Now that the children are entering their full-time school years while I work nights, I suddenly find myself with a heap of free time early in the day during the week, and have made the most of it by sitting in a dark, noisy space watching movies.
There's always a 10am or so screening of all the big blockbusters, so of course I'm going to see Superman or Fantastic Four that way. I always liked seeing films early in the day.
Day films are in my cinematic DNA. When I was a kid, my parents would drop us off at the 2pm show at the Majestic every Saturday, no matter what was playing. I remember lots of Terrence Hill and Bud Spencer films, the Village People movie, Flashdance and Footloose, Spies Like Us, the very occasional proper blockbuster like a Star Wars or a Star Trek, or just compilation episodes of Battlestar Galactica disguised as new movies.
This was how I saw all my movies, happily giving our aching parents some time to themselves so they could go play housie or darts or just hang at the pub, in exchange for the intensity of the theater, and the glory of the lolly stand. Going to movies in the daytime was so usual, I can actually remember how weird it felt when Uncle Sol took me to my first film at night, (it was, obviously, the classic Who Finds A Friend Finds A Treasure), and coming out to see the stars in the night sky.
I always got a kick out of the indulgence of waiting the daytime hours in the cinema, even as I become an actual grown up and saw most of my movies outside work time. I was the only person in a screening of Shawshank Redemption on a Wednesday afternoon, and came out of a Friday morning showing of Twelve Monkeys as an emotional wreck, walking out of that hopelessly optimistic ending into bright light and bustling life.
Now I am back in the habit, and I might not get quite so emotional walking into the sun after an adventure with the Fantastic Four, but it does make the rest of the day just the bit more brighter, in the endlessly blinding glare of regular life.
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