September in a theater still beats September on the couch

I have a stupid ritual and I am keeping it. After the summer toys go home, I pick a theater on a night that is not opening night, buy a ticket to whatever adult picture is still clinging to a screen, and sit there like a person who has not been trained by a pause button. Sometimes the movie is good. Sometimes it is a prestige shrug with a sad piano. The ritual is not about protecting cinema. It is about checking whether I still know how to watch.

Streaming has not killed that skill. Habits have. You start a film, you pause it, you answer a message, you come back, you have no idea who the cousin is. Then you tell people you saw it. You saw a sequence. A theater removes the alibi. If the picture is boring, you are bored in public, which is clarifying. If it is working, you cannot screenshot your way through the feeling.

September is the right month for the test because the inventory is honest. The explosions spent themselves. The awards campaign has not yet put a gun to every screening. You get holdovers that did not deserve to be buried, and new pictures that are a little too long on purpose. I like the too-long ones more than I used to. Length is not automatically depth. It is occasionally respect.

Do I sound like a priest. Maybe. Priests should be funnier. The joke is that I will still watch garbage on a Sunday afternoon in my house, paused, with a sandwich. I am not pure. I am just not going to let the entire fall get eaten by menus of movies I have not seen. One ticket. One sitting. Then a score. Three out of four Reese's Peanut Butter Cups for the habit of going.

Go while the room is still the point. Three out of four Reese's for the habit. The movie still has to earn its own cups.