The Joys of the Small Town Cinema

Ask most people to describe their cinema-going experiences and quite often you'll be met with a raft of negativity. Ticket prices are too high, you have to re-mortgage your house and book yourself in for a heart bypass to get snacks and there's always someone or something to distract you from your viewing experience. The cinema industry, somehow baffled as to why people are put off going to the movies have been attempting to get bigger and better to entice punters. 3D films, comfier seating, giant screens, ear-splitting surround sound, multiple screens and full scale meals have become the norm at the cinema. It all seems a long way from the smoky local cinemas we used to see.

They do however, still exist, only minus the smoke. Whilst multiplexes get bigger and bigger and seemingly more and more uniform, there are an ever declining army of independent cinemas catering for towns deemed not big enough for Odeons or CineWorlds. These cinemas are far smaller, have much less choice, and probably won't be able to screen 3D films for another 30 years but they provide a valuable service to those that cannot always travel to the next town to catch a recent blockbuster.

I live in Swanage, a small town in the south of England with a population of around 9000 people. The nearest multiplex is a 30 minute drive away, and, as you may have noticed on my post on in flight movies, I don't always get round to see the latest must-see movies in the cinema. Swanage does have a local cinema, but I have tended to avoid it as the viewing experience is little better than watching a film on TV and it does not always show the films I am desperate to see. However, having missed the chance to see The Social Network on its initial run, I decided to bite the bullet and see the film at my local cinema, and it is there that I rediscovered the charms it can offer.

The cinema in question is called the Mowlem, an independently run theatre housed in a desperately ugly building in bad need of renovation. Upon entering I am greeted by stares of bemusement and borderline hostility. The elderly usher sighs and mutters "I guess we'll have to open up after all." Despite arriving late, it turns out I am the first customer to arrive for the screening. Apparently the film has not had more than 5 people viewing it each night since it started showing at the cinema. It seems the people of Swanage are unimpressed by The Social Network's rave reviews.

I am joined by a couple and we are led up to the cinema. "I'm not bothering to open up the main doors so you'll have to come round the side," barks the usher. We oblige and sit down wherever the hell we want on the horribly uncomfortable and worn seats. The trailers are shown on a screen that seems little bigger than a 40" television with a far murkier picture and the projection doesn't quite fit where it's meant to be.

Then there's the intermission. Remember them? The film hasn't even started but the lights go up, cheesy music begins to play and the usher shouts "does anyone want any ice cream because you'll have to come downstairs for it." The couple want ice cream and I wait patiently while the usher leads them out the cinema and down the stairs.

Eventually the film starts. The picture is murky, the sound is awful but The Social Network is a great film and I am satisfied.

So what did I learn from my horrible viewing experience? Well, despite everything I was charmed. The people that run the cinema work with very little money and judging by the amount of people in attendance, they're hardly raking in profits. The cinema remains open, however, and it is done for the love of film.

You go there and you don't know what to expect; a few years ago my sister went to see Titanic and the projector broke down just as the ship began to sink. You don't know if you'll be the only person in the cinema or if the whole town will turn up. Despite all the faults and the inability to compete with the viewing experience at the big multiplexes, these small town cinemas have heart and soul. The people that work there aren't teenagers earning minimum wage for their Saturday jobs, they are people that genuinely love the place, even if they act offended when you turn up.

If the multiplexes pitched up in every small town and these cinemas began to die out, it would be a real shame. These theatres hark back to a simpler time, when going to the cinema was about the film you were going to see, not the cinema itself.

10 Minor Characters Given Overly Dramatic Death Scenes

So you're an actor and you're struggling to get your big break. Your agent calls and they've got you a part in a big new Hollywood film. The only problem is that you only have a handful of lines of dialogue and have barely any influence on the main plot. However, the director wants a tacked on, emotional scene to give a false sense of pathos. Your character gets to die and you get to make tragic faces despite the audience knowing barely anything about who you're playing. It's win-win.

Welcome to the world of the overly dramatic death scenes for minor characters. Here are some of the most notable:

Haldir in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

For the climatic battle of Helm's Deep, Peter Jackson and co. had a problem. Aragorn and friends were facing a battle against overwhelming odds but, as fans of reading will know, no-one particularly important was going to die. How are we meant to get our emotional kick when the only one's dying are a few grizzled peasants? Craig Parker, that's how.

Some genius remembered the character of Haldir, played by Parker for all of two minutes in the first film in the trilogy and decided it would be a great idea to bring him back and swiftly kill him, just so the audience has something to be sad about. Said genius probably didn't stop to think that the audience might not really care too deeply for that elf that was in Lothlorien for a bit. So, Haldir returns to honour an allegiance between men and elves and then dies in a way that is something of a running theme in this list; fighting heroically until his last breath and passing away in the hero's arms. Absolutely no-one was upset about this.

Mifune in The Matrix Revolutions

Having killed off most of the poorly fleshed out supporting characters in the first film, the producer's of the Matrix sequels decided to introduce thousands more supporting players to be poorly fleshed out, but this time with with stupider names like Ballard or Sparks. One of the characters to get a better deal was Mifune (Nathaniel Lees). Not only did he get to make a rousing speech, he got a pretty good death too. Not from the character's point of view of course; having your face cut up by Sentinal tentacles must sting, but Nathaniel Lees must have loved the opportunity to show off his range of facial expressions, which vary from 'stern' to 'angry.'

Needless to say, Mifune dies fighting heroically until his last breath, only this time he doesn't die in the hero's arms but in the arms of the tedious kid that no-one likes.

Hagen in Gladiator

Having failed to turn the phrase "Hagen dies" into some sort of joke involving ice cream, I'll cut straight to the point; Hagen (Ralf Moeller) was doomed from the start. Hagen is a classic bad-ass with a good heart. At first he gives Russell Crowe a good kicking and the audience thinks he's kind of a dick but then he turns out to be a good guy and a fierce warrior. He's willing to fight with Maximus to the death, and, as with a lot of characters willing to fight with the main character to the death, he dies. Hagen defends Proximo's Gladiator school as Maximus attempts to escape, showing how much of a bad-ass he is along the way before ultimately dying fighting heroically until his last breath. Again.

Ben Hayes in King Kong (2005)

This was never going to end well. Peter Jackson had shown in The Two Towers that he would never be happy with just letting faceless expendables die so one or two of the not-so-important supporting players were doomed the minute they set foot on Skull Island. Jack Black's film crew got a pretty unfair deal but it was Ben Hayes (Evan Parke) who was there to pack an emotional punch. A wise and weary mentor and father figure to Jamie Bell's Jimmy, the audience was instantly made aware of him being a good guy because he knew stuff about books.

Having established this bond between Hayes and Jimmy, Jackson proceeds to kill Hayes in a horrifying way; first being crushed by King Kong and then thrown to a bottom of a canyon. Needless to say, Hayes died heroica...well you know the rest.

Tommy Ryan in Titanic

Tommy Ryan (Jason Barry) DID NOT die heroically fighting until his last breath, thus making this list less monotonous.

Having established himself as a man of good character based purely on the fact that he was Irish, Ryan epitomised the fun and exciting ethic diversity of steerage class and how far it was removed from the evil and boring rich people. He was doomed, however, along with his partner in crime Fabrizio, who suffered death by funnel.

It was a tall order for Tommy Ryan to have a distinctively tragic death in a film full of tragic deaths but being shot by 1st Officer Murdoch in the scuffle for survival is pretty tragic. Murdoch shooting himself afterwards didn't help either.

The Not-So-Important Jedi in Revenge of the Sith

There's nothing like a good montage of mass murder to tug on the heartstrings. George Lucas even went one step further and decided to get younglings involved. But for the actors who had endured hours in make-up to play background Jedi with only the occasional cool looking lightsaber kill to show for it, this was their moment in the sun. Order 66 is executed and the Clone Troopers turn on the Jedi and kill them one by one in a series of cowardly ways. We don't know anything about these characters, but it's kind of sad in a way. Well, a bit. But not much.

Rest in peace pointy headed beard man and kind-of-hot blue woman. Rest in peace.

Dr. Satnam Tsurutani in 2012

Remember when Jimi Mistry was going to be the next big thing in Hollywood after he made East is East and set off to make the god-awful The Guru? Well this is where he ended up. Tsurutani is pretty much responsible for finding out the world is going to end. He has a nice family too. Chiwetel Ejiofor really wants to save him but he encounters the evils of bureaucracy and doesn't. Thus, Tsurutani, nice family and all, dies with everyone else, leaving the many dislikeable and undeserving characters to survive on the arks.

Frank Harris in The Day After Tomorrow

While we're on the issue of Roland Emmerich disaster movies, we best cover The Day After Tomorrow. What Emmerich really, really, likes to do is take a small character, give him the slightest hint of emotional depth and pathos, and have him die in a sad yet contrived situation and expect the audience to feel bad about this. We saw this with Satnam Tsurutani and we saw it with Frank Harris (Jay O. Sanders).

Harris is a grizzled old timer, loyal to the end to Dennis Quaid. We know very little about him, but he's a good guy. So when he falls through glass and is left dangling high above a shopping centre and threatens to pull his colleagues to their doom with him, he cuts the rope and falls to his death to save them. Note the variation from the common theme; Harris sacrifices himself heroically, rather than fighting heroically.

Stan Olber in Volcano

Staying on the theme of heroic sacrifices, Stan Olber (John Carroll Lynch) saves a bunch of people from a subway train being consumed by lava (for those that haven't seen it, Volcano is about a volcano erupting in down town L.A., for some reason). As a reward for his valiant efforts, he slowly burns to death after jumping into a pool of lava. You can't help thinking that Stan should have made a better job of his jump but this scene has the distinction of being one of the only memorable things in Volcano. Thus a small character is transformed into a tiny redeeming feature of an otherwise terrible, terrible movie.

Ivan Dubov in Face/Off

The character of Dubov is instantly rendered cooler by the fact that he's played by Frank Subotka from The Wire (Chris Bauer). His role is small, but important to the plot and featuring an impressive amount of drool. Dubov is an enemy of Nic Cage's (except Nic Cage isn't really Nic Cage, of course) but when the idea is suggested that they work together on a escape, he come's around to the idea pretty quickly and all of a sudden Cage and Bauer are best buds. Dubov does most of the hard work in helping Cage escape, but is thrown off a walk-way and dangles over a big drop with only a gun and Cage's hand between him and falling. Naturally, he falls and Cage is briefly sad before forgetting about him completely.