When I was growing up, we had two ways to experience movies, the cinema and VHS copies. For me, the cinema was always king when it came to the movie going experience. The bigger screen, widescreen, cinema sound, stuff you could never get a home in the late 80's early 90's. Until of course the advent of DVD's in 1997.

It's with DVD's that really started to collect films as a hobby, but I also started to invest in how I watched them too. I had a 32" Sanyo widescreen TV that weighed as much as a newborn elephant and was just as awkward to lift and carry. And I bought a surround sound setup. A Sony amp and 5.1 speakers for Dolby Digital sound as Pro Logic was on the way out. I made sure at the time that the amp could do DTS as a friend of mine who had one told me that while at the time the sound type was rare it was worth it when you did get a disc with that sound file. The region one edition of Saving Private Ryan being the torch bearer for what DTS could do (the region two edition only had Dolby Digital).

So over time, I upgraded my equipment time, the TV then became a 50" Panasonic HDTV when the PS3 came out, then became a 55" Sony Bravia for the PS4 launch, and is now currently a 65" 4K Sony Bravia. The sound system too got an upgrade, from regular Dolby Digital and DTS to their respected HD versions.

So for the past ten years or so, I would always think that my setup was just sub a cinema setup. All I was missing was the scale of the screen. And now with 4K I watching films at the same resolutions that most cinemas project their films.

So last night I decided to go see a re-release of Goodfellas at my local ODEON. A film I have seen a dozen times in various formats, from the crappy VHS retail to that god awful flipper DVD that Warner Bros first brought out (those glorious days before dual layering DVD's were the standard), to the current Blu-ray edition. It's a film I know backwards and have written essays about in film school. So to me, it was revisiting an old friend. I haven't seen the film in full in about ten years, I have the Blu-ray, but have never got around to watch it in full, outside of a few famous scenes.

I always used to joke with friends growing up that the reason the cinema is better than watching at home was that there's no pause button, so you have to give the film your full attention. But last night, the experience of watching Goodfellas on the big screen was beautiful. The projection has this beautiful grain that made me feel I was watching it on 35mm and there were at least one or two times when I glanced at the top right corner to see if I could catch a cigarette burn so that the projectionist would know when to switch reels.

But what really stood out for me was the sound. Sweet glorious sound. From the different sounds of people shoes walking along the pavement to the pounding, visceral soundtrack that just dragged you into the moment of the scene and would never let you go. From the opening song "From Rag To Riches" which plays over the iconic Saul Bass designed title cards to The Sex Pistols version of "My Way" that plays over the end titles.

During the film, I was able to somewhat watch the audience watching the film and you could tell who was watching this for the first time, and how they were on that amazing emotional roller coaster for the first time and how Scorsese's direction along with Schoonmaker's editing perfectly brought them along the dips and highs of the film.

If anything the above experience rekindled my love of going to the cinema and how it has something that a home setup can never capture. That audience feeling when everyone is invested in what's being shown on screen. I always think of two moments that come to mind. While watching David Fincher's Zodiac, there's a scene where Jake Gyllenhaal's character has to go into a basement to look at a poster and as the camera looks like the stairs to the basement, I could feel the entire audience lean ever so slightly forward to slowly peek into the darkness and see what was down there. And while watching the Steven Soderbergh film Contagion, about half way through the film someone in the audience randomly sneezed out loud and you could just cut the tension in the room with a knife.

Film has dream, film has music. No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul.