MOVIE HOUSES FAIL THEIR MARKET TESTS.

I've long been displeased with the experience of going to the movies, particularly at the chain theaters.

Perhaps it is time for the people who run the theaters to rethink their business model, which seems to be based on upselling at the concessions, and endless commercials. Nearly half an hour of previews? Seriously? We're already doing the theaters a favor by purchasing tickets and their popcorn, and we can tolerate the high prices intended for popcorn lovers at the concessions.  When the scheduled start time for the feature is 1.30, start it no later than 1.35.  Don't make me wait until two.

It's not that the experience got any better after the end of the corona tyranny.

With both the performers and the script writers on strike, though, there won't be many summer blockbusters coming to antagonize the curious. The streaming services are likely to win the battle with the movie houses the same way they won the battle with the cable companies, by default.

And now, dear reader, there are all of three movie houses operating within the city limits of Milwaukee.

Like the rest of the country’s theaters, the Downer closed its doors during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown orders in March 2020. Five months later, it was the first movie theater in the city of Milwaukee to reopen.

Like several other local theaters, the Downer had never fully reopened; since late 2020, it had been open three to five days a week most weeks, with only a couple screenings per auditorium each day.

The Downer is the second movie theater in the city of Milwaukee to close this month. Marcus Theatres closed the Southgate Cinema, its last movie theater in the city limits, on Sept. 5. With their closings, the Oriental Theatre, the Avalon Theater and the Times Cinema are the last movie theaters in the city.

Southgate is another of the shopping centers that were the Next Big Thing at the city limits sixty years ago, and it long ago morphed into an enclosed strip mall, with a new sort of tenants. The Oriental is an old school movie palace with the faux-Chinese courtyard and zodiac in the ceiling, and it may still be screening The Rocky Horror Picture Show at Friday and Saturday midnights.  The Avalon is its Bay View counterpart, only with a faux-Moresque courtyard setting off the zodiac, and I believe it is now owned by a nonprofit of some sort.  Those theaters are both located in neighborhoods the metrofexuals would like to turn into walkable, inclusive, yet transgressively upscale environments.  The Times (formerly Times Fine Arts) once had an, ahem, reputation.  The current owners continue to cater to the sort of people who speak of filllllm, if, perhaps, expanding the sorts of edgy to show.

Rumors of the Downer's demise have been circulating for years.

The single-screen, 1,000-seat Downer became the 440-seat, two screen Downer in May 1990, the year after Landmark purchased the theater. And, of course, the technology in the project booth is thoroughly modern – no more celluloid here.

Despite the fact that the theater appears, anecdotally, to do a bang-up business, there lately appears to be a persistent rumor that it’s closing. But rumors of the Downer’s demise are much exaggerated, according to assistant manager Liz Ahlstrom.

Some things never change, the Times Fine Arts business model was a thing in the early days of the theater.

On opening day, at least, the promise of clean content was also on display on the big screen, according to a newspaper article recounting the opening, which called "Seven Sisters," "a pleasing story in which a convent girl’s prank of stealing out at night to attend a ball does not bring upon her the shame of the ‘old story,’ but which shows that girls can use sense and sometimes display better judgment than most playwriters are disposed to credit them with. It is believed the general tone of morality would be raised if screen adaptations took a natural course rather than making everything a sex problem."

Even the praise of Milwaukee Record couldn't save the theater.

At some point in the last 20 years, the simple act of seeing a movie became a production. No longer could you simply show up, buy a ticket, and enjoy the film—seats needed to be reserved, and those seats needed to recline and rotate and vibrate and have enough room for three adults and three three-course meals. 3D or not 3D became a question (for a while, at least). Devices needed to be silenced. Ninety-minute pre-show “entertainments” needed to be watched. The whole thing became kind of exhausting.

None of this has ever applied to the Downer Theatre (2589 N. Downer Ave., 414-962-3120). For more than 100 years, the stalwart “neighborhood theater” has served up the very best in domestic, foreign, and independent films. No muss, no fuss. Is it a gorgeous and ornately decorated movie palace? No. Is it a technologically advanced and modernly appointed multiplex? No. Is it kind of scruffy and rough around the edges? Sure. If the Oriental Theatre is the glistening jewel of the East Side (and the Avalon Atmospheric Theater is its Bay View counterpart), then the Downer Theatre is the cool pair of beat-up shades you slip on when you’re watching that dance scene in Godard’s Bande à Part.

Whatever. The last movie I saw there, over 40 years ago, was Meatballs.  It. Just. Doesn't. Matter.

And therein lies the charm of the Downer Theatre. It’s a “neighborhood theater” in every sense of the word: small, lived-in, intimate, well-loved. It has no aspirations of providing a “modern” moviegoing experience stuffed with distractions. It looks and sounds good (the projection is digital) and dammit, that should be enough. In an era when going to the movies can feel as personal as eating at a fast food joint, the Downer Theatre strips away the fat and allows the power of film to speak for itself. Show up, buy a ticket, and enjoy.

No more, apparently.