My First Movie After 5 Years Not Entering a Cinema

I haven't entered a cinema since the last I watched Pikachu the Detective movie in 2019. So that makes it like 5 years since my last movie?

Today the streak is broken. I went to watch my first ever movie after 5 years. I was eyeing on this China-produced movie called YOLO in English, but 热辣滚烫in Chinese, starred and directed by a comedian actress and celebrity I really like, Jia Ling.

Initially I really wanted to watch it alone but a friend suddenly messaged me today to ask what I was doing and she got shocked a little that I am watching a movie because I really usually don't. My husband also offered to fetch the boys from school so it is like a super rare opportunity for me to go for this 2 -hour 10 minutes- movie. I grabbed the opportunity, especially before I deliver the baby.

After cooking and preparing lunch for the boys, I arrived at the cinema at 115pm. The earliest showtime is 140pm though I wished it has rven earlier screentime.

I realized I was so foreign to the current movie ticketing system. There were very very few people and everything is done via kiosk. No one was at the ticketing counter anymore.

Even if you want to purchase food and beverages or snacks, you need to go through the kiosks.

So I selected the movie and showtime that we were going for and paid.

The tickets came out to look like this with a QR code.

Waited for a while for the theater designated to be ready and open. So my friend wanted to get a drink. I wanted a hot corn in the cup but we could not find it on the menu on the kiosk so I gave it up.

As we were walking around and waited, we saw there was this book shelf full of books donated and we can pick them up to read for free. Interesting for a spot such as the cinema, right?

Okay, finally at 135pm, the theater or cinema hall for our movie was opened and we could enter. Not many people were watching as the offical screening date is actually 21st March but not sure why we can watch it earlier today.

There were a whole row of students and then just another 5 more audiences including me and my friend, perhaps?

Nevertheless, I still enjoyed the movie. Though one of the reasons why I haven't entered a cinema to watch a movie for so long is I have a hard time sitting still for 2 hours for a movie doing nothing but just watching it, I actually managed to sit through this movie.

The storyline was a bit draggy in the beginning. But I really wanted to support Jia Ling in her cinematic production so I enjoyed some of the shooting techniques she showed in this movie. Managed to spot some of her creatkve way of potraying the story like this few scenes, including another that was how she felt so defeated and then how she rose up. Especially love the scene when she saw her older self in the reflection doing a thumbs up to her newly transformed self. Salute her determination of losing 50kg to film this movie in real life too. She quietly trained behind the scene for a year and had so much self discipline to have this movie come by.

After we were done for this movie, there were even memo of how she struggled to keep herself motivated throughout this one whole year and how she almost gave up in difficult moments.

It was an inspiring movie for me. So it is also worth for me to post it on #wednesdaywalk this week to remember it and me watching it at 37 weeks pregnant.