Films that felt more like going to an event vs just watching a movie?

Star Wars

Sex and the City 2.

I saw Purple Rain in a packed theater the night it opened. We clapped and carried on like it was a concert. Great fun.

R2 no. But yes to the first one. I remember women showing up the the theaters dressed up like the characters.

Rocky Horror Pictureshow

Da Sound a Music

Any of the Star Wars movies

Toy Story (the first one)

Finding Nemo

The Incredibles (the earlier Pixar movies were definitely an event)

Les Mis (saw it on opening day, Xmas Day 2012, theater was packed)

It's hard to get excited for a movie because it's hard to avoid massive spoilers the day it opens. In some cases, they will release promotional materials that spoil the movie and that too will cut back on the excitement and anticipation. On the other hand, films only play in theaters for 3-4 weeks now which is not enough time to really build momentum so that's not good either.

In the past, people didn't have so many hours of entertainment at their fingertips, weren't spoiled before the movie came out, didn't have rotten tomatoes that could kill a movie's hype within minutes, and had to wait months for the next blockbuster to come out.

City Lights (1931)

I took a photo of the Dominion Theatre marquee - Tottenham Court Road, and I have still the programme sheet (Spike Milligan doing the voices, Robert Parrish who played the paperboy did a mini-introduction on stage) and the larger programme written by Chaplin biographer David Robinson.

The Wizard of Oz

Jaws. Opening night.

We didn't know what hit us.

All About Eve

On DL it’s The Ten Commandments.

Anything on Cinerama. I remember "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" and driving into Hollywood to the Cinerama Theatre.

Another one was 2001. I took my girlfriend to see 2001: A Space Odyssey for her 16th birthday.

I went to see Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins for my 6th grade graduation celebrations.

For my parents it was a big night out when they went to see Cleopatra (also in Hollywood).

And then, every L.A. city middle school student was bussed to see Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet. Sublime.

Gone with the Wind Scrooge Grease The Color Purple African Queen The Red Shoes Halloween

The roadshow release of CLEOPATRA!

Twister

Raiders series

Harry Potter!

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Harry Pottah

The original Jurassic Park. Tickets were sold out opening weekend at every theater in town

A lot of people tried to make Magic Mike an event.

My whole family going to see Fiddler on the Roof at the Cinerama Dome and Close Encounters on Hollywood Blvd. They would even sell glossy programs to movies like these when they first opened. I have the program for Fiddler still.

E.T.

Titanic

R21 I was trying to think of that name. You are right. My friends all went to dinner and then saw that movie. I refused to go because I knew both they and the movie would be obnoxious

Anything with music by:

Mancini

Legrand

Mandel

Morricone

R26, or John Williams.

The mega success of Titanic. Fangirls and older women (and maybe men) were seeing that movie multiple times. I remember Titanic was playing in theaters for months, longer than the average movie. People were going hysterical over Leo, he was like a young god.

The original Star Wars.

Beauty and the Beast

Titanic

The Crying Game

Jurassic Park

Andy Warhol's Kitchen, In the Realm of the Senses, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Silence of the Lambs, Maurice, theatrical re-releases of Gone With The Wind, those awful Koyaanisqatsi movies with live orchestra, the wonderful Metropolis with live orchestra, The Exorcist, Cruising, going to a revival house to see shockers like Triumph of the Will, Freaks, etc.

R28 TITANIC was the #1 movie at the box office for 15 weeks straight! It opened in December and by the time the Oscars rolled around in late March, it was still #1! No wonder it won Best Picture. It was finally unseated in April by the LOST IN SPACE movie.

I think TITANIC appealed to most everyone. Those who enjoy costume dramas. Those who enjoy forbidden love romances. Those who enjoy upstairs/downstairs storylines. Those Titanic fanatics, because Cameron was a stickler for being accurate about the ship's design and its sinking. And those (mainly straight men who were dragged) who love disaster/action-packed extravaganza.

Then, of course, there was the Leo-mania! I remember ET or one of those entertainment news channels did a segment about girls/women going back to see it just for him. I think they imagined themselves in Kate's place. Poor Kate! No one was decorating their bedroom walls or lockers with her pictures unless it was a TITANIC still or Leo was in the shot.

When AVATAR came out and became the highest-grossing film, many people tried to compare it to the TITANIC phenomenon, but it just wasn't the same. For one, nobody went because of the Aussie lead (forgot his name) or the love story.

Blair Witch Project. We waited in line forever at the Angelika and had to go drinking afterward.

My most memorable movie "event" was seeing Scarface 1932 in a revival house in the 80s. I was young, it was PARIS, the print was impeccable, the volume was LOUD. That movie is viscerally violent and sexy, and we could smoke while it washed over us.

R34 smoke what?

ET

Whenever the line for a movie twists around the outside of a theater and you feel like you're waiting to get on a ride at Disney the film becomes more of an event.

The Lord of the Rings movies

Saw the original Jurassic Park in Westwood, CA on opening night and it was like a rock concert. Found out the next day that Spielberg was sitting in the back row watching the audience reactions.

Also saw Tim Burton's Batman in the same theater and it was a similar experience.

I no longer live in LA but I've seen movies in many cities and none were as fun as seeing them there.

I myself never saw it, but I would think Saturday Night Fever filled the bill.

[quote]Saw the original Jurassic Park in Westwood, CA on opening night and it was like a rock concert. Found out the next day that Spielberg was sitting in the back row watching the audience reactions.

I was 13 when I went to see JP with my mom and a buddy of mine here in Mass. It was the second weekend after it opened, but the theater was still packed. The audience's reaction was like being on an amusement park ride. It was incredible! I had never witnessed that before. It made it so much fun.

Chicago

Fame and Nashville.

Don't be silly OP, nothing in the last 30 years since home video took off. Before that, blockbusters were made by repeated viewings. Now you can buy any movie for less than a movie ticket in 90 days. Standing on line for two hours to get your favorite seat and then doing it all again next weekend made it an event.

Dr Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia. The movies start with an overture, and have an intermission. Probably for the smokers.

The Blair Witch movie was over-hyped.

Avatar, with its 3-D.

The Dark Knight Rises, July 20, 2012, Aurora, Colorado

I occasionally used to have a friend over to watch old movies. We watched “Death of a Salesman”, and it so disturbed him that he quit his Engineering job to go to art school, two hours away, and become an artist. It was life changing for him.

I never saw Titanic or Avatar or most of the blockbusters of the past 20 years or so especially comic book hero films. I only saw the recent Batman and Supergirl films for the Henry Cavill eye candy. I do love Star Wars though.

Earthquake in Sensurround

Batman Returns. Pfeiffer was electric!

[quote] It was finally unseated in April by the LOST IN SPACE movie.

I seem to recall it was number one for a week. Those bubble-headed boobies!

The original “Hairspray” and “The Brady Bunch Movie” on their opening weekends because the theaters were packed with John Waters fanatics and Brady Bunch fans.

Rear Window

Actually, it was an event because it was shown at the Ziegfeld Theater for as a one night only homage

Bonnie and Clyde

R21 I considered including Magic Mike cause some people did, in fact, try to make that film an event. Women were lined up in groups for that one, some even bringing their daughters to see it too (like 7 and 8 year olds smh). At my showing there was all women and me, my female friend and one older gay gentleman. So me and that gentleman were the only males there, and women would cheer, scream and some even stood up dancing and throwing dollar bills at the screen.

R32 Avatar was an event all its own. It was INCREDIBLE. I never experienced anything like it since and never before. The only thing that came close to it was The Dark Knight and Batman Returns.

And even then they didn’t have that feel from Avatar, where people literally stood up cheering when the bad guy died and gave a standing ovation at the end

“GIANT” was also a huge deal and an event, a big part of that being the late James Dean and George Stevens being the Spielberg of his time.

Empire Strikes Back had HUGE lines to get in which became commonplace with LotR, Potter. Avatar was cool 3D. Finding Nemo at the drive in was chaos, every kid in the tri county area was there, couldn’t even see/hear Hulk well on our screen. RHPS definitely - sad many college kids where I am are clueless about it. Several have asked me what the big deal is.

RHPS?

When Urban Cowboy premiered in Houston in 1980(?), it was a huge deal--Travolta was the biggest star in the world at the time and thanks to really shrewd marketing, Gilley's, which was basically a dance hall in a warehouse off the Sam Houston Tollway, was a national phenomenon. A lot of locals whinhad been extras in the film were on hand, including my uncle who you can kind of see in one shot, intersecting for a moment with Hollywood because they were farm kids who went in search of bigger paychecks in the oil fields and shipping channel.

It happened to coincide with the height of the oil boom and the shift in Texas from being a primarily rural to urban state. It was very zeitgeist-y--the popularity of Dallas springboarded off it and there was a resurgence in c&w music and Western fashion. For about 6 months there was no escaping Looking For Love In All the Wrong Places on the radio.

This type of thing used to last a lot longer, unlike now where there's a massive publicity blitz for a week and then on to the next thing.

Only thing I remember blowing up like that was Brokeback Mountain--the buzz seemed to come from the viewers in that case, not manufactured by publicists, and it lasted quite a while, almost 6 months. I also saw a corresponding bump in interest in "alt" country and roots music from that.

R57 RHPS !

Thanks, R59. I should’ve known that.

R58, Gaylynn I will be the first king of the gay utopia.

Rocky Horror Jaws Titanic The Matrix

"Arlington Road." At the end of the movie, which we saw in a movie theater in Westhampton, everyone in the theater clapped.

South Park: Bigger, Longer Uncut

I remember people standing in long lines at the arthouse movie theaters to see The Gods Must Be Crazy. It was like nothing anybody had ever seen before but I am sure if I watched it today instead of laughing I would be disgusted at its racism.

Powertool. The marketing began half a year before its release and no one knew anything about the star except that single marketing image. So it created enormous buzz. With all of today's cheap and cheeries, you couldn't do that today.

Of course, it is hardly the immortal Golden Years classic of Dawson's Fifty Load Weekend, and its wooden star was but a cock puppet compared to Dawson – the most elusive shimmering star since Garbo.

Someone upthread mentioned Earthquake - in Sensurround! - and I seem to remember as a kid that was a very big deal. It was kind of event cinema because of this big special sound effect that claimed you’d feel like you were in an actual earthquake. In reality - not so much. And the film wasn’t very good. But the whole thing was event cinema and a lot of fun and anticipation at the time.

I remember the excitement about going to the opening night of Star Trek: The Motion Picture back in - 1979 I think? I was a teen trek fanatic - and it seemed like a dream come true that all our old favourites were coming back! I think the big theatre where I was held around eleven or twelve hundred people - and it was sold out and packed with fans. Again - the movie wasn’t that great! - but we were so excited and happy to hear riffs on the old theme and see the characters - and the souped-up special effects! - that I don’t think anyone was very critical on the night...

After Star Wars had been such a hit - the opening night to Empire was a pretty big deal too.

Some movies were big hits when I was young and there was a lot of buzz around them at the time - and going to see them was considered a really big deal - almost acrite if passage. Felt like all the kids had their parents take them to see Mary Poppins when it was out - and even our end of year school musical presentation that year was full of numbers from it. Later on I vaguely remember hearing the young and cool teachers from my school all talking about going to see cabaret and discussing it...

I’m from Australia - and we had heard that raiders of the lost ark was huge in the US - but hadn’t started yet here when we headed to the States for a science fiction worldcon. When we got there - we were desperate to see it - but it had finished it’s downtown run and a bunch of us had to cab it out to the middle of nowhere in the burbs to see it - so worth it tho! Exhilarated!

And later on at another wirldcon - on labor day weekend - they did a late night free screening of the hit of the summer that everyone had already seen and loved - who framed roger rabbit? Of course - it hadn’t started in Oz yet either - and seeing it with such an appreciative audience who really got it and held it such affection was a fantastic experience.... great memories!

You sound fun, R67.

The Exorcist.

It was the early 70s and The Exorcist had been the no. 1 book in the country. When it was made into a movie, people were standing in long lines to see it. We never saw a horror movie like that. (And it still remains one of the most scariest movies) There were stories of people who died of a heart attack while watching it and others suffering from panic attacks and had to be carried out by ambulance.

I remember my roommate was reading the book and she freaked out because she heard tapping on the window and no one was there. She couldn't sleep for days. People were really spooked by the book and the movie.

R69 yes people were passing out it was so scary to them.

Most people today will say it’s not scary but that’s because we are desensitized. Back then this was new to people and we were still mostly a Christian nation.

Return of the Jedi. I almost barfed I was so excited.

I'm an old fuck so I remember getting dressed up to go downtown to see movies when it had the feel that say going to the (live) theater does. Ones that stick out to me are: How The West Was Won (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), The Sand Pebbles (1966), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1966). Of course they were all of epic proportion which led to the feeling of attending an event.

Surely Gone with the Wind qualifies. An older woman I know only went once, refused to see it again on tv, said it would sully the grandeur she remembered from the theater.

Ten years ago, I read one of Roger Ebert's books where he talked about going to see GWTW when it was re-released in the late '60s and how disappointed he was that they cut it to make it fit a widescreen and so you lost a lot of the picture.

In my lifetime?

Titanic obviously.

Royal Tennebaums was electric. Feeling of an instant classic unfolding in front of you. Mind you, this was a cinephile audience.

Batman Returns - full summer promo for what now feels like a very quirky little movie. Total event.

Silence of the Lambs. I was in Junior high. Female teachers told us we wouldn't see a female character like that very often. It had an impact beyond the thrills. Everyone in my suburb was talking about it at adult gatherings. Still a shockingly left field piece of work.

Which brings up Thelma and Louise of course ..

I remember the 1978 Superman being like that. State of the art special f/x and Marlon Brando!

I saw it twice.

The trylon in Minneapolis recently showed Lawrence of Arabia on a big screen. I took a few friends and my boyfriend who had never seen it. I explicitly said you need to do this once. We smoked a joint before. It was magnificent. They talked about it for weeks after, said it was like being hypnotized.

Any new Star Wars film

All those Lord of the Rings movies

Superman, Ben Hur, The Titantic, The 10 Commandments,

"A Hard Day's Night."

Any of the big '60s roadshow events -- "Sound of Music," "The Music Man," "Funny Girl," et. al.

I became a big fan of the LOTR movies. Each movie was a big event for me. Before the 2nd movie came out, I drove all the way to LA to a tiny bookstore to have Viggo sign the LOTR book. He was so handsome, I almost fainted.

The Titanic

A local museum showed "Blade Runner" a while back and it was a good crowd of devoted fans. It felt like a private exclusive experience.

And I heard sniffles in the end when Rutger dies.

[quote]yes people were passing out it was so scary to them. Most people today will say it’s not scary but that’s because we are desensitized. Back then this was new to people and we were still mostly a Christian nation.

Plus there is a big difference seeing a movie in a ( at the time ) huge packed movie theatre as opposed to seeing on TV with the lights on and everyday life going on around you.

I saw Invasion of the Body Snatchers in the Bay Area when the remake came out in the 80s. My boyfriend and I did mushrooms and we sat there frozen with our mouths hung open the entire movie. When it was over we ran home like the wind because we thought someone might be chasing us. It still feels like an event.

CMBYN

Titanic, as much for the film itself, great as it was, but also for seeing it in the theatre onboard the old QE2 at the start of its 1998 round-the-world cruise. The Titanic itself was built and operated by the White Star Line, a shipping company that was later (1930's) merged into what became the Cunard White Star Line which ran the Queen Elizabeth 2. I thought Cunard had balls - or else a great sense of humor - to show it onboard one of their ships even before it went into wide release.

I guess it meant a bit more to me because as a 6th grader in 1962, I interviewed one of the few remaining survivors, a woman named May Futrelle, for my elementary school newspaper on the 50th anniversary of the tragedy. Her husband Jacques Futrelle was a popular author of the time who died when the ship went down. I don't remember much of what she said except that it was very cold that night. She was in her 80's when I met her, wore a shawl to stay warm, and used an ear trumpet to listen to my questions.

I remember when TITANIC came out, there were still survivors who were teens/young adults when the tragedy occurred. I thought that was cool. The last survivor died in 2009, but she was only 2 months old when the ship sank. It makes me sad that there are no longer people around who remember the turn of the 20th century. Currently, the oldest person alive is a Japanese woman born in 1903.

Another Exorcist tale. I was a pothead college student in the early 70's when this movie came out. As mentioned upstream, this movie was heavily hyped pre-release. I think it may have made the cover of Time magazine, which in the pre-internet days was the nation's barometer of "major events". The Catholic church had initiated campaigns against this movie and its premise. Newspapers carried stories of movie goers fainting, going into convulsions, etc and being carried out of the theaters on stretchers.

So naturally, a couple friends and I decided in would be great fun to get really stoned before seeing the movie. We realized what a mistake that was during the opening credits when the movie's theme music ("Tubular Bells") started. Before the first levitation / head spinning scene, we were utterly freaked out and remained that way for the entire movie. Good times!

Opening weekends for "Brokeback Mountain" and "Evita," when the theater was filled with gays and the opening weekend of "Fahrenheit 911" when the theater was filled with enraged liberals like me.

The early 2000's had a ton of event films in a row. Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Spider-Man, X-Men (the start of the Marvel movie bonanza), Star Wars. There hasn't been anything like it since. There may have been event films since then (Avatar, The Avengers, The Hunger Games), but nothing to the extent of the amount of films and the ubiquity of it at the time. Once the last Avengers film is released next year, there will be a major downturn in the movie business and we may never see an event film in our lifetimes again after that. Sad that future generations won't be able to experience it for themselves.

Gladiator

Brokeback Mountain

The original Halloween. 1978. A friend and I saw it before any reviews came out in Chicagoland. We left the movie as trembling, frightened little boys. We were 18 at the time. By the following Friday it was selling out to screaming audiences because Roger Ebert gave the film 4 stars. Even a second and third movie theater viewing I was still scared shitless. Same thing for the first Alien movie in 1979.

R94 I love the original Halloween and still find it incredible creepy and scary. It’s the only one in the franchise I find scary.

A lot of it has to do with how atmospheric that one is and the directing/angles and of course the acting, which never felt over the top or campy.

CYMYN

[quote]Another Exorcist tale. I was a pothead college student in the early 70's when this movie came out. As mentioned upstream, this movie was heavily hyped pre-release. I think it may have made the cover of Time magazine, which in the pre-internet days was the nation's barometer of "major events".

It was also a huge blockbuster book and seems even today when a popular book is adapted the movies become an event like Harry Potter, Twilight and Fifty Shades Of Grey.

Dude Where's My Car (2000) - as part of the Ashton Butcher Film Retrospective.

Fifty Shades of Grey was a publishing event no-one had seen the likes of before, at least in our lifetimes. It was selling 100,000 copies a day at one point. Consignments would be delivered to stores daily and there'd be a feeding frenzy and they'd sell out in minutes. It was actually insane. I worked in publishing for a long time and never saw anything like Fifty Shades.

R99 I know. I manage a place where we sell books and Fifty shades was always selling out. Shocking as it’s a terribly written book.

The Godfather (1 and 2 but not 3).

Laura with Gene Tierney

Devil Prada 2006.

Grease. People were lined up around the block to see it.

I didn't see the Sex and the City films, but I remember the first night of one of them at the multiplex when I was in line to see another film. There were tons of women and their besties dressed up like the four NYC career gals of the small screen. They looked ridiculous.

R105 that’s the first. Happened here in NYC too. Was ridiculous.

It hasn't hit this list yet, but years ago Disney made a big to-do about "Dick Tracy". It starred Warren Beatty, Madonna (singing songs written by Sondheim), Mandy Patinkin and a host of other Hollywood starts (most under tons of make-up to look like Chester Gould's gangsters and criminals).

The marketing blitz was huge - friends and I went to the first midnight showing. The movie theater was packed. We were so excited (I loved DT growing up, own a hardcover book of celebrated cases) and so disappointed by the end.

Man there's a project that did not work out as planned.

Sondheim's music is very good though.

oops - apologies, R107 should read, "host of other Hollywood stars"

R107 didn’t Dick Tracy ultimately flop? And I remember Madonna getting the part after Sean Young got herself fired.

On the more see side: Schindler's List.

Growing up The Sound of Music was it.

Godfather part one

Star Wars

ET

Dick Tracey won Sondheim/Madonna an Oscar, but I can see in hindsight it really wasn't as good as the hype.

R109 it was a big disappointed to Disney, who were hoping to surpass BATMAN's gross ($251 million stateside, $160 million overseas, on a $35 million budget) from the previous year. DT grossed $103 million in the US and $59 million overseas on a $47 million budget.

Also, BATMAN was the #2 film of 1989 (after INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE); DT didn't even crack the Top Ten in 1990. Heck, HOME ALONE, PRETTY WOMAN, and DANCES WITH WOLVES were the Top 3 films (in that order) of the year.

[quote]And I remember Madonna getting the part after Sean Young got herself fired.

No, Sean Young was originally cast as 'Tess Truehart.' Beatty said she was wrong for the part, so he dropped her. Later, she said that she was fired because she would not put out for Beatty.

Madonna practically begged to play 'Breathless Mahoney' and worked for a very low salary. She didn't even get paid $1 million.

Stupid Sean Young. She destroyed her own career.

Didn’t she sue Beatty and all? She ended up losing lol

There is quite a distinction how "eventful" movie releases were pre and post cable, vhs and dvd....in the "olden" days, the event was created by the public, as opposed to the media and the studios manufacturing the event nowadays.

[quote]Madonna practically begged to play 'Breathless Mahoney' and worked for a very low salary. She didn't even get paid $1 million.

She more than made up for it with the "inspired by " soundtrack featuring a little ditty called "Vogue".

[quote]Plus there is a big difference seeing a movie in a ( at the time ) huge packed movie theatre as opposed to seeing on TV with the lights on and everyday life going on around you.

Yes. All those asshole co-audience members. Thanks, but no.

[quote]Brokeback Mountain

Not where I saw it, at a multiplex. No movie is an event at one of those places.

When "Funny Girl" premiered in Boston in 1968 at the Cheri Theaters, it played on all three screens.

"Last Tango in Paris" premiered in Boston in 1973 with mandatory reserved seating.

R116, the "I'm Breathless" soundtrack also peaked at #2 on Billboard 200.

THE GODFATHER. The book was a sensation, and my best friend and I had both read it. We were lucky enough to see it in a large theater with a big screen. It did not disappoint. From the first second, when that screen went black, with that voice that said, "I believe in America," and then the first shot of the nearly unrecognizable Brando. Not to mention the horse's head!!

We were GLUED to the whole thing, and actually stayed to see it twice!

I also stood in long lines for THE EXORCIST; it was damp and drizzly, but the line wrapped all the way around the theater. I was way back in the line by a side door, where they were exiting the previous audience. People were coming out looking shell shocked; people in the line were yelling out, "What was it like? How was it??" and only one guy just said, "You won't believe it," and walked on. The rest of them looked like they had PTSD.

R122 my stepdad always takes pride in that he saw the film and sat through the entire thing. But his friends he went with al walked out throwing up when her head spun. One passed out he said. But he stayed in lmao.

Silence of the Lambs for me. It was at the IFC in NYC opening night, Valentine’s Day and cold as fuck, but you had to wait outside for nearly a hour to get into the theater. Munching on homemade Valentine’s Day cookies for dinner. Then the movie, which was long, but thrilling, especially when Clarice goes up to Buffalo Bills door, but you think she’s at another house and the FBI SWAT team is about to discover an empty house.

Seeing Lucille Ball in "Mame" after Easter Sunday dinner in 1974.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch - didn’t get to see it on Broadway, but it was (is) an amazing movie. It is hard to watch now because of how emotional it makes me.

Elder gays will remember the long lines to see "Love Story" in 1970. It took me three attempts to finally see it, kept selling out and dozens would be turned away.

I wanted seeing Schindler's List to seem like an event, so I went on opening day to that big theatre on Connecticut Avenue in Chevy Chase, DC, thinking it was still just one intact, huge theatre.

WRONG!

They had created a 'theatre #2' on the second floor, and they crowded us all into it since it was something like 11 AM. It was a cold and rainy day, so there were mostly homeless people. There was a woman sitting behind me wearing the noisiest plastic raincoat, which she refused to remove (I asked). Up on my right and behind me, a probable holocaust survivor moaned through the entire movie.

It was an event, alright. But the opposite of the kind you meant, OP.

Brokeback Mountain was an event for me. It was the first film I can remember that everyone I knew was talking about and everyone had seen it. It's not perfect but there was a hell of a lot of 'buzz' about it at the time.

Avengers Infinity? What kind of event was that? It was probably playing on every screen at the multiplex, hour after hour.

Little Darlings was an event film. We all had the day off school and it was rated R.

I hadn't been to a theatre in ten years when I saw Brokeback Mountain. I had the great good fortune of sitting next to some asshole teenage girl who kept looking at her cellphone. I did not go back to a movie theatre until Manchester by the Sea, by which time theatregoers had become somewhat less assholescent.

I go somewhat regularly again, but it never feels like "an event." Being forced to sit next to people eating French fries and nachos may have a lot to do with that. It will always be more of an ordeal than an event.

Evita. Not the best movie, but I was 18, recently exploded into my gayness, a friend was obsessive about Madonna, and we went to a movie theater set up like a stage theatre, complete with balcony, etc. Someone was taking photos with a flash during the “Don’t Cry for Me” balcony scene. It was ridiculous.

Maybe because I was a kid, but these seemed special to me:

SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER

GREASE

R132, I saw the much anticipated "Brokeback Mountain" at the upscale Loews Cinema on Tremont Street in Boston the weekend it opened. Walking to my seat, a huge rat ran in front of me. I swore off seeing movies in theaters after that, until "A Star is Born" a month ago.

R131, For me, "Little Darlings" was an event because of Armand Assante's hairy chest.

Titanic was an event for me because I saw it after it had already been accepted as iconic, and although I thought it was a pretty lame movie overall it did have a grand, spectacular movie artifice thing going on. Also, I sucked off my boyfriend in the car before we went into the theater and that made for a memorable moviegoing experience.

Fatal Attraction. This was a movie where the insane audience reaction added to the experience. If you saw that movie in a packed theater, it was so fun and exciting.

Yep - r38 - Fatal Attraction became one of those films that you had to see because everyone else you knew was seeing it and everyone was talking about it - so of course you wanted to know what it was like and all about - and remember - in those pre-internet days - you couldn’t just google up dozens of reviews and trailers! You had the review in your local paper - and if you missed that - you didn’t have many other options! Maybe some screen magazines or whatever...

So yeah - many of the big hits just instilled curiosity the more family and friend talked about them, like fatal atttaction.

Basic instinct was another must see - as silence of the lambs. And in a lighter vein- ghost, dirty dancing. Working girl - just big hits that grew as word of mouth helped make them popular.

Also - I remember when I was young - a friend at school who loved drawing and animation - had several really elaborate program books his grandmother and grandfather had bought (?) when they’d been to see big Disney films many years before. Song of the south Fantasia etc - so they must have been a pretty big deal in their day to merit doing that - surely?

"A Hard Day's Night" wins this thread, for an entire generation.

"Woodstock."

"Cleopatra."

Paranormal Activity -Even though most people talk shit about it now, it was a huge deal back then. With all the advertisements showing everyone in theaters screaming and covering their faces, people thought it was going to be the scariest movie ever made and they couldn't wait to see it.

Cloverfield -Another movie with a very clever ad campaign. It was interesting how they didn't show the monster so people didn't know exactly what it was about. Was it a natural disaster? Was it Godzilla? After the first trailer (which didn't even show a title, only a release date), everyone had to get online and say their theory.

For example, when one character said "I saw it! It's alive! It's huge!" in the trailer, one person mistakenly heard "I saw it! It's a lion! It's huge" and so the theory of a giant lion terrorizing New York City was born. Then people were taking frames from the trailer and looking for shapes in smoke. It was all so fascinating.

R63, What?! Why would anyone applaud when-----SPOILER ALERT!-----

the good guy got blown to smithereens?! The Bad Guys WON! Was everyone there a RWNJ??

I mean, you DID grasp that the new neighbors AND the (not actually killed) college gf were Timothy McVeigh types, right? That the coda of them talking to reporters and each other was all lies to blame THE GOOD GUY, who had discovered their RWNJ activities, including the Hitler Youth-style "Scouts"?

Did they clap at the end of "The Parallax View," also?!

I saw The Shining on opening night at the Bruin Theatre in Westwood, CA, late spring 1980. The was so much buzz around that movie! A very memorable night. And this was back when Westwood was still a thing.

Interesting tidbit: One of the trailers before The Shining started was for the first Airplane! It started out with the screen an ocean-like expanse full of dark, ominous clouds, with the tail of the plane cutting through them, slowly coming from the back to the front, with the 'Jaws' theme sound bite quietly playing over it. The image was so spooky/creepy that at first the packed theater audience thought was the start of The Shining, "Hooray! It's starting!" Alas, the spontaneous reaction of cheers and whoops was quickly retracted.

I remember going with my father and older brother to see "Psycho" when it was first released. They wouldn't let anyone in the theater during the last ten minutes, so we had to wait in the lobby and listen to the SCREAMING. I was already terrified before I even got in the theater.

I saw LOVE STORY in a large theater downtown; some hag in the back was SOBBING OUT LOUD through the entire last half hour! I mean sobbing, snorting, nose blowing, hiccups, the whole nine yards. The local TV stations did spots where they would interview people coming out of the theater still crying, and it was written up in the newspaper.

I guess you had to be there.

[quote]Fatal Attraction became one of those films that you had to see because everyone else you knew was seeing it and everyone was talking about it

That was never a persuasive reason for me to see a movie.

r145 Obviously she hadn't read the novel.

[quote]Yes. All those asshole co-audience members. Thanks, but no.

Sorry Babe, in the good old days you could hear a pin drop in a movie when the audience wasn't laughing or in the case of "The Exorcist" screaming. There was a time when theater had real ushers and matrons who policed kiddie matinees who trained kids how to act in a theater. Seeing an event picture with a huge sold out audience was half the experience you could never recreate at home. It was the advent of cable TV and home video that people went to the theater acting like they were in their living room, then add a big dollop of cell phone on top to ruin it all.

I remember those days, r148. I miss them.

People dressed up to go to the movies, too. And the theater.

[quote]People dressed up to go to the movies, too.

I didn't. That's why things changed. There was no reason for that.

"Wait Until Dark." They turned off all the lights in the theater during the climactic scene (to simulate what the blind heroine was going through.) Scary as hell!

This is a gay site and no one has mentioned Mommie fkin Dearest yet. People were literally dying to see this comedy masquerading as a melodrama.

Excuse me??? I was THE event!!!

BLACK PANTHER. People were dressed in garb, making the Wakanda Forever arm signs and just united to see something rarely seen in cinema—a predominately black cast being shown as powerful, intelligent, dynamic and beautiful.

R154 I haven't see so many Poles mistreated since WWII.

They were literally dying to see it, R153? Really?

I saw Fatal Attraction I think it was the Tuesday night after it opened at a sold out screening at The Biograph in Chicago in 1987 - sold out on a Tuesday night! It was a lot of fun. The audience could barely recover from one jolt before another one came.

What do you want, r157, from someone who literally types "fkin"?

Blade Runner

Ridley Scott's use of light in this film is genius -

The Way We Were

R141 - yes! Paranormal activity! And Cloverfield! And add Blair witch project to the list... and maybe - back in the day - Halloween - Friday the Thirteenth - and the Shining.

Also remember back in the eighties there was a tranche of five Hitchcock ‘classics’ that had been held back (by his estate? Studio?) and hadn’t been seen in years and years (I gather they hadn’t been seen on tv even?) - there was Rope, The Trouble with Harry, The Man who Knew too Much, Rear Window and Vertigo. There was a lot of publicity and fuss made over the rolling out of the screenings - I think there was a week or two between each being screened? - and the audiences were full of Hitchcock fans. Great fun!

The two posters who mentioned the change in audience behaviour post-home video-technology - I temember at the time thinking that people in the theatre were behaving more and more like they were watching a film at home on their tv - commenting and having conversations while the film was on - drive me crazy! Really not fun to have to confront people and ask them to shut up every single time you went to the movies sheesh!

And as for R146 - lol! Well smell you! You little rebel! Just you keep dancing to the beat of your own drum...

Boys in the Sand

The Blair Witch Project. I was lucky enough to see it at the point where there was a lot of early buzz, before it got overhyped and discussed to death, because it was really a slight film that didn't hold up well at all to analysis. But at that moment it felt like we wrre all in on some hidden secret.

It helped that I saw it in an old echo chamber of an independent theater which wasn't too big, and had a sound system where one speaker was scratchy and another hummed on and off disconcertingly, and the heating system didn't work. It really enhanced the atmosphere which was really all that movie had in the last analysis. The Witch was the movie Blair Witch was trying to be.

The Blair Witch Project belongs in a thread entitled 'Watching a Film and Feeling Like You've Just Been Had' .

Batman Forever. Mediocre movie, but I was 13 when it came out and I Can remember friends skipping school to go to the movie premiere. Some other huge films that were “events” I can remember growing up...Titanic of course, the Star Wars prequels, Mission Impossible, Sixth Sense, Forrest Gump, Batman, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Home Alone, The Mask, Interview With The Vampire, The Matrix and Jurassic Park.

Waiting to Exhale...I actually found the movie kind of charming and I loved to hate on Whitney's acting anyway. But the women at work worked my nerves with the "exhale parties" and constantly playing the CD in the lunchroom on breaks. Before I transferred twelve years ago, one of the secretaries held an exhale party and by then the movie was on YouTube...

The animated films of the '90s became an event after the successes of THE LITTLE MERMAID, which kicked off the Disney Renaissance, and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, which really confirmed it. Starting with ALADDIN, (and Disney's declaration that it would release animated films annually) these films became events to look forward to., but THE LION KING, which followed ALADDIN was really its apex. POCAHONTAS and HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME had major premieres, but weren't critical darlings like the previous three. Still, they were hits (both were in the Top Ten grossers of their respective years) and lots of merchandise was sold. But HERCULES was a mess all around. Both a critical and financial flop. I remember reading articles mentioning the decline of the Disney Renaissance. MULAN fared better the following year, but by then Pixar was king. HERCULES made a lot of money and was in the Top Ten at year's end, but it was not a musical.

Tarzan was the final film of the Resaissance. R168

WAITING TO EXHALE!!!

R146, The movie "Airplane". I worked for a large company when it was first released. Co-workers were going to see it 2 and 3 times,

Star Wars Return of the Jedi E.T. Jurassic Park

With each one of these, the movie theaters were packed. There was an anticipatory buzz beforehand, which heightened the experience. The collective reactions — like the cheering in E.T when the boys take flight on their bikes above the FBI agent — were contagious. We applauded at the same time, laughed at the same time, and held our breath at the same time. The spontaneous applause at the end was joyous You really felt like you were sharing the experience with everyone else. I don’t I’ll ever experience anything like that again.

I saw Beauty and the Beast at El Capitan. It wasn’t a packed house, but being in that theatre made it a wonderful experience. There were also stills in the lobby to see how the animation was done, and there was a short holiday-inspired floor show before hand, which made the experience special.

"Manhattan Melodrama"" at the Biograph in Chicago, July 1934. As good as the movie was, it was what happened outside after that was a real bang...

> yes people were passing out it was so scary to them.

No one was passing out at The Exorcist. That was pure marketing hype.

However, a lot of morons, mostly fraus, get excited at being told by the media how they should react, and do so in mobs. You saw that with the very lame Love Story, which was marketed as an event movie, and had theatres of chronic sobbing fraus bent over helping each other out of the theatre at the end, because they'd been told to, so it became a bonding experience.

The English Patient

R174 people were.

R174, who was at every one of those screenings of The Exorcist. Wow, you had no life back then.

Disney premiered "Pocahontas" in Central Park. The NYT had a two page ad and a order form for free tickets. They had four drive-in size synchronized screens. Vanessa Williams sang 'Colors Of The Wind" on stage. Too bad it rained most of the day, you had to get there early for a place and security but that was an event!

Debbie does Dallas.

Around the World in 80 Days.

That [italic]was[/italic] an event, r180. We got dressed up and drove to downtown Montclair to see it in Cinerama. I was 5 or 6 years old.

R181 that’s so cool.

If only films were this cool still.

R181 what did you dress up as?

Amistad

The Dark Knight

r183 Cantinflas

Bohemian Rhapsody has an event feel to it.

Prometheus. I saw it the second day it came out. It was the Alien sequel/or prequel. It was a huge deal.

R188 I went to see it also but it’s second weekend. And my theater had a lot of people.

I actually liked it, although many don’t.

It’s a prequel.

So, you’re the other one who liked it, R m189. I likes it too.

Sorry, typos. R189. I liked it too.

R191 yeah it was great. People haven’t liked any Alien sequel since 2, cause even 3 is hated by many.

I remember I was a little boy (eleven) when my tutor dragged me with her friends into this supposedly great movie that was based on a great sci fi novel series. Apparently there was this big anticipation about the movie coming out. That movie was Dune starring Kyle MacLachlan, Virginia Madsen, Francesca Annis, Sting, etc.

Looking back I don't think the movie and its themes were appropriate for an eleven year old but then in school we also watched Amadeus starring Tom Hulce.

The James Bond movies.

R193 they showed us Amadeus also.

Ragtime. God, I loved that movie.

R192–I loved Alien3, especially the Director’s Cut which was fantastic. I do not care for Resurrection, however.

My mom said watching Dirty Dancing was quite the event, because the dance style was used to promote the movie beforehand. And since the dance style had the word "dirty" in it was all sorts of lurid, forbidden, and interesting.

We too watched AMADEUS in 8th grade music class circa 1993.

R197 I love the Directors Cut to 3. Not theatrical.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture was a huge deal among trekkies when it debuted. I saw it all 5 times that first night and like everyone around me, I actually paid to get in all 5 times -- I never, ever do that -- but we knew that we needed to show our support so that there might be another. RHPS as a Saturday night midnight ritual, of course. But at the Oriental Theatre in Milwaukee, the Friday midnight movie in the 80s was The Talking Heads Stop Making Sense... it was like a cross between a concert, a dance party, and a church revival hour. The Oriental also did theme nights. There was The 3 Musketeers/4 Musketeers double feature with a live action fencing club fight in the lobby between shows. And they sometimes brought in an organ to accompany certain silent films. John Waters' Polyester in glorious Smell-o-Vision. Shoah, over the course of two somber nights. In Reno Nevada, there was an old retro/art house theatre, and because of all the lounge acts in the casinos around Reno/Sparks, sometimes old movie stars (now lounge acts) would show up to give a talk with the films. I remember seeing Debbie Reynolds for Singing in The Rain and The Unsinkable Molly Brown and Don Rickles for... something. Also, The Rocketeer gave out small souvenir hand mirrors at it's premier. And the midnight premier showings of the Harry Potter movies gave out souvenirs too and were a genuine blast -- all those sweet young nerdy people showing up in Hogwarts robes -- it was like a G rated RHPS.

When you watch the sneak preview before the scheduled release and are surrounded by the die hard fans.

[quote] When you watch the sneak preview before the scheduled release and are surrounded by the die hard fans.

Wouldn't that include things like Twilight and that gasp you heard around the world when Taylor Lautner took off his shirt in the trailer for the second movie?

Lautner looks great shirtless.

His face is so unfortunate though.

"Showgirls" (1995)

You children have no idea what an evenet was. What with your weekly comic book movies opening on 10 screens every other block. Events were when the movie you wanted to see was on ONE screen in the entire state and you had to either travel and wait in line for hours or just wait weeks even months until it came to theater near you, once again a single screen and you'd have wait in line to see even there.

Birth of a Nation (1915)

General Spanky (1936

Safety Last (1923)

Why We Fight (1942)

R174, I went to a lines around the block screening of THE EXORCIST when it first opened. The theater was jammed and every seat was taken. About halfway through they stopped the film and turned the house lights on because a guy sitting in an aisle seat about halfway up was having a grand mal SEIZURE, still in progress. They had to call paramedics, who arrived fairly quickly and they made an announcement that the film would resume as soon as the guy was taken care of.

A couple of audience members, who I assume had some medical experience, were kneeling by the guy; they loosened his belt and turned him on his side once the seizure stopped. He was snoring loudly and had peed his pants. The rest of the audience was actually pretty civil and quiet during all this; today they would be screaming to turn the film back on!

OMG r208, did anyone freak out because they thought the guy was possessed from watching the film?

I wonder if one of the sequences where the screen flickers triggered his seizure.

There was some murmuring when the lights came up, but once the theater manager made the announcement that an audience member had had a "medical emergency", everybody was quiet and quite respectful. It was actually pretty early in the film, during the sequence when Regan is having all those tests on her brain with those machines. It actually didn't ruin the momentum of the film - once the lights went down and they started it back up, everybody got right back into it.

"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" You have no idea how exciting that was....

I think the last sort-of "event" movie I attended was a midnight show at the Cineramadome of "Hook," the stink bomb Steven Spielberg movie. After that I said: Never again.

Avatar was a huge deal

The opening day of "Manhattan" in New York.

Woody was a big deal then.

Free Solo

"2001: A Space Odyssey" was an event in its original release in 1968 and its rerelease in 1973. Prelude, intermission, 70 mm film, the whole works.

Dawson's 50-Load Weekend.

GIANT was an event upon release and then its re-releases.

James Dean really had that “IT”

Seeing My Fair Lady at the Criterion theater in Times Square which was like going to a Broadway show. I was a boy and had never even heard of My Fair Lady until that day and why was everybody dressed up? And why did we get assigned seats why couldn't we just sit wherever we wanted? I found it boring by the way which I no longer do.

Seeing Singin in the Rain at Radio City in the mid 70s in a gorgeous Technicolor print. I had never seen it before and it hadn't yet been anointed so I wasn't sick to death of it like I am now. But to see it for the first time under those circumstances was exhilarating like you wouldn't believe.

Mame at Radio City. Waited hours to see it on a Sunday afternoon. Friends wanted to leave at which point the line started to move. Yes its a horrible movie and I still watch It's Today on youtube because it's so macabre. But that packed Music Hall audience for some reason enjoyed it so much they applauded after the musical numbers and everyone sang along with the title song. How did those 6,000 people know the lyrics? They couldn't all have been gay.

The closing night sing along Sound of Music at the Ziegfeld. A full house of SOM fanatics exulting in its silliness and beauty. I've never walked out with an entire audience in such a sheer state of joy before or since.

It's a Mad, Mad,Mad,Mad World at the Clairidge Theatre in Montclair NJ. 1963. Reserved seats. Intermission with hideously sweet "orange" drink.

Black Panther owns this thread.

[quote]"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" You have no idea how exciting that was....

On the one sheet (poster) and newspaper ad before there was a ratings board and there is a warning .... "Important Exception: No one under 18 will be admitted unless accompanied by his parent". Yes, HIS parent.

R221 they weren't implying that the movie was too mature for girls. That's what they used to say when referring to both males and females without having to use "his or her." Males took precedence.

Return of the Jedi. I grew up in a smallish New England town. Lines for movies were never horrible. But for ROTJ, we stood in line for over two hours to see it opening night. There was a lot of excitement to see the final Star Wars chapter. Everyone at the movie was really into it. People were cheering and clapping. It reminded me a lot of the first Star Wars, except I was 9 years old for the first one. There was a magic in the air for the first one. The theater was full of kids who cheered when Luke hit the spot on the Death Star to start the chain reaction. We all left the theater exhilarated and couldn't stop talking about it. ROTJ gave us back that feeling even though we were teenagers.

[quote]they weren't implying that the movie was too mature for girls. That's what they used to say when referring to both males and females without having to use "his or her." Males took precedence.

I get it.

Sneak previews.

"Showgirls."

Indecent Proposal was a national event. I've never seen another movie so talked about, in terms of how challenging the premise was to the audience. And this was the last era for true movie stars.

God that movie caused so many discussions lmao R227

Indecent Proposal was the SIXTH highest-grossing film of 1993!

Any word about Last Tango in Paris, it's my favorite movie by far and I've read that people were SCANDALIZED by its depiction of sex between strangers. People from northern Spain actually went all the way to France to watch it. I'm curious how it was received in America, Pauline Kael made it iconic among the intellectual crowd but what about regular folks?

THE FLORA DORA GIRL.

A quiet place

I loved how word of mouth built momentum with certain movies. Theaters would play a movie for months if it was a huge hit. I remember one theater close to home played Arthur so long that when they took the letters down from the marquee you could still make out the word for a few years from the damage due to sun and light exposure. One movie I remember being a big event was Kramer vs Kramer. I can remember waiting in line and then ruining into the auditorium to try and grab the best seats ahead of the crowd.

R233 I remember JURASSIC PARK came out in June 1993 (when I was finishing up 7th grade) and wasn't released on video until October 1994 (when I was starting my freshman year of high school). I aged a lot in the interim -- both physically and emotionally -- and back then a year was forever and a day, so it felt like it was in the theaters for a lifetime!

Oh geez, R230...I thought it was gonna be Gene Kelly dancin'around the Eiffel Tower in a sailor suit.

Gene Kelly had a beautiful body.

"Deep Throat" (1972)

We know Deep Throat was a massive hit and had lines to get in to see it.

I believe NY Times wrote an article about Deep Throat making porn mainstream and popular and called it “Porn Chic”

Batman. I saw it at at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood. It was opening weekend and it was packed. People cheered so loud when the he first appeared on the screen.

R239 I remember when Batman opened everyone made such a big deal about it. Watching it today is almost embarrassing. So unbelievably bad, especially Jack Nicholson's performance as The Joker.

[quote] Gene Kelly had a beautiful body.

He's known to have a big penis too. There was mention in George Sidney's bio about him dropping his trousers and playfully whirling his cock around between takes.

R241 why would he do that?

R242 Apparently he was a fun guy who joked around on the set quite often.

Gene Kelly was very fun and EXTREMELY liberal for back in the day. I was shocked to learn he was extremely liberal and a friend to gays.

Titanic

Moulin Rouge

The Blair Witch Project

Grease (yes, I'm 47)

The London premiere of Lars Von Trier's The Idiots

The Matrix

Crash - the Cronenberg film. It was very controversial in the 90s and banned by some councils in the UK.

Gene Kelly's first wife Betsy - they married when she was 17 btw - was a Marxist and was blacklisted, Gene was more than 'liberal' politically.

R242 = millennial, horrified at the Gene Kelly dick story

R243 = forty something datalounger, blissfully unaware of R242's horror

[quote]Any word about Last Tango in Paris, it's my favorite movie by far and I've read that people were SCANDALIZED by its depiction of sex between strangers. People from northern Spain actually went all the way to France to watch it. I'm curious how it was received in America, Pauline Kael made it iconic among the intellectual crowd but what about regular folks?

I was a kid then scouring the movie sections of the NY papers. It was rated X and was a sensation more than a scandal because it opened at the beginning of the sexual revolution. Hardcore was already playing all over the country.. It opened in New York as a Roadshow Engagement, reserved seats and two shows a day and $5.00 admission. It was a critics darling and was Oscar nominated for Best Actor and Director. The Golden Globes nominated it Best Picture.

The Last Temptation if Christ by Martin Scorcese

The Passion of the Christ - Mel gibson

Now Tango is seen less a mainstream declaration of sexual openness but of young female exploitation and perverse Italian rape culture by communist sicko Bertolucci.

Kael was horribly wrong. AGAIN. Talk about loving trash and scraping the bottom of the barrel doing it.

Waiting to Exhale. The fraus of color at my office would host “exhale parties” even after the film was on network television.

That's Entertainment. Adults at the time of its release had some familiarity with the MGM musicals of the 40s and 50s, but their little gaylings didn't, and the pre-release hype was catnip to me. For ten days, our local paper ran a still a day from one of the featured musicals, and had a contest to name the stars shown and the movie. (Some were harder - I remember one with Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse but it wasn't Singin' in the Rain.) My mom and I played together. The prize was two tickets to That's Entertainment and we won. We got to see a special screening the evening before release with all the other winners. It was an EVENT!

Stars Wars was probably the biggest event-like movie I can remember along with the theatrical re-release of The Sound of Music in the 70s. Pretty much going to any movie back then was an event for us kids unless we were dropped off at the matinee. Movies weren't as disposable as they are now, and I don't know how anyone can enjoy watching a movie on their smartphone.

Huge protests outside NY's Ziegfeld Theater for The Last Temptation if Christ by Martin Scorcese

INDEPENDENCE DAY at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood on opening night, July 3rd. 11:00 or 11:30 pm showing, sold-out.

That was hella FUN! Dumb movie, but a really fun experience. I don't think I'd been to the opening day of a movie, with such a loud & enthusiastic audience, since maybe RETURN OF THE JEDI? I'm glad we went that night, and not a few days later. Even if the theater had still been packed, there wouldn't have been the same energy. There was something about the fact that it became July 4th AS we were watching the movie.

R255 TWISTER was like that earlier in the year. That spring it was declared (if not prematurely) the blockbuster of the year... then ID4 opened in July. Not surprisingly, they were the #2 and #1 films of 1996, respectively.