The snacks might have a massive mark-up but you can’t beat seeing a movie up on the big screen at the cinema. There are all the usual suspects when it comes to multiplexes in London but the city is home to some real independent gems that take the screening experience to the next level – we’re talking comfy sofas, proper bevvies and varied programmes that include everything from arthouse flicks to foreign films to the latest blockbuster releases.
Some of these cinemas have real history – the Regent Street Cinema opened back in 1848 and is often called the birthplace of British cinema, there’s been a cinema under one name or another on the site of the Rio in Dalston for over 100 years, and the Caste Cinema on Chatsworth Road has gone from a single-screen cinema in 1913 to a bingo club to a warehouse to a snooker hall to that top bit of Eat17 to a cinema once again.
Others are shinier and newer, like the Institute of Light in the railway arches by London Fields, the redeveloped Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, and the three-screen Catford Mews.