In a world where movie theaters get an increasingly bad rap for not being as user-friendly as prices would justify, ArcLight Cinemas is making a difference. Few venues elicit the smiles that ArcLight’s premier movie-going experience brings. The Los Angeles-based chain currently has four locations in Hollywood, El Segundo, Pasadena and Sherman Oaks, with a new theater set to open this fall in La Jolla.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of their Hollywood location. To celebrate, ArcLight is presenting a series of “Member’s Choice” movie screenings. Even more exciting, they’re hosting in-depth interviews and informative Q&As all year with the actors, directors, screenwriters, and others responsible for creating the art that goes up on the big screen.

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On Monday, March 12, 2012 I attended the gala World Premiere of 21 Jump Street at the SXSW Film Festival. The sold-out screening was held in the historic 1200-seat Paramount Theatre in Austin, Texas. The film was a selection in the Headliners section.

The wildly popular television series 21 Jump Street ran for five seasons from 1987-1991 on Fox. It was part of their inaugural primetime season and the show that arguably put the fledgling network on the map. Over two decades later Executive Producers Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum are back to play the iconic baby-faced high school undercover officers Schmidt and Jenko.

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On Saturday, March 17, 2012 I attended the long-awaited World Premiere of Fat Kid Rules the World at the SXSW Film Festival. The sold-out screening was held at the whimsical Alamo Lamar in Austin, Texas. The film was a selection in the Narrative Spotlight section.

Fat Kid Rules the World is the surprisingly sweet, heartfelt directorial debut from accomplished actor Matthew Lillard. Known for his onscreen work with successful studio pictures Scream, Without a Paddle, and the Scooby Doo franchise, along with indie titles like SLC Punk!, The Groomsmen, and the award-winning Alexander Payne film The Descendants, Lillard steps behind the camera to put his own creative and observational skills to the test. Directing from a script by Michael M.B. Galvin and Peter Speakman, based on the K.L. Going novel, he crafts a painfully authentic work about one boy’s descent into self-pity and the efforts of a stranger to lift him up and out of despair.

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On Tuesday, March 13, 2012 I attended the exciting World Premiere of Funeral Kings at the SXSW Film Festival. The sold-out screening was held at the funky Alamo Ritz in Austin, Texas. The film was a selection in the Emerging Visions section.

Location: Small Town U.S.A. The kind of familiar place where Main Street has one traffic light and everybody knows your name. Three middle school boys, Andy (Dylan Hartigan), Charlie (Alex Maizus), and David (Jordan Puzzo) are (at first glance) typical mischievous teens hatching schemes. Don’t get me wrong — they’re good boys — but in a Stand By Me kind of way they’ve become ordinary kids placed in an extraordinary situation. That’s just a hint of the story of Funeral Kings, the auspicious debut feature from brothers Kevin and Matt McManus, who wrote, directed, and produced this sweet little American indie.

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On Saturday, March 10, 2012 I attended the North American Premiere of Hunky Dory at the SXSW Film Festival. The sold-out screening was held in the 220-seat Alamo Lamar in Austin, Texas. The film was a selection in the Narrative Spotlight section.

Of all the thoroughly enjoyable movies I saw at SXSW this year, Hunky Dory may be the most accessible and wonderfully rewarding. It’s the one kids, parents, and grandparents will fall in love with. Marc Evans (Trauma, Snow Cake), directing from a script by Laurence Coriat, has made some risky choices — and they’ve paid off.

A high school is preparing to put on a novel production of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The twist is, it will be a musical using pop hits of the day. It happens to be 1976, and what a magnificent year to mine for tunes.

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On Sunday, March 11, 2012 I attended the gala World Premiere of Eden at the SXSW Film Festival. The sold-out screening was held in the historic 298-seat Stateside Theatre in Austin, Texas. The film was a selection in the Narrative Feature Competition.

Eden is based on the horrific true story of Chong Kim, who was kidnapped in her teens and held captive as a sex slave. Kim co-wrote the source material with Richard B. Phillips. It was adapted for the screen by Phillips and director Megan Griffiths. As the fictionalized Hyun Jae (nicknamed Eden by her captors), she is forced to join dozens of other girls in a lurid clandestine operation, supplying underage prostitutes to “discriminating” clientele (they like ‘em nubile) out of a storage facility that doubles as a prison.

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On Tuesday, March 13, 2012 I attended a gala screening of Monsieur Lazhar at the SXSW Film Festival. The sold-out event was held in the legendary 1200-seat Paramount Theatre in Austin, Texas.

Monsieur Lazhar came into SXSW as a “Festival Favorite,” and it certainly fits that description. The Canadian film debuted at Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival last August. It went on to great acclaim in its home country at Toronto the following month. Monsieur Lazhar then triumphed at a half dozen other film festivals before making it to the U.S. in January at Sundance. It was Canada’s entry into the Oscars and was eventually nominated for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year.

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