The joy of going to the cinema alone

(What is up with Flickr’s new embed system!)

Den of Geek talk about the benefits of going to the cinema by yourself

I remember my first time. May, 1995. A Wednesday. A student house in Coventry, and I uttered the fateful words “anyone fancy the cinema tonight? There’s a film called Hackers that looks great”. And not one of them wanted to come, the selfish bunch. Too interested in playing Doom on their PC, watching The Bill or listening to this ‘Britpop’ stuff. They certainly weren’t busy cleaning the kitchen.

So I made my mind up, walked out of the house and settled down at the Odeon by myself. I loved every minute of the Jonny Lee Miller/Angelina Jolie electro nonsense on my lonesome. And I’ve been enjoying the joys of solo cinema for many years since.

I’ve been known to like going to the cinema by myself sometimes and the reasoning isn’t far wrong…

  • Common sense…
    I want to watch this film and I usually ask on twitter, etc. If no ones up for it, I go anyway. Last film I watched alone was Gravity in IMAX3D. Friends moaned that I was going to late in the night.
  • You get to read the free cinema magazine
    Heck no, it was a chance to sneak into other movies and see the trailers. Back in the day, there was time between the showings but thanks to the multiplexs you can literally walk out of one and into another one (the greed, means they try and fit more into less time)
  • It’s about the film
    Absolutely… Sometimes you don’t want any of the nonsense chatting, you just want the film and nothing else.
  • Together, alone
    The whole of idea of the defunked Salford Cinema Club was to go together but end up choosing the film you really want to watch. To be fair only a couple of times did we actually split up the group. But the idea was always there.
  • It’s all down to you
    Nothing better than picking the seat you want. Small ice cream and This is another reason why I quite like going to the cinema late at night because theres the minimum of disturbance from kids and punks throwing stuff around.

Some of the best films I’ve watched have been alone including Inception, The Matrix, Donnie Darko, etc… Ok not all of them have been in the cinema but they have all been in a darken room

Author: Ianforrester

Senior firestarter at BBC R&D, emergent technology expert and serial social geek event organiser. Can be found at cubicgarden@mas.to, cubicgarden@twit.social and cubicgarden@blacktwitter.io