When the movie theater experience works, it works really well. Who doesn’t like sitting in the middle of a darkened theater in front of a massive spectacle of storytelling and visual awe, sharing the group experience with mostly total strangers amid incredible sound and the scent of popcorn? (Okay, I’m sure there are those who don’t enjoy that, but it’s meant as a rhetorical question. No need to name names.)

Yet we’ve all had the opposite experience, too. That guy wearing the British Royal Guard hat who sits down in front of you just as the movie starts. The little kid behind you who won’t stop kicking your seat. The horde of gremlins who break into the theater on Christmas Eve, carve up the screen, and keep checking their cell phones. [Read more…]