Like my first, I wanted to see it at a time where it would not impact the rest of my family. That was only a partial success for The Brutalist, since I wasn't able to rejoin the other three until nearly 2 p.m. ... and have ended up paying for that in minor ways since the morning of the 31st when I saw it.
I was hesitant to ask for a second pass to see a movie, but I knew this one would really and truly impact only me and only a single night of my sleep. So when I did ask my wife, I requested that if she vetoed it, to please veto it without malice. This phrasing made her laugh and I knew she would not veto it.
See, my Nickel Boys showing was at 10:40 p.m. on Thursday night -- and that's really only the time the trailers started. The movie itself would not start until almost 11, and would not end until 1:20 a.m. In fact, such a percentage of the movie finished after midnight that I assigned the viewing date as Friday morning the 3rd rather than Thursday night the 2nd on Letterboxd.
This is a thing that never happens in Australia.
There is one theater, the one at the casino in Melbourne, that sometimes has a 10 p.m. showing. But outside of premieres of Star Wars movies and the like, Melbourne cinemas are trying to get the last screening of the night up before 9:30 p.m., and 8:45 is preferable.
LA is a different story. Though Nickel Boys is long (2 hours and 20 minutes), it was not nearly the longest movie being undertaken at the AMC 16 in Burbank at that time of Thursday night. There was a showing of The Brutalist starting even ten minutes later than that. And if my respectable attendance for Nickel Boys (about ten other people) was any indication, the 3 hour and 35 minute Brutalist probably had plenty of people resigned to staying at the AMC 16 until 2:45 in the morning, once you factor in trailers.
As it was, my showing was late enough. Because of a road closure that I wouldn't have known about if I were just feeling my way back based on my memory of these streets -- I've left my phone connected to the network since my return from The Brutalist in order to get GPS and, you know, properly communicate with people -- the normally 15-minute drive took me 22 minutes, even at well after 1 a.m., and I didn't get home until about 1:45.
And true enough, only I was affected, as I was still the first one up the next morning.
No substantive commentary on Nickel Boys right now, but I will say that it's the sort of movie with enough experimental components -- I don't want to call the whole thing experimental because that makes it sound inaccessible -- that watching it at such a late hour was probably not my best bet, and I was certainly asleep for a minute or two here and there. One small can of Pepsi Max and a single 3 Musketeers bar (another American novelty) were not enough to help me fight off the desires of my body.
But if faced with the choice of seeing the movie under these less-than-optimal circumstances or likely not seeing it in the theater at all, and only prioritizing it on video at some unknown future date, I'm glad I went with this choice.
Now just think how many more movies I could see guilt-free in Australia if they had start times like this.
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