So Where's Good for Popcorn? An Exeter Cinema Guide

Megan Furborough, Screen Editor

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debates the pros and and cons of a variety of cinemas on offer in Exeter.

For a small city, there are a lot of ways that you can see the latest films. Aside from Campus Cinema, which is the cheapest cinema in Exeter, we have an Odeon, Vue and Picturehouse, as well as the Phoenix. But whilst there are a number of places to grab your popcorn, each cinema has its own respective quirks.

Vue
Image credit: Geograph

The Odeon and Vue in town are your typical multiplexes – air-conditioning blasting all year round, the familiar stick of well-trodden popcorn under your feet and gigantic screens are pretty standard fare. The number of screens at each venue means that they can show all the latest films, and for your big blockbusters you may even be able to catch a midnight screening.

But as you may expect, they’re pretty soulless and you pay a premium for slowly turning into an icicle over the course of 120 minutes.  And the prices vary between the two. At the Odeon, an off-peak student ticket is £4.65, rising to £5.50 at peak times. In contrast, an off-peak student ticket at Vue is £6.95, rising to a peak time price of £8.15. All in all, if you want to go to a multiplex, go to the Odeon – it’s cheaper, closer to the high street and seeing as neither cinema is particularly special, at least here you’ll have some money left over for snacks.

However, if you want to catch a film that’s a little different, or just want to see the latest film in a nicer setting, independent is definitely the way to go.

The Exeter Picturehouse is located at the bottom of town, but is well worth the walk. Equipped with a lovely restaurant and bar, there are two screens which show a mixture of Hollywood, art-house, world and independent cinema. It’s spacious, clean and the staff are really friendly. On a Monday you can get a half price student ticket for just £3 and the E4 Slackers Club, which offers free screenings of films every month, is partnered with Picturehouses. What’s more, the seats recline, meaning that sitting in the front row doesn’t require extensive back and neck surgery.

Exeter Phoenix
Image credit: Geograph

The Phoenix isn’t a cinema, but is a hidden gem when it comes to seeing something alternative and special. Most of the films are projected on 35mm film, a rarity when most cinemas have gone digital in the past few years, and there are often special screenings such as live orchestras and Q&As. There are also regular film nights including Kino Queerling, which showcases queer and cult cinema and each year the Phoenix presents the Two Short Nights film festival. Even more enticingly, their normal screening tickets are just £5.50. The Phoenix isn’t a standard cinema, which makes the experience of seeing films here even better.

So really, it all comes down to you. What do you like watching? What’s your price limit? Do you want a box of popcorn the size of a child? There’s no right answer. But with our handy guide to the cinemas in Exeter, Screen hope that you all get out to the cinema as much as humanly possible – wherever you choose!

Megan Furborough, Screen Editor

La Haine (Hate) for World Cinema?

It was after having seen a review of Lore, a film depicting Germany’s devastation in the immediate aftermath of World War Two, focusing on the children of Nazi supporters whose beliefs are challenged by their dependence on a Jewish refugee, that I broached the possibility of seeing it with a housemate one evening. However, his initial ambivalence quickly turned to an outright no, as soon as I explained that it was a non-Hollywood German language movie and would consequently be subtitled.

 

Image Credit: Rotten Tomatoes

On asking the other four of my housemates whether they’d rather see the latest Die Hard movie, Argo or Lore, to see if this was a shared feeling, three of them chose the Hollywood option. In addition, all had never heard of Lore, and one went so far as to say that he’d rather kill himself than choose either option (but that if he had to choose, it would be Die Hard). Well at least that technically isn’t a vote for Hollywood then.

So why does there seem to be at best, apathy, to World Cinema (films from non-English speaking countries, often in a foreign language) and at worst, aversion?

 

For many people, going to the cinema is a form of escapism. They want to enjoy the spectacle. They want to find themselves lost in a fictional world away from a rosy reality of unemployment, a rising cost of living and one star rated local food establishments (here’s looking at you Mega Kebab).

 

This isn’t to say that this experience is impossible with a foreign subtitled movie, far from it in fact. La Haine (Hate) is a striking, gritty portrayal of the struggles of three friends from different ethnic backgrounds living in the banlieues of Paris. The extensive use of argot (slang) and verlan (inversion of syllables in words to create slang) alone allows an insight into a marginalized part of French culture that just could not be replicated in an English language Hollywood context.

 

Despite this, if we consider the top 20 films released in the UK and Ireland in 2010 according to the BFI, there is not one World cinema film in the list.

 

This is not surprising though after a brief comparison of Exeter’s three main cinemas (Odeon, Vue and Picturehouse). Of the three, only Picturehouse in a given week will be screening World cinema. From Thursday 7^th March to the following Thursday, only one World cinema film from this year (Lore, although released at festivals in 2012) in terms of widespread release, is being screened.

 

Three other World cinema films from the last four years are being screened too: Amour, Eleanor’s Secret and Long Live the Family, each with one screening. This amounts to a mere seven screenings out of a total 60 of over ten films. At least they are being screened; in fact, they are over-represented if we consider the lack of screenings at other cinema chains and the total absence of World cinema in the BFI list.

 

A preconceived notion of World cinema as being intellectual and pretentious is culpable for this almost automatic rejection of World cinema. This is then perpetuated by a tendency of sacrificing the screening of popular mainstream World cinema films – already suffering from a lack of exposure due to inadequate distribution – in favour of art-house (independent, non-conventional and intentionally non-mainstream films) World cinema, which fit this notion. A notable exception here is Amélie, which was intended for an international audience and demonstrates the great success that World cinema, in particular popular World cinema, can have with adequate distribution.

 

Regardless, when faced with a choice between the next installment in a popular series with a favourite actor or a relatively unknown foreign movie, the average person is going to choose what they are comfortable with.

 

Nevertheless, I remain hopeful that in the future, World cinema will account for a much greater percentage of British weekly screenings and that they will feature in the yearly top 20… even if this would still have no impact on my housemates and possibly result in the end for one of them.

 

Benjamin Lewis