AMC’s Kabuki Theater

AMC bought Carmike which bought Sundance — this is why we can’t have nice cinemas

For as long as I’ve lived in San Francisco, my go-to movie theater has been the Sundance Kabuki. Growing up in the northeast and later living in Southern California, the vast majority of my theater experiences leading up to Kabuki was either AMC or Regal. Which is to say, crap.

We had a small independent theater near where I grew up in Cleveland (a friend’s father actually owned it), but it wasn’t particularly convenient to get to. And it was small and very independent.¹ Ann Arbor has some great small theaters, but again, tiny. To see the vast majority of “big” movies, I had to go to one of the chains.

And that mainly sucked. Because the experience sucked. But I was “lucky” in that I didn’t fully realize just how badly it sucked until i went to the Kabuki for the first time. They had food! Food other than shitty overpriced popcorn and stale nachos. Real, actual human food! And drinks! With alcohol! They had nice seats! And they featured something truly novel: silence before a movie started. Crazy, I know. But they didn’t play the type of television commercials that I wish I could pay money to avoid. And they didn’t blast them at 150 decibels, as the theater chains did.

Anyway, I say this because if you try to look up the Sundance Kabuki right now, you’ll find a very different result. You’ll find the AMC Dine-In 8.

Yes, the worst plot twist imaginable has happened. AMC has swooped in to buy the Kabuki.² And, unsurprisingly, it has sucked all the vitality and character and goodness out of the theater. It’s now total crap.

Truth be told, Kabuki had been heading south for a while now. The chain sold to Carmike in 2015 and every experience I’ve had since then has been decidedly subpar. But I’ve now been once since the AMC nightmare. I’m sad to say, it’s worse than feared.

Luckily, San Francisco is home to a number of interesting independent theaters. But none are particularly high end. They’re quaint, not really nice. That leaves one option: the Alamo Drafthouse, which is great. Different — certainly not quiet leading up to a film — but great.

There’s a lot of talk these days about how the cinema experience is dying. But when done right — as it used to be at Sundance Kabuki, and as it is at Alamo Drafthouse — it’s a fantastic experience.³ It’s worthy of a night out. AMC is worthy of a night-in. I would honestly rather stay at home and pay almost any amount of money than go to one of those theaters.

Anyway, I was thinking about this today when I went to book a movie ticket for this evening. Depending on the movie, I now have basically two choices: one of the shit AMC theaters, or Drafthouse. So: there is no choice anymore. Drafthouse every time. Unfortunately, that theater is typically only playing three or four films at any given time. So I might be forced to swallow my soul and head to AMC Dine-In 8 every so often. Which fucking sucks.