Movie in day to day life is a must for teenagers nowadays. Everyone enjoys watching movie in a theatre snuggled into a soft seat with buttery popcorn in your lap and a sound system that feels like its channeled directly into your temporal lobe, somehow you’ll come out feeling like you had a good time.
For the global jet-setting movie junkie, these are some movie theaters that take a good experience and make it great.
- Cine Thisio, Athens, Greece
Athens is home to multiple outdoor movie theaters that crop up during the summer but none provide as majestic a view as Cine Thisio.
From your seat at Cine Thisio you not only get to view the latest blockbuster but also the Acropolis, and the Parthenon that sits on top. The best view is at night.
Cine Thisio is the oldest outdoor movie theater in Athens, built in 1935, and is usually open from April to October. Cine Thisio shows both first-run studio releases and classic movies.
- Alamo Drafthouse, Texas, United States
It shouldn’t make sense that a movie theater chain has such street cred, but Alamo Drafthouse does. Think of it as the cool kid brother movie theater.
Alamo Drafthouse started out in Austin, Texas, and hosts a whole series of events including Heckle Vision, Quote Alongs and nights where experts rip apart Michael Bay popcorn blockbusters.
But what makes the Alamo theaters really cool are its policies: no children under the age of six, no talking, an extremely strict no-cellphone policy (as this curse-laden voicemail left by an unhappy customer demonstrates) and no ads before the movie.
- Rajmandir Theatre, Jaipur, India
Head to the Rajmandir for the ultimate Bollywood experience: the national anthem at the start, a choice of expensive and cheaper seats, the three-hour Hindi flick bisected with an interlude and applaud along with the locals whenever the hero shows up on screen.
With its pink Art Deco-inspired exterior made up of waves and asymmetrical shapes, the Raj Mandir is a symbol of Jaipur, a city laid out beautifully from its founding in the 18th century.
It opened in 1976, seats around 1,200 and usually fills up.
- Kino International, Berlin, Germany
A remnant of the Cold War, Kino International dates back to Germany’s socialist period. Today Kino International boasts a well-rounded art-house program and hosts a strong list of premieres, festivals and parties.
The movie theater is situated along Karl Marx Allee, where entire blocks of buildings carry heritage status and are protected by the Denkmalschutz in Berlin.
This heritage status means that the outside facade of Kino International, along with its interior furnishings, cannot be altered.
- Hot Tub Cinema, worldwide
This London-based initiative includes your favorite films, amazing locations — and hot tubs. Punters can book a whole hot tub to share with six or eight friends.
In the summer, events take place on rooftops and in parks — in the winter Hot Tub Cinema switches to indoor locations. Across the seasons events take place in the UK, USA and Ibiza.
- Secret Cinema, Worldwide
This may be stretching the concept of the movie theater since Secret Cinema does not host events in a single physical space — the location is determined by the movie screened.
Secret Cinema is a London-based group that organizes monthly movie events shrouded in mystery. Patrons are told not to reveal the location or even the movie screened.
Once you register, you are told the day of the screening to gather at a predetermined location. From there, hired actors put on a live-action version of scenes from the movie before the finale, a theatrical showing of the movie itself.
In the past immersive cinema experiences have included transporting punters back to the ’50s, “Back to the Future”-style, and to a galaxy far, far away for a “Star Wars”-themed event.
Agencies
