ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST: GOODBYE TO THE UA COURT STREET MULTIPLEX

An auditorium at the now-defunct Regal UA Court Street in Brooklyn's Cobble Hill. Once a cinema house of audience madness, now a lifeless tomb of movie memories, some good, some not so good.

The day has finally come when the Regal Court Street Stadium 12, more recently the Regal UA Court Street, dimmed its lights for the final time, and I cannot say I'm really all that shocked. The 12-screen multiplex in downtown Brooklyn was a management disaster and the audiences there were sometimes nightmarish. Seeing animated films there was the worst, because ghetto parents used it as an excuse to let their kids run around unsupervised while they sat back and got their drink on while devouring Popeye's (from the one a few doors up the street) and littering the floor with its bones and boxes. After my experience of seeing Ratatouille there, a cartoon that isn't a kid's movie at all, I swore off seeing animated films anywhere other than an arthouse like the Film Forum. 

Probably my most cherished memory of the place and its annoying audiences was when I saw STAR WARS EPISODE II: ATTACK OF THE CLONES with my lover at the time. We were seated to the right of an overweight, bespectacled guy in his mid-thirties who kept his gaze locked on the screen while saying aloud to himself, but which all present could not help but hear, comments like "And THAT...is why he is a MASTER...of THE DARK SIDE," and my favorite, when Yoda whipped out his lightsaber: "And NOW...You shall see why he is called...THE MASTER." He threw out comments like that from the start of the film to the end (when he stood up, thrust both fists into the air and whopped "WHOO-HOO!!!") and it was simultaneously annoying and hilarious. I don't know if the guy was just socially awkward or on the spectrum or what, but I swear to whatever gods there may be, I would give my left arm for his commentary to accompany the film's DVD as an extra.

SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME was my last movie there. I went by myself a couple of weeks back and found the place damned near deserted, so it was obvious that the end was approaching. That said, for my money, as a theater, it was pretty much the most palatable of the mainstream Joe Sixpack ones I've been to in Brooklyn during my 25 years living here. It was convenient to get to and, if you caught a movie with a civilized audience (a rare occurrence), it could be quite pleasant. 

Requiescat en pace, Court Street Stadium 12. If you ran more exploitation films, you would be remembered as a solid grindhouse.