Palace Nine -- South Burlington, Vermont
Of all Chittenden County's theaters the Palace Nine is the warhorse. Sure there has always been a theater at the corner of College St. and South Winooski Ave., but before the Essex Cinemas and the Majestic showed movie patrons what stadium seating and surround sound look and feel like there was the Palace Nine. It's hard to justify nostalgia for something that was and still is just so-so, but the Palace Nine looks and feels like what it was like to watch a movie when Eddie Murphy was a leading man and nobody had heard the term "indie" film. The Palace so badly wants to be like a modern-state-of-the-art theater like The Majestic or even Essex Cinema, but it's stunted by its size and it's body-type. No matter what technical improvements it tries to make it's stuck between not being quite an art house and not having the bones to be a modern-day theater with all the roominess and ear drum splitting sound that moviegoers expect nowadays. The films that have been recently showing there tend to be more edgy films and documentaries that (perhaps) the stately art-deco walls of the Roxy in downtown Burlington can't handle. I hope this continues, because having all five theaters in town showing the "Shaggy Dog" has got, née must end. Tickets are $7.50 after 6 PM and $4.75 for seniors, military, and students for all shows all times. If your feelin's like you want to know what it's like to see a movie "back-in-the-day," put on your parachute pants and moonwalk over the Palace 9.
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