Jawnts: At Cinemug, coffee, DVDs, and movie nights

Movies are best enjoyed with other people. When watching at home, alone, there are too many distractions. Make another cup of tea, feed the cat, get in a circular Twitter argument. The feature is paused repeatedly, chopped into a bunch of unnatural segments. There isn't anyone to keep your habituated behaviors in check, so the phone and television compete with each other for dominance. And who will give you recommendations for the next night's flick?

Dan Creskoff's Cinemug on South Broad Street, which opened Jan. 12, is gambling on the notion that there are enough people left who want to have a more communal film consumption process. It is a mash-up of a coffee shop and a DVD rental store, a place where people can both talk movies and, on at least one occasion every week, watch them with others.

"Movies are essentially a social activity," Creskoff says. "There is a social aspect. People want to talk about it afterward and relate to someone. We give them somewhere to sit and something to drink."

So far, Cinemug has split its screenings between better-known classics - Friday the 13th and Do the Right Thing - and more obscure fare, like Death Race 2000 (with a pre-Rocky Sylvester Stallone) and Spider Baby, or the Maddest Story Ever Told. On Friday, Creskoff debuted what he hopes to make a recurring feature: once-a-month screenings of short films by local filmmakers. On Thursday, Cinemug will show the 1984 Alex Cox classic Repo Man (Emilio Estevez chasing aliens around Los Angeles to a punk-rock sound track).

Cinemug also has a selection of 1,600 DVDs (and growing). Creskoff estimates 80 percent of the collection isn't streaming on Netflix. A quick look through the store shows an impressive set of foreign and indie films, including huge blocks that are unavailable on the major streaming services, such as the movies of Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar and David Lynch's later works. The staff is well-versed in the collection, which guarantees some worthwhile suggestions.

Movie screenings at Cinemug, 1607 S. Broad St., are scheduled for 8 p.m. Thursdays. Admission is free. Watch for special events on its Facebook page.