I’m saddened to hear that Landmark is closing its cinema at Plaza Frontenac, leaving the St. Louis area with no movie theaters that regularly schedule arthouse films. Landmark doesn’t have much choice, as it’s being evicted by the high-end mall’s owner for not paying $274,000 in rent.
I feel partly responsible.
For many years, my wife and I went there to see movies that the megaplex owners (e.g. AMC, Marcus) never showed. Landmark left the huge franchise movies from the Marvel and Star Wars universes to the other operators, opting instead to play independent films without major distribution, documentaries, and smaller-budget movies that appealed to an older audience. Fully half of my ten best movies list each year was comprised of titles I saw there.
But as streaming became more popular, I would often see that a movie was opening at Plaza Frontenac and, instead of buying tickets, would write it down on a list of wanna-sees, planning to catch it later when Netflix or some other streamer made it available to watch in our living room.
Unfortunately, many of those titles never appeared on any on-demand services, so we missed the opportunity entirely. I still have close to twenty such entries on my list. I don’t know how many of them had a run at Plaza Frontenac, but it’s probably more than a few.
The economics of the movie business has always been tough for everyone involved and, as in any industry, there will always be winners and losers.
I wouldn’t be bothered if one of the many multiplexes in our area that fill their screens with yet another “Jurassic Park” and “Transformers” sequel went dark. But losing this particular theater hurts my movie-loving heart.