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A movie theater or cinema is a location, usually a building, for viewing movies. Other colloquial names include the silver screen and the big screen (contrasted with the "small screen" of television). Generally, theaters are not owned by individuals, but rather operated by corporations and visited by the general public: one can attend the film showing after buying a ticket. There are often several rooms or auditoriums, each showing another movie; such a theater is called a multiplex, and if very large (16 screens or more), a megaplex. Sometimes a popular movie is shown in more than one auditorium. The film is projected with a movie projector onto a large projection screen at the front of the auditorium.

1 Types of movie theater

There are a variety of movie theatres:

First-Run Theatre: A theatre that runs primarily mainstream film fare from the major film companies and distributors in their initial release period.
Second Run or Discount Theatre: A theatre that runs films that have been pulled from the first run theatres and presented at a lower ticket price.
Repertoire or Art House Theatre: A theatre that presents more alternative and art films as well as second run and classic films.
IMAX Theatre: A variant theatre which uses an oversized screen and high power projection and typically runs films designed for this format.
A sex cinema is specialized in showing pornographic movies.

Some movie theaters are converted from conventional theaters, and some theaters may be temporarily converted to show movies. As for content, some theatres have special series devoted to art and foreign films shown on a limited basis, and sometimes a higher ticket to appeal to an audience that sometimes does not have a dedicated venue for such fare.

Some movie theaters are outdoors and so can only be used when it is dark. A drive-in movie theater is basically a parking area with a screen at one end and a projection booth at the other. Moviegoers drive into the parking spaces which are usually provided with portable loudspeakers or the vehicle's sound system tunes to an FM station over which the soundtrack is played, and the movie is viewed through the car windscreen. Drive-in movies were mainly found in the United States, and were especially popular in the 1950s and 1960s, but are now almost extinct.

Some outdoor movie theaters are just cleared areas where the audience sits upon chairs or blankets and watch the movie on a temorary screen, or even the wall of a convenient building.

In late 1990s student organisations in universities and schools started to show movies in auditoriums equipped with multimedia projectors.

Some alternative methods of showing movies have been popular in the past. In 1980s the introduction of VHS casettes made possible video-salons, small rooms where visitors viewed the film on a large TV. These establishments were especially popular in the Soviet Union, where official distribution companies were slow to adapt to changing demand and so movie theaters could not show popular Hollywood and Asian films.

2 Admittance

According to motion picture rating systems, children or teenagers below a certain age may be forbidden access to theaters showing certain movies, or simply subject to parental guidance.

3 Crowd control

As movie theaters have grown into multiplexes and megaplexes, crowd control has become a major concern. An overcrowded megaplex can be rather unpleasant (due to factors like body odor and bruising), and in an emergency can be extremely dangerous. Therefore, all major theater chains have implemented crowd control measures.

The most famous one is the ubiquitous holdout line which prevents ticketholders for the next showing of that weekend's most popular movie from entering the building until their particular auditorium has been cleared out and cleaned. Furthermore, many theater chains like to co-locate their theaters in shopping centers, and they deliberately build lobbies and corridors that are too small, making holdout lines a necessity. In turn, ticketholders will hopefully be enticed to shop or eat while stuck in the holdout line.

4 "The back row"

Sometimes couples go to a movie theater for the additional reason that it provides the possibility of some physical intimacyPhysical intimacy in increasing degree is: #Physical closeness # Touching, especially tenderly #Touching intimate parts, outercourse #Sexual penetration Touching may include: Holding hands Hugging: gently enclosing the arms around the trunk of each other, where the dark provides some privacy (with additional privacy in the back-row). This applies in particular for young people who still live with their parents, and these parents tend to monitor and/or forbid certain activities. Compared with being together in a room without other people, it may also be reassuring for one or both of the couple (and for parents) that the intimacy is necessarily limited.

Arm rests may be a hindrance for intimacy. Some theaters have love seats: seats for two without armrest in the middle. The most modern theaters have movable armrests throughout the theater that when down can hold a food container as well as act as an armrest or partition between the seats and when up allow closer contact between the couple. More expensive theaters may have large comfortable sofas.

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