Every year I make a semi-serious New Year’s resolution to watch more movies. There are few things I enjoy more than watching films on the big screen, and even in our era of streaming dominance, I happily leave my house several times a month for public screenings. 

The stay-at-home lifestyle of 2020 was good for my overall movie consumption but terrible for my in-person attendance. Last year I watched 150 feature-length films, which easily dwarfed the 98 films I watched in 2019, but only 10 were on the big screen. 

Although my trips to the cinema were limited, I still managed to have four memorable nights out at the movies.  

I will never forget triumphantly watching Parasite with hundreds of Cairenes the day after it won Best Picture at a notoriously local awards show

February 10th, Zamalek Cinema, Cairo

I woke up on February 10th to the news that Parasite had won the Academy Award for Best Picture. I had been hoping it would win, but was expecting the usual crushing disappointment from the Academy.

I immediately hopped onto my laptop and spent the next couple of hours watching clips of Bong Joon-ho’s endearing and moving acceptance speeches.

I first saw Parasite in December 2019 when the hype within the Letterboxd crowd had already reached fever pitch. I immediately loved the film and was eager to see it again. 

In the week leading up to the Oscars, our neighbourhood cinema was reshowing many of the nominated films. Parasite was serendipitously scheduled to play the Monday night after the ceremony, and because of the glow of the Oscar win we were able to convince a few non-arthouse friends to join us.

I had a smile on my face the entire day leading up to the movie, and it felt like such a celebration of film to enter a packed screening of a Korean Best Picture winner in Cairo. 

I am well aware of the multi-faceted criticism of the Oscars, including its overly narrow focus on American films while mostly limiting international films to a single category. 

But the Oscars maintain an out-sized symbolic importance in the wider culture, and so it was a celebratory moment when for the first time, the Academy woke up and recognized that the best film of the year was made outside of America.

We all live in the same country now: that of capitalism.

Bong Joon-ho

I can hope Parasite’s victory helps lead to a greater recognition of international films not only by the Academy, but also in the general English-speaking public. 

As much as streaming has dimmed the long-term prospects of theatrical distribution, I am at least optimistic that more people are discovering the joys of non-English movies and television while sitting on their couches at home.

Little Women was the best movie I watched while lying in bed and being served by a butler

January 9th, Enigma at Paragon Cineplex, Bangkok

I have many fond memories of going to the movies while traveling. 

I saw Avatar (by myself) in Brussels before it was released in North America, and then saw it again four months later (again by myself) when I was stuck in Berlin because of the ash spread by an Icelandic volcano. 

Another time, Jessica and I were walking around Paris when we stumbled upon a small old-fashioned cinema about to show the 1952 Marilyn Monroe film Don’t Bother To Knock, and so we bought a ticket expecting a light-hearted comedy, but it was surprisingly dark and somewhat disturbing, although very interesting. 

One of the first things I did when we arrived in Bangkok on New Year’s Day 2020 was look at the movie options, and I was particularly intrigued by the Enigma cinema, which has full-sized beds instead of seats, something which I had heard about before but had never experienced. 

Tickets to Enigma cost a ridiculous 4,000 Thai Baht (about 130 USD) per couple. This does include a light meal, unlimited popcorn and soft drinks, and a single cocktail (you would think they could throw in a couple of extra cocktails for that price!) 

Jumanji 2 was playing during the first week of our trip, a movie that held zero interest for either of us, but we saw that Little Women was going to be released in Thailand. Jessica loves both the book and the 1994 film, and she was horrified when I admitted I hadn’t read/seen them and that I didn’t even know the story. We agreed to check the showtimes a few days later and that we would cough up the money if Little Women was playing at the Enigma.

I thought this was highly unlikely, but a few days later I found myself enjoying a complimentary cocktail on the 22nd floor of our hotel in preparation for the most expensive movie of my life. 

The lobby of the Paragon Cineplex felt more like that the lobby of a luxury hotel than a movie theatre, and I am sure that any of the regular screening rooms would have been fairly luxurious. With our ticket for the Enigma screen, we were whisked through a long hallway and brought to the lounge, which opened one hour prior to the screening. We were handed menus and told to select one food item each, and we shared chicken satay and a pasta with curry sauce (both were mediocre). 

We had the lounge to ourselves and so tried out the various couches and massage chairs. As we got closer to showtime, the more confident I became that we would have the theatre to ourselves, since I thought that anyone else crazy enough to buy such an expensive ticket would also show up early to enjoy the lounge.

We entered the screening hall and plumped onto our double bed (there were about 20 overall). The beds are set up in such a way that if you are lying down you can’t see anyone else. This aura of privacy would be nice in a busy screening, but it was totally unnecessary since we had the entire place to ourselves, except for the butler whom we paged a few times with a button to bring us more pop and popcorn.

It was an outlandish experience and an absurd amount of money to spend on a movie. I probably wouldn’t do it again, but I have no regrets, especially since our travel was so limited for the rest of the year. [Jessica would like to add here that Little Women is one of the great, iconic novels that everyone should read, and that this film adaptation was a joy to watch, made even better by the luxurious cinema experience].

I also have to smile at the irony of spending so much money to watch a movie by ourselves, something we ended up doing over 100 times at home during the rest of the year. We can be thankful at least that our annual Netflix subscription cost less than this one night out! 

The scariest thing I did in 2020 was watch The Invisible Man in theatres on the day the WHO declared a pandemic

March 11th, Zamalek Cinema, Cairo

In early March 2020, my friend Alex and I were planning a boys’ night to see The Invisible Man since our wives had no interest in seeing it. The worries about Covid had only just started to percolate within Cairo’s expat community, and over 100 people had still attended a party at the Canadian Ambassador’s Residence on March 5th.

We agreed to see the movie on March 11th, the day the WHO officially characterized Covid-19 as a pandemic. Undeterred, Alex and I went to the movie, although he said his wife Mariam would force him to take a Dettol shower upon his return home. 

The cinema wasn’t very full, but we were unfortunately still close enough to some people who were talking throughout the movie. Normally I hate the intermissions that are forced into movies here, but this time I used the break to ask people to please stop talking so much (which is something I have done in cinemas throughout the world!) 

The movie was fun, had a few genuinely scary parts, and Elisabeth Moss was great. 

Later that week the cinema would close due to a massive rainstorm, and then stayed closed till July due to Covid restrictions. The showtimes posted outside the theatre stayed up for months afterward, a constant reminder of our decision for one final night out before packing it in for the rest of the year. 

Attending an outdoor screening of Nomadland after nine months of watching movies at home was the perfect reminder of the joys of the big screen

December 6th, Open Air Cinema, Cairo International Film Festival

The 42nd Cairo International Film Festival went ahead as scheduled with in-person screenings in December, as Egypt has had basically no Covid restrictions since the summer. I wasn’t willing to attend any indoor screenings, and so I initially thought I would have to give the festival a pass, which made me sad since I had seen six movies at the 2019 edition. 

To my delight, the festival built a large temporary outdoor auditorium, meaning that at least a few films were screened outside, including Nomadland. The film had already been widely praised, winning the top prize at both the Toronto and Venice film festivals, and so unsurprisingly an almost packed audience turned up to see it.

The film is set in the American Southwest and the cinematography is absolutely beautiful. It was a real treat to see it on a big screen (although I could have done without Cairo’s constant traffic noise interfering with the more contemplative parts of the film). 

The film centres on people who never fully recovered from the previous financial crisis and who live nomadic lives in trailers or converted vans, moving from place to place depending on where they can find temporary work. It was a sobering film to watch during a year of economic catastrophe for low-income workers, and the scenes of Frances McDormand’s character working as a temporary holiday employee at an Amazon facility seemed prescient of the pandemic-fueled e-commerce boom. 

As someone who has suffered zero negative financial consequences in 2020, the film served as another reminder (in a year full of them) of the glaring inequality in our society and of the uncomfortable truth of how our society and economy were built to benefit people like me.