Your memorable movie-going experiences

Good thread idea. A few that spring to mind:

* Clerks, when it first came out in 1994. It got a ton of good reviews, including four stars from Gene Siskel ... although he noted several times, "if you don't enjoy crude, sexual humor don't watch this movie." Well, a friend and I went to see it at the old-timey York Theatre, in downtown Elmhurst, Ill., at a weekday matinee. Everyone else in the theater was 65-plus. By the time Dante and his girlfriend began talking about "snowballing," my friend and I were laughing just as much at the muttering old people exiting the theater as we were at the movie.

* Titanic, seen several weeks after it came out, when the movie finally showed up at a small-town movie theater in Michigan's U.P. The ladies of Manistique, Mich., had been clamoring for this movie to be shown there, and when it finally was, they dragged their husbands/boyfriends along. So as the movie drags on and on, finally the iceberg is struck. When the boat began to sink, some people (guys) in theater literally began cheering. It was awesome!

* Zach and Miri Make a Porno: as with most Kevin Smith movies, there's a huge gross-out scene near the end. When it happened, the entire theater of 30-somethings (my wife and I included) just went bonkers, screaming and yelling, for at least 10-15 seconds. Great moment.

 

Avenger: Endgame was pretty emotional for me, I thought about the people I'd seen some of the earlier movies with, others who have died since the first one. Marvel movies and Star Wars films are about the only thing that gets me into a theater these days. Mainly because of that emotional connection with seeing it with others.
Having my mom take my brother and sisters and I to see Animal House and my mom trying to cover my younger brother's eyes (and him slapping her hand away) when Belushi climbed the ladder at the sorority still makes me laugh. First R movie I saw.

 

First R movie I saw was Police Academy. Enjoyed it throughly.

One movie that gets me a little emotional is, the original "Annie". It's the only movie I ever got to go see with my grandmother, who had a lot of physical problems and rarely went anywhere.

 

Least memorable, I guess, is Ghostbusters. I fell asleep. My girlfriend understood. It had been a long day at work.

 

Not the best experience, but OP asked for memorable: Drinking in the bar at J.T. McCord's on Valley Mills Drive until about 11:45, and the going across the street to the Lake Air Cinema to see the midnight showing of The Exorcist for the first time. I was just a bit drunk. Good times...

 

Your post triggered something I forgot about my viewing of Avengers: Endgame. Like most movies I see, I went with my wife and daughter. My daughter had been very upset about the dusting of Spider-Man in Infinity War, mostly due to her affection for Tom Holland, but it was Iron Man's death that really had her in tears. She grew up with those movies, though she had to catch up with some of them later. She was only four when Iron Man came out. It was something we've bonded over. My wife may like them, but she isn't the type to retain all the little details that fit into the ongoing story lines, so we had a sort of ritual. My daughter and I would explain the stuff we thought my wife needed to know on the way to see the movie. I don't think I had quite realized just what the character of Tony Stark meant to my daughter until I turned to my right and saw her tears.

I was sad to see the character go, but my emotional reaction to Endgame was different. I was energized. It was as close as I had come to walking out of the theater as a little kid after watching Star Wars for the first time. It wasn't quite enough to displace that first viewing of Star Wars, but in terms of favorite movie viewing experiences of my life, I realized it was now 1A and 1B.

 

• I think we went to the drive thru a couple of times before this, but Better Off Dead was the first movie I saw in an actual theater. I was 8, and my sisters let me tag along with them on a Saturday afternoon.

• The first Avengers movie was my first midnight show. It was fun to see it with a huge, enthusiastic crowd that cheered at all of the big spots.

• The first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie in 1990. I was 13, I think, and into the Turtles at the time. Me and some friends went to see it opening night and had to catch the 10 p.m. show since the first one sold out. The line at the theater was deep into the parking lot, probably several hundred people long. It sucked waiting, but we had fun with it. I remember feeling bad for the people who came to see House Party, which was the other movie playing that weekend.
A year later, we all went to see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 and the three of us were the only ones in the theater.

• I liked both Ted movies, but I didn't pay to see either one. I went to see Amazing Spider-Man early one afternoon, then saw a showing of Ted was about to start as I was walking out and sneaked in. It was the first time I'd ever sneaked into a movie.
When Ted 2 came out, I did the same thing but planned it. The end of Ant-Man lined up perfectly with the start of Ted 2. It was a tradition by that point.

 

When I saw the movie in a theater, a surprisingly high percentage of the men were wearing their Bruce gear.

 

I saw “Do the Right Thing” in a packed movie theater in Manhattan the first Friday night after it opened in 1989 (the number, another summer). Much like the movie, very hot day and the AC in the theater stopped working, which led to a real edge in the crowd. Mixed race crowd and there were strong reactions and counter-reactions to a lot of the lines throughout. From the critical scene in Sal’s through the 2 quotes at the end, I thought there was a real chance that violence would break out. Most intense movie going experience I’ve ever had.

 

Only time I cried in a movie was in the mid-50s. I was about 10 years old and the movie was The Creature From The Black Lagoon. I was scared shitless...

 

This kind of thing always reminds me of my great uncle. This is long enough ago that you could go to an early matinee and just stay in the theater all day. He would do it every time he went to the theater, even just watching the same movie over and over. In the evening, my great-grandparents would dispatch my grandmother to go drag him home. When I was little, this put a really comical image in my head. I didn't know what they looked like as children, so I pictured the adult versions of them doing this. My grandmother was not a large woman and my great uncle usually went about 300 pounds.

 

I had a friend in the '70s whose father was a producer in the adult film industry. They had a VCR and access to movies that weren't otherwise available.

We watched the Exorcist when we were 14 and my then 11 year old brother was with us and I remember it scared the crap out of him.

They lived on a gated property so he would turn off the entry gate and we would watch some of his father's work. If his mom came home, she would have to buzz in, which gave us time to pop a more appropriate movie into the VCR before she came into the house.