WE NEED CINEMATIC MAGIC IN OUR CITY

In September 2023, the Bow Tie Cinemas' Criterion Theater downtown closed. Over its 19 years of operation, people wandered into the tile-ceiling, red-carpeted, popcorn-peppered lobby. Then, after a barrage of Bow Tie closings across Connecticut, the New Haven location, too, shuttered its doors. A year and a half later, the movie theater still sits vacant, with its advertisements for the Criterion Card and once-incredible popcorn plastered over papered windows.

Now, New Haven residents like myself travel to the North Haven Cinemark for movies if we can find open seats. On $5 Tuesdays, my friends and I squeeze into the theater with people from across the city. On top of the 15-minute drive to the movies, we here in New Haven are at a cinematic deficit: the lack of AMC's selections.

The number of times my friends and I have gotten excited about seeing the new A24 movie or our favorite director's comeback, only to see it is only playing in theaters located an hour away would make any Letterboxd Pro member sick. The AMCs closest to New Haven are in Trumbull, Plainville, and Norwalk, all close to a forty-minute car ride from New Haven. Due to the lack of public transportation in our state, there is no way to get to these theaters without sitting in traffic, praying the constant buildups on I-95 don't make you late, and you don't get car sick on the way home after munching on popcorn and candy (or get sick after watching The Substance).

AMC, or any movie theater that is dedicated to showing great movies, should open a location at the vacant Bow Tie Theater in downtown New Haven.

Fine, I will call on the Yale Card. Despite New Haven's Yale University educating current and former prominent chief film critics like New York Times's Wesley Morris and Renata Adler, Roger Ebert's right-hand-man Gene Siskel, and The Nation's Stuart Klawans, our city has no movie theater to nurture the next cinematic minds, from Yale or elsewhere. Imagine not getting carded for a movie for the first time (or sneaking in), finding refuge at theaters when you need to cry post-college flame breakup, hanging out Friday or Saturday night with your friends. Film criticism is stagnating because there is a lack of a movie theater hopping on this opportunity.

And we are already fans of your theaters, AMC. When the Nicole Kidman opening sequence premiered at your theatres, I bonded with strangers outside downtown bars reciting the poetic lyrics. Queer still topped friends' best 2024 movies list. My boyfriend and I still trekked up to see Dicks: The Musical in Plainville, Connecticut, where we cackled three counties away from our apartments.

AMC, or any movie theater that comes to NHV, we will come to your place for magic. We will come to your theaters to laugh and cry and care, because we in the city, all of us, get that indescribable feeling when the lights begin to dim and travel to places we’ve never been before -- like Plainville, Connecticut -- not only to be entertained, but to be reborn. Reborn, like a beautiful Bowtie into an even more gorgeous AMC.

AMC, please make movies better (and exist) in New Haven, Connecticut - or anyone dedicated to movie magic in our city.

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