My trips to the cinema 2017

Choose 2017.

Choose Brexit. Choose Trump. Choose not a single day without Steven Universe in your face. Choose mass hysteria. Choose apocalypse. Choose to escape from it all.

Choose car journeys, train journeys, bus journeys. Choose Showcase, Picturehouse, BFI, Curzon, Odeon, Cineworld, ICA, Prince Charles, Embankment, Ciné Lumière, Vue, Empire, Rich Mix, Barbican. Choose renting films on iTunes with an American account because they took so long to earn themselves a UK release. Choose leftovers from 2016, skipping those you already saw that year except for La La Land because the premiere audience wouldn't stop getting up to take a dump. Choose embarassing award ceremonies from top to especially bottom. Choose Smurfy Selfie Time before every movie you see in the Spring, even when they're rated 18. Choose Q&A's. Choose festivals. Choose Flare, Sundance, FrightFest, LFF, LIAF. Choose repertory screenings. Choose 2K, 4K, 35mm, 70mm, 2D, 3D, IMAX. Choose addiction. Choose 2018 delays. Choose surprises, disappointments, guilty pleasures. Choose sequels, reboots, remakes, cinematic universes, Oscar bait.

Choose CINEMA.

Choose sexual awakening by Dev Patel's facial hair. Choose the MCU, the DCEU, the MonsterVerse, the Legoverse, the Disney remake-verse. Choose Greta Gerwig, Kristen Stewart, Zoe Kazan, Tiffany Haddish. Choose Harvey Weinstein fucking up Oscar potential for the last time. Choose anime. Choose BBFC cuts. Choose taking photos of yourself with Woody Harrelson, Kevin Smith, Christopher Lloyd and Tommy Wiseau with Greg Sestero that nobody in their right mind will give a shit about.

Choose short films, surprise films. Choose documentaries about racism, global warming, chickens, refugees. Choose live premieres, the difference being that the only other people in the Gallery seats were either guffawing at each other's banter no matter what the on-screen scenario or blabbing all the way through the first act of a tribute by one of The Voice's breakouts just because she's too voluptuous for them and not because she's super-talented. Choose Netflix controversy, animated war and Edgar Wright. Choose Despicable Me #3, Cars #3, Sony Spider-Man attempt #3, Project Itoh film #3, Rise of the Planet of the Apes #3.

Choose "I saw Dunkirk in 70mm". Choose that one Mexican tentacle film you were going to see at Flare but was prevented from doing so by a terror attack, therefore reducing your experience down to just one, and forever regret taking word from Letterboxd before deciding to see Lovesong pre-release. Choose Joe Bang. Choose #TragedyGirls. Choose Cruise. Choose trying and failing to watch decent horror with your new friends on a Sunday. Choose attending Lloyd Kaufman's double bill screening even after he defended a sexual predator, because it's at least better than suffering through 70 more minutes of Goodbye Christopher Robin. Choose feeling awkward when you're between your friends and an anime gag panders to your fetish. Choose no conclusion as to whether you were thinking too little about Blade Runner 2049.

Choose applauding Adam Sandler's presence. Choose titles you're too cowardly to read in person. Choose "yes, she fucks the fish". Choose "yes, the fish smooches him". Choose trying to concentrate on Joaquin Phoenix trying to overcome his past and addictions but the Stalls at the OLS always has a chain reaction of drunkards constantly taking a toilet break 20 minutes into a gala, and vow never to make this mistake again. Choose sitting at the front of the Royal Circle, with no need to worry about stupid alcoholics downstairs, and sit back as Greta Gerwig gives you the surprise of your life. Choose the closing gala of an Oscar baiter that not everybody will love for long. Choose Armie Hammer. Choose My Little Pony, talking Pikachu, Frozen cash-grabbing and John Cena. #ChooseKind. Choose Aaron Sorkin, Jumanji and Don Hertzfeldt, and then sit back and end it all with a Star Wars for the third time in a row, one you will hope most if not all people online will agree, "Star Wars is saved!"

Choose posting your journey onto Listal, Letterboxd, MUBI, IMDb, TMDb, Trakt, Rate Your Music, Cinematic and a thousand other ways to spew your bile across cinephiles smarter than you. Choose tweeting illiterate or typo-ridden reviews and hope that someone, somewhere cares, other than the chap who likes and retweets everything you tweet. Choose your friends not caring, because most of them are so drawn into cartoon and video game culture as well as their own fat fetishes that to them you feel like an outcast. Choose typing an overlong Trainspotting-type monologue about your experience anyway, which you'll never have to write again unless a T3 is made.

Choose being so film-crazed it puts you off your own projects, partly because a dozen of your iTunes downloads that you'll never watch take up your disk space. Choose tiredness and question why you're this addicted in the first place. Choose giving your parents and yourself hell, as you walk through the polluted streets of London, holding your breath for as long as you can, just to watch some obscure piece of art all by yourself.

Choose finding out your favourite celebrity is either dead or a pervert. Choose treating awards committees like they matter when they nominated a happy musical about P.T. Barnum where The Big Sick should've been before it even comes out (and before you end up liking it). Choose war over the self-proclaimed Smartest Film Critic in the World, Disney buying Fox, the FCC stripping your American friends of their freedom. Choose to watch your whole world fall apart at the seams and society crumble into stupidity, and watch Hollywood do exactly the same.

Choose your future. Choose your whole world's future. Choose cinema's future. Choose Life...



...but why would you want to do a thing like that?

All my trips to the cinema:
1997-2007 | 2008-9 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | Internet | Shorts | Theatre | Celluloid | Everything

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