Tom Cruise and I have one thing in common: We both love eating popcorn at the movies. But I am a blogger, and Tom Cruise is not, so here we are.
Rarely do I go more than two weeks in New York City without seeing a movie, whether it's a new release or a screening of something old. Usually, the experience feels incomplete without a whole lot of popcorn, often all for myself. Over the years, as I've become a repeated customer at film spots around the city, I've built up some knowledge, and some taste, and some routines. Over the past year, I've kept notes on my experiences, trying to get a thing of popcorn at least once from every theater I go to.
The kernels of my research have finally bloomed—here are all of the independent theaters in my vicinity, evaluated by their popcorn. I left out the chain multiplexes, even though I generally really like their popcorn, and I also didn't include the places with menus at the seats, where they bring you the check with 40 minutes to go in the movie, because that is not the true concession-stand way.
13. Film Forum - $7 Large Popcorn at The Ladykillers
It pains me to put Film Forum last on any list, because I do love it very much—like an older sibling with cool, mildly inscrutable taste. It's a pretty unassuming multi-screen spot in lower Manhattan where you have to form a line all around the perimeter of the pretty jammed lobby if you get there early; it's got that New York City real estate trick where they are making the most of every single square foot. Their repertory programming is catholic: oddball cult hits, deeper foreign cuts, a good dose of documentary, and stone-cold classics by legendary auteurs. On several occasions, I've basically gotten stuck in loops with them, where I go to a movie, see a trailer for something that looks really good, go to that movie, see a trailer, etc.
But I cannot lie about their popcorn: It is terrible. They do not seem to believe in butter at Film Forum—their concession stand in general hews closer to "organic cafe" than "movie time!"—and as a result the popcorn is dry and bland and tough and impossible to eat without a lot of soda. Multiple times, I've talked myself into buying it because I so badly want it to be good, and always by the 10-minute mark of the film I am disappointed by my own optimism.
12. Lincoln Center - $8 Large Popcorn at Caught By The Tides
Lincoln Center is a non-negotiable destination if you're a tourist in Manhattan. It's not far from Central Park or the luxury mall at Columbus Circle, and even if you're not going to see a play, or the opera, or the Philharmonic, or the ballet, that fountain makes for a lovely photo op. Nearby, there are plenty of good spots for reading on a nice day, one of my favorite restaurants in P.J. Clarke's, and a dashing little wine bar in Vanguard.
Amid the glamor of this spot, and the deep-pocketed donors that maintain this monument to highbrow art, the movie screens can get a bit lost in the shuffle. Sure, they come out into the spotlight once a year for the New York Film Festival, but the film theaters are pretty easily ignored in the shadow of such towering, ostentatious buildings as the Metropolitan Opera House and the, um, David H. Koch Theater. But you can cross a footbridge to the one-screen Walter Reade Theater or, more likely, duck into the multi-screen Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center on 65th. There, you'll find under-the-radar new releases, prestigious imports, and better-known older hits like Bonnie & Clyde or Defending Your Life.
It's possible that crossing the street to the Reade gets you better popcorn, but I am evaluating this Upper West Side landmark based on the popcorn at the Munroe. This is just popcorn in an old-fashioned box you can buy at the entrance. It's not particularly big, and it felt like it'd been sitting in the box for a while. It was just your basic boxed popcorn, dry but salty, and it didn't really fill me up. My main issue, ultimately, is that Lincoln Center just feels too nice for popcorn—too beautiful and too austere for an inherently messy snack. Better to just bring Twizzlers and keep it pristine.
11. Roxy Cinema - $7 Regular Popcorn at Wild At Heart
The lobby of the Roxy Hotel in Tribeca is this stylish jazz bar that always makes me afraid I'm going to get kicked out for being too common. But the basement is pretty chill. It feels like if a rich guy built a theater in his house: a relatively small screen with classic-looking red seats, carpets, and curtains. (The bathrooms, by the way, are absolutely a must-see.) The movies that play here are a little hard-to-predict—I've seen Casino, The Heartbreak Kid, and Celine and Julie Go Boating, among others. The programming tends a little more dark and serious, in my mind, than the average theater, but you could really get anything from a shoestring-budgeted new release to an '80s blockbuster.
Roxy's little concession stand, run by an employee in an old-timey uniform, has a number of enticing options (including alcohol), but nothing that'll blow you away. The popcorn comes in a little cardboard cylinder that doesn't give you much volume, and at least on my night there a "large" just got you two cylinders. It came out of a popcorn machine but tasted pretty ballparky. It had a salty and buttery flavor all throughout, even though you couldn't add to it yourself. My problem, really, was just that I wanted more.
10. IFC Center - $15.50 Large Popcorn with Large Soda for Dig! XX
This is the only movie theater to which I have a membership. I guess I've never been much of a joiner, in that sense, but they were running a good discount, and I come here a lot. This multi-screen spot in the Village, not far from Film Forum, delivers a mix of new indies, crowd-pleasing older picks, smart series, and things you can't get anywhere else. There's usually something for everyone here, and it's become a very cozy place to me, even if it might be disorienting at first. (The geography bears the mark of a space that's been tinkered with multiple times over, and they also run a short film ahead of most features, which always confuses the heck out of latecomers.) The two really big rooms, in particular, make for some of the best places to revisit something incredible, or just catch it for the first time. My top-notch experiences here include Mulholland Dr., RRR, and It's A Wonderful Life.
Going into this project, I expected their popcorn to rank highly, simply because I had such positive associations with IFC—on top of everything else, I think they have the friendliest concession workers in the city. Unfortunately, when evaluating their popcorn's quality with all the focus and seriousness of a movie theater food critic, I was disappointed. They give you a lot of popcorn at IFC, and they'll put butter on top if you ask, but on the whole the pieces were tiny and the taste was bland.
I was so stunned, honestly, that I gave IFC another shot, returning for Lost Highway at a much busier time of night. Maybe, I thought, the afternoon was just a down time for popcorn. This batch, to my taste buds, was fresher and saltier, with slightly fewer tiny crumbs. But it wasn't a massive improvement. It was just average popcorn.
9. Paris Theater - $7 One-Size Popcorn for The Thin Man
The Paris, right by the south end of Central Park, is sort of a weird one. It's a vintage single-screen movie house, but it's recently been acquired and renovated by the enemy of the movie theater: Netflix. When they're not using it for Netflixy events, they program stuff that tangentially connects to things they want you to stream, I guess. Sometimes the theme is clear, like "We're doing Marilyn Monroe movies because Blonde is coming out," and sometimes it's "We're doing comedies because you can watch comedies on Netflix." The tech-company sheen colliding with a classical moviegoing atmosphere turns it into an uncanny place, one where they'll allegedly run streams off Amazon Prime or where an employee introducing a canonical '50s film also has to fake enthusiasm for Happy Gilmore 2. But still, good movies + big theater = happy Lauren.
The concession stand on the lower level of the building is pretty standard, the popcorn coming in the clip-art ideal of a popcorn box and tasting exactly like it does at a high school football game. It's dry, but you can salt it to your heart's content with a shaker on a table across from the registers. It doesn't taste fresh, but you get a decent amount, and the pieces are a sturdy size. This is a normal, satisfactory box of popcorn.
8. Metrograph - $5 One-Size Popcorn (Small) at Eyes Wide Shut
Metrograph, the Lower East Side staple, has got a kind of Wes Anderson aesthetic, where you can tell somebody thought very, very carefully about every single detail: the cocktail menu, the quirky candies for sale, the pre-film slideshow ads, even the font of the schedule behind the ticket counter. Frankly, I don't get the sense that it's a fun place to work, but they do show a lot of cool movies, often centered around clever themes, and in this space I've watched works like La Dolce Vita, Night of the Living Dead, The Driver, Inherent Vice, and Happy Together.
Metrograph's hippest screenings tend to attract the kind of model-esque, confident young people who make you wonder, "Where exactly does your money come from?" And I suppose they stay so thin by barely eating any popcorn. The bag it comes in is chic but tiny. For a long time, I stayed away just because it was so small, opting for cheaper and longer-lasting candy instead. But for this project, I was pleasantly surprised by how satisfying it was. Metrograph's popcorn, despite the quantity, was a higher quality than ballpark popcorn. It was very salty, didn't taste stale, and served as a perfect snack, if not a full meal substitute. It was a sneaky reminder that maybe I don't actually need to eat so much popcorn...
7. Cinema 123 - $19.25 Large Popcorn Combo With Two Large Drinks at Superman
...Unless I'm seeing a blockbuster like Superman, of course. Cinema 123 is a (count 'em) three-screen middlebrow new-release theater in a very wealthy part of Manhattan. I'd never been there before this trip, and I was pleased with the concessions, which included one of those freestyle soft drink machines and an apparent secret discount (the sign advertised $26 for the combo). This popcorn was very buttery for the first third, a little chewy but nevertheless tasty and salty. The quality declined as I worked my way through the bag, the pieces getting blander and smaller, but this was still a good purchase.
6. Quad Cinema - $9 Large Popcorn at Hester Street
I hadn't been to four-screen Quad Cinema on 13th St. in forever, partly because their lineup tends toward the obscure. But I'll always hold a fond place for it in my heart. When I was 23 and going through a particularly depressing stretch, I took a certain level of solace and comfort in a Winona Ryder series they were running. It's a simple pleasure, the movie and popcorn thing, but a couple hours in a different world is generally a pretty good way to gain some perspective. The Big Chill did something similar for me here another time, as did a screening of On The Waterfront, which was the very first thing I saw in a theater after getting vaccinated for COVID. Quad's a little easy to overlook, but it does seem to pop up for me when I need it.
For example, I was trying to figure out what I would see here to further my popcorn journey, and they programmed Hester Street, which I'd wanted to watch for quite a while. So I saw Carol Kane and munched on tons and tons of popcorn. When purchasing, the guy whipped out a mini-pitcher of butter and let me say "When" like we were at an Italian restaurant, and even though the butter was only on top, the larger pieces had that greasy, salty flavor all the way to the bottom. The popcorn was maybe a tad overdone, but I was happy.
5. BAM - $7.75 Large Popcorn at Oh, Hi!
The Brooklyn Academy Of Music's activities and spaces encompass a whole range of media—fancy concerts, glitzy plays, intellectual talks, and indie film. Their movie theater has four pretty spacious screens, and one thing they do that catches people off guard is start their showings basically right at the advertised time, with the trailers running beforehand. This is a reliable spot to see a new release that isn't quite a blockbuster but has name actors in it, like The Lighthouse or Babygirl, and you'll get some fairly down-the-middle rep series thrown in, too. This is where I saw Seven Samurai, for example, which is a movie that demands a lot of popcorn.
Anyway, the bags at BAM are a healthy size—well, probably unhealthy if you asked a doctor—and they put butter on for you. When it's busy, they have it already sitting out and ready to go the second you order, which can make it a teensy bit stale, but this purchase remained really buttery halfway down the bag and salty the whole way through. It more than filled me up, even if was a little dry at the end, and for a 90-minute feature, this was all the food I could ask for.
4. Angelika Film Center - $11 Large Popcorn at Anora
When a really buzzy indie film is in limited release, a lot of times the only place you can see it is at the Angelika on Houston. That's a little unfortunate, because it's one of the most aesthetically lacking theaters in the city. There's a nice-enough cafe on the ground floor, but you've got to go down a long escalator to get to the theaters, and once you arrive, you never forget that you're underground. The screens aren't very big. The seating arrangements are strangely long and narrow, making for some pretty rough back-row sightlines. The noise from the subway leaks through at regular intervals.
All that said, they make some great popcorn. You get the self-serve button-press butter, so you can easily use the popcorn trick where you drop it through a straw placed in the bag and let it drip all the way to the bottom. Honestly, I will put up with a lot just to have the opportunity to use one of those machines.
3. Williamsburg Cinemas - $14 for a "Super Combo" of Large Popcorn And Large Soda at Splitsville
Located at the heart of one of the most expensive parts of Brooklyn, Williamsburg Cinemas is a family-friendly, multi-level new-release space with a superhero mural on one of its sides. I'll go here if it happens to be convenient, but not for any other reason, because it's got a lot less personality than most of the other theaters on this list. That said, it does have a butter machine. When you get hot, salty popcorn as buttery as you want it, in a bag that's hefty but not extreme, that's ideal. The pieces maybe got a little small toward the bottom of the bag, but whatever. This is wonderful popcorn.
2. Cobble Hill Cinemas - $8.25 Large Popcorn at The Fantastic Four: First Steps
Cobble Hill has so much character. Tucked into an especially beautiful (yet busy) part of northwest Brooklyn, this almost 100-year-old building is everything you want a friendly neighborhood theater to be: humble, welcoming, and timeless-feeling, yet also more than capable of giving you a top-tier new-movie experience that doesn't use its age as an excuse for inferior functionality. I love the durability of this theater, and its wide appeal, and even though it's been chopped up a little bit to add some cramped upstairs screens, those innovations only add to the charm for me. It means people are invested in the continued relevance and success of this place.
It'd suck if the popcorn couldn't match the rest of the enchantment, but thankfully, it does. They have the butter machine with straws, placed out on a pedestal in the middle of the lobby, so I got this super buttery (though not especially salty) popcorn with big pieces that stayed good even though I waited through the previews to start eating. The size was enough to fill my stomach, but it hit the spot so acutely on this particular day that I wanted to keep going.
1. Village East - $18 Large Popcorn with Large Soda at One Battle After Another
There are two Village East experiences. One is your usual night seeing a new movie in a standard theater. The other, when you plan to catch a major release in the big main room, is my very favorite in all of New York City. The primary screen at Village East is a palace, wowing you with its magnificent ceiling and boosting your adrenaline because there are three different seating tiers of moviegoers all excited to see the same thing with you, almost like a sporting event. Booksmart, Challengers, The Brutalist, One Battle After Another—I can name each movie I've seen in this room all without any hesitation. It drops my jaw every time, and when I got a ticket specifically in Row F to see One Battle, I spent days looking forward just to being back inside this gorgeous coliseum of cinema.
And the popcorn rocks. Village East is owned by Angelika, so I imagine the concessions are from the same vendor (though I've never compared them side by side). The staff is capable of meeting the huge rush that comes when it's 10 minutes to showtime in the big room, and they let you handle the butter yourself on a self-serve machine with straws nearby. It's not the biggest of the large popcorns out there, but I will absolutely inhale it. This is what going to the movies should be.
