Empire Cinema

The good news is that, as the theatre industry dies, you can get a good seat almost any day for almost any film. Since they’re not that popular any more, they’re not as roughly treated by the populace. And since theatres are trying to improve their image and retain customers, they tend to be nicer seats, better kept, and more comfortable.
Of course the food is an utterly outrageous rip-​off. And the advertisements before the film are so bad that they literally run for about 20 minutes. I routinely plan to be 15 minutes late. I still get a good seat and I skip most of the ads. And they want £10 for the pleasure of seeing it once. It’s only £20 to own it on the day it comes out.
Theatres are like living museums. A testament to a bygone era when your home TV or theatre system sucked and the theatre was an amazing place.
You know what theatres don’t have? A pause button. My TV does. Why does this matter? The trend in filmmaking is ever longer run-​times. Blockbusters like Star Wars and Indiana Jones were 90 minutes. Today blockbusters are 120, or even 180 minutes. If you’re selling me a 2 litre bottle of coke for £8.00, i’m probably going to need the loo in the next 3 hours. My friends can come to my house, we can eat our own food, we can pause the film to talk about something, we can pause the film for a bio break, we can rewind and hear that bit of dialog that we missed.
Seriously, though. if you have a family of 4 you can rent a film in your own house and order out pizza for the same or less than the admission and parking costs. Add in buying even a modest amount of food at the theatre, and the theatre wastes more time (driving, sitting through ads), gives you less food, and makes you miss some of the film if you go to the toilet. And who are the big drivers for going to films? Kids: people who famously need the toilet a lot more often than grown-​ups do.
Anyways, that’s enough of a rant. This theatre is like all the others: it’s main attraction is you can see the film before it is released to DVD. Otherwise, it is overpriced and wastes lots of extra time.