Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard

Jawnts: Movie Mondays, with a cheap brew or two

Almost every Monday, Chinatown's Trocadero Theatre, once a fancy opera house, unites two of life's great joys: cheap beer and old(ish) movies restored to the big screen. But don't expect to see Casablanca or His Girl Friday at the Troc's Movie Mondays. Its yearly screening of Die Hard (1988), a fine Christmas tradition, is the oldest movie I've seen there.

Almost every Monday, Chinatown's Trocadero Theatre, once a fancy opera house, unites two of life's great joys: cheap beer and old(ish) movies restored to the big screen. But don't expect to see

Casablanca

or

His Girl Friday

at the Troc's Movie Mondays. Its yearly screening of

Die Hard

(1988), a fine Christmas tradition, is the oldest movie I've seen there.

Every week, the setup is the same. Arrive at 6:30, as doors open, pay your $3 for admittance, and get a ticket for a free can of Pabst and a token for another free beer (also Pabst) or popcorn. Arrive after 7 and you are condemned to one beverage ticket. The hook, of course, is that you'll remember Top Gun more fondly after a few.

The movies aren't usually of the Oscar-winning type. Prestige pictures are rarely a good match with a boisterous crowd likely to get only more rambunctious as the evening wears on and PBR intake increases. This is definitely a ritual for a particular kind of person, specifically one who doesn't mind if a line of dialogue is obscured by a beery chorus of imitators.

Movie Monday doesn't go in only for 1980s nostalgia. More recent blockbusters and cult favorites get an airing, too. This week, it's Edgar Wright's The World's End (the best comedy of the past summer). It follows the exploits of a gang of old friends, now in their early 40s, as they return to their childhood hometown to complete a pub crawl they attempted as teenagers (and, as it turns out, to battle a robot or 12). It's the perfect introduction to Movie Monday.

Doors open at 6:30. Showing of The World's End is at 8. Admission: $3. You must be 21-plus. Visit www.thetroc.com for a list of coming movies.