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Andrew Ordover's avatar

I agree about seeing great films in theaters. The dark, the quiet, and maybe most importantly, the enforced, sustained attention to the screen, all make the experience radically different. And some movies just don't hold up well when reduced and fractured and stopped and started endlessly.

I DID get to see both Casablanca and The Godfather in theatres (long after having seen them multiple times on home screens), and both were glorious. I took my teenaged son and his best friend to the latter, and his friend had to leave at a certain point, because the moral horror of that movie, in an environment where she couldn't easily turn or walk away from the events, was too much for her--even for a kid who reveled in physical-horror movies. Limbs getting torn apart, she could handle. The damage to Michael Corleone's soul, she couldn't.

I'd bet anything that she wouldn't have had the same reaction on a home screen.

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