See you at the cinema

To save time and have better seat, I always try the earliest showing time possible in the morning to go to the cinema. No different with this time with First Man, thus we had a pretty small audience and and me and another very old guy were the only two sitting through the whole post-credits of this film. Naturally we met each other ... in the WC afterward, praising the film (First Man is a good one, in my opinion, and his opinion also) and on the way out he shared with me his whole "watching schedule". It turned out that he bought the AMC membership (almost 20 bucks per month for three films per week, any format and showing time - a pretty cheap deal given the fact that IMAX 2D ticket for early morning sessions is already at 12 bucks, I could afford to buy the membership, though - impossible to find time to go to the cinema three times per week when I can hardly arrange time to watch one per month) and he watched almost every single film that comes out every month. He likes Lady Gaga's A Star Is Born, found The Sisters Brothers so so, and enjoyed The Equalizer 2, every film title that he watched, he wrote down in a yellowish piece of paper, with sign to indicate whether he likes it or not. Maybe he doesn't know that he can easily do that on IMDb or Rotten Tomatoes these days without having to keep a paper note all the time. Doesn't really matter, though, as he seemed to really enjoy his retirement (I suppose) going to the cinema. Maybe that was the reason why he bade farewell to me by saying "See you at the cinema". I'm not sure whether he knew, but that sentence really moved me, as it made me remember my favorite film critic Roger Ebert, who wrote his final piece on his website in March 2010 under the title See you at the movies, only a week before passing away due to terminal cancer. I miss Ebert's writing, he knew everything but never tried to show off his knowledge with reviews full of technicalities or anecdotes, rather his reviews were often very easy to read, with clear statement of whether or not he likes the film, since he really just wants to share his love (or in rare cases, hate) of films with his readers. I am just an amateur in his field (and forever will be), but always try to write something with similar spirit. At the end of the day, we watch film with different purposes, some to kill time, some to entertain, some to reflect, it is totally unnecessary to impose your idea, your opinion of a film upon others. As your experience watching a film is unique, the only thing we can, and should share after watching one is that we gain something, joy, knowledge, good memory while not wasting our time, and money for that film. 

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See you at the movies by Roger Ebert.