Starlight Cinema - San Jose, California

SING Mac

The screen and sound were good back when it was at San Pedro Square, but too small for the current setting at St James Park. The smaller screen felt more like straining to watch a TV while deep in the big woods - because a lot of people upgraded their TV's at home, during the Covid lockdowns, to larger screens and better sound, the standards are higher now. Also, because people needed to social distance and spread out more for Covid, they sat further away from the screen for either the Raya night or for Karate Kid; so it was harder to get immersed into the film because the peripheral noises (one night there was a fire truck that interrupted with a loud siren and emergency lights) kept intruding to you subconciously. It was reminding that you were outside the home in an exposed park, at night, with your back turned, etc. A larger screen would have offset that feeling more.

The larger outdoor movie screen that San Jose State University used when they showed the animated movie Coco from 2017 was at least 50% larger: it would have been perfect (even now for post-pandemic) because the larger screen filled your field of vision without having to huddle close, and the larger speakers had more surround-sound quality to where you could almost feel the sound like a outdoor music concert - so it was still a noticeably better experience watching Coco movies outdoor at SJSU, than watching Coco at home.

But being watching in the outdoors is also one of the best things during Covid, because everyone can safely social distance as they see fit on the grass and not be constrained by the rows of seats inside a movie theater.

Having the popcorn and hot drinks vendor was good this year - there's a picture of the kettle corn below:

William Wood

5 stars

Carlos Manzanares

Patrick

Luis Sedeno