The World's End

The World’s End

DLL can pick a film to go and see.

Small town guys get back together in a small town for a twelve pub crawl they failed to complete as teenagers. Naturally, things don’t go smoothly. There’s some baggage, some unresolved issues to overcome, and, naturally, the robotic alien takeover problem causes the odd hiccup along the way.

Generally hilarious, a moment that made me laugh out loud was when they went into the second pub along the route, the Old Familiar, and found the internal fit-out to be identical to the First Post starting point.

Pubs, like cinemas, should have their own identity.

We went to an independent cinema, so it was a lot less soulless than the multiplex. There’s still sweets at (only slightly) inflated prices, but there’s also teas and coffees, beers and wines, home made sandwiches and cakes. Bit of a cottage industry thing.

I’d messed up the online seat booking thing, too, and the guy at the desk sorted us out the best option available. While it’s still not as tightly run as I’d like (see below) there’s no popcorn, no hot dogs, and no-one came in late or got up to go to the toilet fifteen times during the film.

I doubt my cinema would last very long:

• No food that involves noise. No rustling, crunching, ripping, popping.

• No drinks that involve noise, definitely no straws, and no highly coloured slush drinks inducing even worse behaviour in badly behaved small children. Not unless they’re spiked with that drug that calms them down / sends them to sleep.

• Doors locked. Don’t bother turning up late, you’re not getting in.

• Toilets: medical emergencies only. Go before the start, go afterwards, like a sensible adult. I have to admit a certain frustration with folk that sit there through the adverts, sit there through the previews, sit there through the Orange Wednesdays Kevin Bacon specials, through the turn off your mobile warnings that everyone ignores so they can shine backlit screens about the place (see next rule), and then, just as the film starts, and some films set out the meaning of everything that follows in the first few minutes, get up to go to the toilet.

• Mobile phones handed in at gate, returned at the end.

• Talk, just the once, during the film, and you’re ejected, never to return, your phone bouncing down the pavement after you.