Quick Review : Classic
Not So Quick Review : 20 years after it’s first release this film is still magical.
The Astor, J 20
Is there any need to review ET? Surely not.
Now The Astor, that’s worth the review. A lovely old building, sitting on a busy corner at the wrong end of Chapel Street that can attract a crowd on a bitterly cold Melbourne night. All you have to say is ‘I’m going to The Astor tonight’ for people to comment on what a wonderful place it is. No one will ask what you are seeing, just going is the thing.
The welcoming lobby, complete with couches, the upstairs foyer lined with palms, over stuffed arm chairs and even more couches, the chandeliers, the music (live piano if you are really lucky), the best choc-tops in the world and a cinema cat that owns the building. The staff, obviously completely unaware of the wonderful position in which they find themselves, have perfected the urban cool disinterested attitude necessary for them to tell their friends at uni “I work in cinema”. I guess most of them are working on the great Australian screen play. There is a light show as the curtain rises before the first feature, although most people talk through it, and with Melbourne’s largest screen the movies are sight to behold. If only they could fix the leg room issue. Anyone above dwarf is squirming half way through the second feature.
The guy in the line for tickets asked the strangest thing. ET was screening on a double bill with ‘Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade’. Just as we walked away he said “do they show them one after the other?”. How do you respond to that? ‘No sir, concurrently?’ or perhaps ‘No sir, one before the other.’.