film many consider one of the greatest films ever made.” I hasten to add that I don’t entirely agree with that; I find parts of “Lawrence of Arabia” ponderous. There is, however, no denying that it is a cinematic feast for the eyes. Or not, if you view it on a 2 ¾” x 5 ½ ” screen.
The next blow came when “Everything Everywhere All at Once” won the Oscar as the Best Picture of 2023. Ugh! Hollywood honored a project I consider one of the worst movies of the entire 21st century!
Move the clock forward. Critics are currently trying to beat the holiday rush by listing their choices for the best films of 2025. Not only have I not seen a single one of them; I haven’t even heard of most of them. How could I? My town of 30,000 doesn’t have a movie theater anymore. The closest “art” theater is in Amherst, which is just 7 miles distant, but driving there when all five colleges are in session can easily take an hour in each direction. Plus, most of the films I might wish to see are tucked into smaller rooms that are sold out by the time I get there. Yeah, I could reserve tickets online, but that might mean having to arc my head upward from the front row.
The only other screens are at the bloody mall and I can assure you there is seldom anything of interest among its Marvel Comics, horror, military action, and comedies made for fourth grade education offerings. The less said about endless junk food, military recruiting, and local business ads, the better. These commercials–and that’s what they are–run 25-30 minutes before the feature starts. The previews of coming distractions are even worse; theaters pump up the volume to make the insipid sound more dramatic. Lately, if I see a Hollywood movie it’s several years later on a streaming service. From the little I’ve seen, there’s not much to entice me to subscribe to every bloody streaming service under the sun as if there’s virtue in seeing something on a 36” screen as opposed to my phone.
Movie theaters are a dying breed in part because they don’t show many films. Films intend some sort of artistic and/or political statement, whereas movies are simply a way to anesthetize you for 90 minutes and have little enduring educational or redeeming value. There have always been scads of movies, but films that generally win awards. Of course, sometimes a trite movie like “Rocky” gets mistaken for a film, but overall merit used to be an award factor. Internet sites will tell you there are more cinema screens now than there were in the 1970s, but if you inquire about art houses or independent theaters, you get a different picture. Yes, there are more screens, but most of them are showing the same movies that every other American mall is showing. In the 1940s, often considered part of the golden age of cinema, there were 18,000 independent theaters. By the 1970s it was down to 4,000 and today it is half of that. In 1940, the U.S. population was about 132.2 million. It is now 342 million. Scale matters; today there are more than 200 million more Americans but your chance of seeing a serious film have decreased by over 60 percent.
Art films do exist, but very few are made in America and even fewer are screened here. I, of course, exaggerate to suggest that theaters are dead, but for much of the USA that’s only mild hyperbole. One-third of all US movie theaters are concentrated in just three markets: Los Angeles, New York, and Dallas-Fort Worth. To add perspective, Massachusetts is the most-educated state in America. In the Pioneer Valley where I live, if you combine Amherst and Northampton, a whopping 70 percent of residents have graduate degrees. I wonder how few Heartland and Rocky Mountain towns have access to serious cinema.
As hipsters age and start paying their own bills, expect theaters to take a big hit. A generation hypnotized by their phones is one culprit, but Hollywood tripe is another. Cities such as London, Montreal, and Paris still have cinemas, a further indication that film has migrated. For the record, the nations with the highest numbers of movie tickets sold are (in order): India, China, and Singapore. When Hollywood celebrates itself at Oscar time, it is also talking to itself.
Rob Weir
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