The End of the Beginning: My hometown theater, Cine 5, closes

UPDATE: Since the closure, Cine 5 has reopened and is back in operation. I’m so thankful for that development. I plan to keep this piece up as a tribute to the theater and as a reminder of the importance of theaters in smaller communities.

For a film buff, living near a movie theater is a great bit of geographic luck.

That’s what I had growing up in International Falls, Minn. From when I was born until I moved away for college, I never lived more than a block or two away from the local theater, the Cine 5.

Sadly, like I’ve done twice already on this site, I’m having to write a farewell piece to place I spent countless hours and created numerous memories. The Cine 5 closed recently, marking the end of another theater that I attended.

I wrote previously about others I frequented that had shuttered. One was the Breckenridge 6, the theater for the Wahpeton, N.D.-Breckenridge, M.N. area. Two others were the Uptown Theater and Edina Cinema in the Twin Cities area, the latter having fortunately re-opened.

However, none of those theater closings hit this close to home, because this one was in my hometown. The memories go back far. As a 90s kid, this was my place where I experienced the start of Pixar and the Disney Renaissance, seeing “The Lion King,” “Toy Story” and the like. I also remember seeing the first “Pokemon” movie there in a full theater and the energy was electric.

Perhaps no movie impacted me more during that time period, though, than “Independence Day.” Certainly not a critics’ darling, but my eight-year-old self was in awe. It was probably the most epic movie experience I had at that point, having seen many other genre classics, “Star Wars,” for example, on VHS rather than the big screen.

The way the theater rattled at the opening when the ship came on screen, the dogfights and the unfolding drama gave me a new sense of scale for film. I was truly amazed and couldn’t get enough.

I only had to wait a year before getting another incredible theater experienced. In December 1997, my dad picked me up from school on a Friday, one of the few times he was able to have that day off, and let me know that later that night, we’d be going to see “Titanic.”

James Cameron’s epic film kept me enthralled for 3 hours, 14 minutes, even with an intermission. I had always been fascinated by the Titanic as a kid, watching documentaries on the Discovery channel about the ship, so I was already hooked. But even my already high expectations were blown away at that theater.

My first midnight movie experience was at there, too, when the my dad, sister and I went to watch “Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.” It was the start of a few film franchises I’d mostly see at that theater over the next decade. My friends and I went to Cine 5 to watch the other two prequels and the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, as well as five of the eight “Harry Potter” movies.

I also spent quite a bit of time there for superhero movies. I saw the first “Spider-Man” film there countless times in 2002 and would go on to watch many more in the multiple auditoriums. For the first 20 or so years of my life, this theater just a short walk or bike ride away offered escapism on a regular basis, and I was able to experience a multitude of genre-defining pictures.

My experience certainly isn’t unique. Everyone my age from International Falls and across the county grew up during a time of big changes in cinema when it came to blockbusters and genre films. Unlike others who lived in bigger cities, though, I experienced all of that at just one theater.

It’s something many who live in smaller towns in the U.S. can relate to. When I left for college and lived in the Fargo, N.D.-Moorhead, M.N. area, there were four theaters I could go to when I wanted to watch movies. Now I live in the Twin Cities, and there are a plethora of cinemas to attend.

In International Falls, a small Midwestern factory town, there was just Cine 5. That was the gateway to the art of film on the big screen for a whole community. Knowing that gateway has closed for the community, and that it was the only cinema for a 60-mile radius really stings.

It’s really compounded personally, though, for a couple additional reasons. One of them is the fact that the theater kind of grew up alongside me. When I was younger, it was just Cine 1 & 2, featuring two smaller auditoriums. Then, a few years later, there was a new, bigger auditorium added on with a larger screen. There was even a new name, Cine 3.

The theater eventually caught up with the stadium-seating trend, too, with two more auditoriums added in the 2000s. With the upgrade, Cine 5 was born. On the inside, Cine 5 changed as well, going from a classic red theater aesthetic to a more modern look with blues and blacks.

Interestingly enough, after I moved away from my hometown, the changes at Cine 5 appeared to cease. Whenever I returned, it was almost like a time capsule, everything seemed to be as it was in 2009 when I left.

In fact the only things that were noticeable on return visits was some wear and tear. However, even though it began to show its age, and didn’t offer the bells and whistles that some other theaters that I attended had, revisiting Cine 5 was always a good experience. It was always like a flashback to a simpler time.

My reason for returning as much as I did was of course my film reviews. I began writing movie reviews in 2008, my second year of attending Minnesota North College-Rainy River. My first review I ever wrote came after a rather upsetting Cine 5 visit.

I had just watched “X-Files: I Want to Believe,” and it wasn’t a great experience. I was a fan of the show, and was let down by the stiffness of the movie and the severe lacking of paranormal aspects. I put all my thoughts on my MySpace blog, and it was all lost because of a website error.

I decided to finally do what I was considering for a while and started my own website, which began my film critic adventure. As previously stated, this was the only theater for 60 miles, meaning basically all the movies I reviewed were watched there.

I attended so often that I ended up just getting a gift card that I would continuously add money to whenever I’d get my paycheck from my job at a hotel. By my rough count from Letterboxd, I watched 125 movies at Cine 5 in total for the purpose of reviewing them.

It’s certainly not where I watched the majority of the films I’ve written about, but of the first 100 I reviewed, most of them were screened at Cine 5. The final film I watched there was 2019’s “Uncut Gems,” which earned an Honorable Mention, just outside my top 10 for that year.

It certainly wasn’t the only film that I showed appreciation to at the end of the year. So as a goodbye to the Cine 5, here are films that made my top 10 lists or honorable mentions that were watched there:

• The Dark Knight, 2008
• Gran Torino, 2008
• Cloverfield, 2008
• Kung Fu Panda, 2008
• Iron Man, 2008
• Pineapple Express, 2008
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, 2008
• District 9, 2009
• Watchmen, 2009
• The Hangover, 2009
• Star Trek, 2009
• Toy Story 3, 2010
• The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, 2011
• This is the End, 2013 (HM)
• Frozen, 2013
• It, 2017 (HM)
• Hereditary, 2018
• Toy Story 4, 2019 (HM)
• Uncut Gems, 2019 (HM)