Thursday Theatre Review: The Landmark

Weekly to a returning weekly feature here at Movies with Abe, Thursday Theatre Review. I had the chance to spend a few months in Los Angeles, and though I’m now back in New York City, it’s worth recognizing the good and bad theatres I attended while in L.A. There’s no perfect theatre, but there are a few things that can make or break a movie-going experience. In no particular order, this is a guide to movie theatres in L.A.

The Landmark

Location: At the intersection of Westwood and Pico, it’s part of Westside Pavilion, a mall that has plenty of other attractions. Parking is free for the first two hours, $3 for under 5 hours, $8 for up to 6 hours, and then it gets crazy after that at an additional $2 per 30 minutes, making a quintuple feature extraordinarily expensive based on parking alone.

Pricing: Pretty good considering how expensive most movies are in LA. General admission is $13, and, rather than raise the prices on weekends, the first show is still discounted at $10. That lower price is valid on weekdays all times before 6pm.

Film selection: It offers a good mix of the popular and the independent. I saw wide releases “The Guilt Trip” and “The Impossible” here, and also had the opportunity to pull off a legendary quintuple feature of limited releases. I scheduled in “Hitchcock,” “Hyde Park on Hudson,” “Quartet,” and “Rust and Bone,” and even managed to get at invitation for a press screening happening at this very theatre for that evening for “Django Unchained.” That was quite a busy, diverse day.

Seating: Like most other L.A. theatres, seating is assigned when you purchase your ticket. Most of the auditoriums are large enough to avoid ample options, with the exceptions described below. On more than one occasion, I opted to avoid seeing a film and come back another time because I was told that only the front row seats were still available.

Bonus features: Two of the auditoriums have couches instead of seats, which makes for a very comfortable movie watching experience, particularly if you have a smaller couch to yourself in a busy theater – as I did during “The Impossible” – or a larger couch meant for more than one person during an empty showing, like a 10:10am “Hitchcock.”

Worth the trip? Yes. It’s one of the more dependable theatres with a good variety of films, and its proximity to Westside Pavilion is a definite plus, with free wi-fi available in the hallway that connects them.