To get into a movie, nobody does it better than cinema

Barbara Bach and Roger Moore, stars of the James Bond film 'The Spy Who Loved Me'

John Meagher Twitter Email

October 02 2021 02:30 AM

With No Time to Die fever ramping up this week, I sat down to watch one of my favourite Bond films. The Spy Who Loved Me has everything: Roger Moore’s playful depiction of 007; Barbara Bach’s luminous KGB agent; Richard Kiel’s turn as Jaws; a series of brilliant stunts, including that ski jump; Marvin Hamlisch’s campy disco score and Carly Simon’s now-classic theme song, Nobody Does it Better.

I hit play just after 8pm and three hours later I was still only a third of the way into the movie. As is so often the case, I had the best of intentions to watch a film in its entirety in one sitting, but I got distracted by texts, emails, Twitter rants, checking football scores; toilet visits and copious cups of tea. The latter two may be related.

When I get to see Daniel Craig’s Bond swansong in the cinema, there will be no distractions, although my bladder might balk at the two hour, 43 minute runtime. In the cinema, there’s no opportunity to press pause. You have to immerse yourself in the experience. How I love those notices just before the lights go down about the importance of turning your phone off completely.

Like anyone who loves the routine of going to the cinema, I greatly missed it since the pandemic began. There was something undeniably emotional about walking through the doors of the Irish Film Institute a few weeks back and escaping from everything for two hours — the film, The Nest, starring Jude Law, certainly transported me to a different place.

There has been a lot of loose talk about the a worrying future for the cinema business in the wake of Covid and thanks to huge 4K televisions becoming increasingly commonplace. We don’t need to get the undertakers in just yet, though. Nothing, for me, replaces the experience of watching a film on a truly big screen with a proper sound system and in the company of others — although I draw the line at the seat-kickers who you may be perched behind you, or those bucket of popcorn and barrel of cola creatures who are assigned a seat close by.

One of my earliest memories is, at six, being taken by my mother to see Popeye in the summer of 1981. I’m tickled by the fact that my first cinema experience — in a long-gone picture house in Roscrea, Co Tipperary — was a Robert Altman film.

Something inside of me never quite lost the wonder that comes with cinema-going and in this always-on world, it’s wonderful — essential — to switch off every so often and drink in the escapism that only a great film in a cinema can do. And I can’t wait to see what Craig and his various tuxedos get up to next week.

In the meantime, I’ll try to finish The Spy Who Loved Me. But can I switch off my phone completely?