Top Fun
Tom Cruise takes my money
Something concerning has been happening the past few weeks, and that is multiple friends I respect telling me that the new Top Gun (Top Gun: Maverick) was “AWESOME!!!!!!”. The rarity of critical consensus on art demands respect, so despite my reservations about enduring several hours of airplanes, my husband and I went to see the new Top Gun (Top Gun: Maverick). If there’s one thing you can say about LA it’s “movies!” But we were faced with a dilemma: where to see this action-packed, Cruise-controlled art?
Due to the global pandemic, many of my favorite movie theaters have closed. The Arclight, a cinematic cathedral in the heart of Hollywood, was the most elegant. The lobby ceiling was several stories high, sun filtering through skylights to illuminate the inevitable red carpet premiere taking place there, even at weird times, like Tuesdays. Once I saw Shania Twain. She was starring in a movie about faith (the Christian one) and family (the traditional one).
The Arclight also had a gloriously overpriced restaurant and lots of snack bars, where you could get a “movie pour” of wine, which translates to about a bottle’s worth. You might say that’s too much, but it was just enough to get me through a Valentine’s Day screening of Fifty Shades Freed.
It was a very funny movie (because it’s bad) and my friends and I laughed a lot (in a respectful way!). Inexplicably, the audience included a couple on a date (remember: Valentine’s Day, 50 Shades Freed) who were extremely drunk and talked a lot throughout (different than respectful laughing). This unfortunately prompted an angry scolding from a woman who had really been looking forward to this movie. I felt like I was in a social experiment where sexually frustrated strangers were thrown together to see how quickly society would break down. We made it through (barely) and even more memorable than the almost-fight was a comment my friend Kassia made when Christian Grey removes his wife’s (Anastasia?) dry, spotless black underwear during a supposedly deviant but actually boring sex act: “Are you kidding? Those would look like a Cannoli right now.”
Another favorite theater, the Vista, has been closed since March 2020. It was a Golden Age of Hollywood delight in Los Feliz with an affordable snack bar, a quirky manager, and a single-minded dedication to showing problematic Pepe LePew cartoons before each movie. I saw Phantom Thread there alone and a man offered me some of his popcorn. I declined; because what kind of weirdo goes to see Phantom Thread alone? Apparently, Quentin Tarantino bought it, so the problematic cartoons should be back in no time.
With my first and second choice off the table, we decided to punish ourselves and see the new Top Gun (Top Gun: Maverick) at the Regal Cinemas at LA Live. LA Live is a complex that includes Crypto.com Arena (The Staples Center), a few hotels, and many terrible restaurants. It might be the worst place on earth unless you love tourists, being near freeways, and teenagers skateboarding very close to you.
We parked in the wrong garage, which ended up being a $30 mistake (I love LA). When we got to the theater (a multi-story maze) we wandered for what seemed like hours looking for our screen. There were people working there but no one seemed to be working there. I felt like I was in a haunted hotel. The Regal Cinemas at LA Live is a worse theater than the AMC in Times Square, a place that famously has bed bugs.
We finally found it, and after several trailers for movies I will never see, Tom Cruise introduced the new Top Gun (Top Gun Maverick) in a special little video. He told us that he had a lot of fun making it for us, and he hoped we enjoyed it. I wish I could tell Tom I did but at the end of the day, there were just too many airplanes for me to say it was AWESOME!!!!!!
(I obviously wrote this before today’s crappy news. An essay suggestion, and a call for us all to cultivate empathy, review facts, and take action.)