Best cinema in Manhattan?

I like Loews Theater is a great one. They are actually AMC now since the merge.

AMC
570 Second Ave. New York, NY

Thanks @ajadedidealist and @hhusted. WIll try them out on my next visit!

It's really old - fashioned, but I love the Anjelika on Houston. They have really good taste on what films they show -- you can just pick one with no prior knowledge and most likely really enjoy it.

@JenMac I love the Angelika as well.

@JenMac @uptowngirl Ditto on the Angelika. Haven't been there in a while. For some reason it seems like I keep ending up at that theater in Downtown Brooklyn, even though I would in no way recommend the place. I keep seeing movies that are the opposite of high art, like, ahem, Avatar.

@NeverSleeps; I normally wait for movies to come on video. I know the movie looks great on the big screen. But you get those hecklers who just don't obey the rules and leave their cell phones on or talk a lot during the movie.

My favorite is Angelika, but more for the programming which not all blockbuster schlock. Don't know what would be the best theater to see a film in 3D. Last weekend I saw Alice in Wonderland in a tiny theater in Boerum Hill and didn't feel like I was lacking for anything, though I guess the big film houses like Lincoln Center will offer surround sound and all that, for true afficionados.

My screenwriting instructor told me Alice in Wonderland was a flop. I didn't see it, and maybe I'm glad I didn't.

Speaking of flops, did anyone see The Bounty Hunter?

Alice in Wonderland wasn't great, IMO - it felt much less dark than most Tim Burton films, and much more self-consciously "Hollywood" I wasn't too keen. The Bounty Hunter looks truly awful, though

Last summer we had a crazy couch crasher who was basically kicked out of her apartment by her just-as-crazy roommate. Anyway she worked as the head PA on The Bounty Hunter, and let's just say I have no desire to see it based on the experience of having to hear all about the escapades of Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston on the set all the day long.

I am a sometimes-fan of Tim Burton (as in, loved Edward Scissorhands, but Charlie and the Chocolate Factory not so much), but I don't know if I'm dying to see Alice in Wonderland. Since some of you have seen it, would you say it's close to the book? From the preview it looked like the story was way off from the original story.

@NeverSleeps No, it's not close to the book really. He invents a lot of the story. I thought his inventions were surprising and quite nice, actually. The last Tim Burton film I saw was Sweeney Todd which was awful awful awful and pointlessly gory, so I was happy to see Alice in Wonderland. It has his characteristic dark touches, but retains some sense of childlike imagination without being simple-minded about it. I guess that's just me. Lots of people have told me the reviews were "mixed" but I stand by my positive view of the film.

@Uranimfish Thanks for your input. The movie does look incredibly aesthetically pleasing, to say the least.

I'm not a fan of gory, so I avoided Sweeney Todd all together... Did Johnny Depp sing in that movie? That's the only thing that made me slightly curious to see it.

Down here in Australia we are spoilt for choice with some of the best Cinemas in the world IMO, take a look at this link then go to the Cinema Tour http://villagecinemas.com.au/goldclass/

Does NYC have anything like this?

I thought Sweeney Todd was decent - but not great - as a musical I think it's overrated, especially compared to other Sondheim (my favorite is A Little Night Music, which is on Broadway now, and is a very very good production)

@JVS Goodness, there's even a concierge at the movies! I don't know of anything like this in New York - maybe at the Trump Tower or the likes? By comparison, our big blockbuster theaters seem plebeian.

@NeverSleeps Weirdly, I saw Sweeney Todd in Berlin, and as the Germans are fond of dubbing absolutely everything into the tongue of the Vaterland, I had to sit through Sweeney Todd interpreted in German. It. Was. Excruciating. Therefore, I don't know first-hand if Johnny Depp sang, but I saw his lips move and heard German song come out of the speakers.

@Uraniumfish: Actually, the screenwriter for the movie Alice in Wonderland was by Linda Woolverton. Tim Burton just directed it. Linda was given free rein to come up with whatever she wanted to make the story work. She did read the book and took much of the dialogue, but much of it she made up. This movie was not the original. She wrote it to appear as a later version, with Alice having grown up. She does face some of the original people as she did as a child, but many characters are new.

The movie did make well over 34 million at the box office. My instructor said the movie was entertaining, just not well structured. But only screenwriters like myself would know that stuff.

@hhusted - I like a lot of Linda Woolverton's "books"/script - she wrote Beauty and the Beast (I think), as well as the Disney musical version of Aida. But I really didn't think the script for Alice in Wonderland was, frankly, up to snuff

@Ajadedidealist: Linda wrote the animation to Beauty and the Beast only. She wrote the book for Aida, that eventually turned into a musical. Linda is very talented. She's a screenwriter, playwright, and novelist.

BroadwayBK: Wait, what were the Jen Ani and Gerard Butler antics? I'm such a gossip!

@BroadwayBK I second JenMac do tell...

Oh brother. Women gossipers. :) :) ha. ha.

Uh.... well according to that crazy girl J and G weren't fond of each other. G one day demanded that some of the lines be rewritten because they weren't manly enough, which J supposedly found really unprofessional. (I actually was shown copies of the rewritten script, so maybe...) G was getting a lot of female visitors to his trailer, which is pretty unsurprising I'm sure, though I hear it was multiple chicks each day. There was much, much more as that girl never stopped talking, but I don't remember much else...

So what's the best one closest to West Village?

I like the Angelika too. We used to go to the Lincoln Center theatre pretty often too, it's in a great neighborhood.