Cinematic malaise

The biggest movie of the year just opened and is playing not five minutes from my apartment, and here I am, sitting at home, alone, watching a Monty Python documentary on demand. Such a thing would have been unthinkable just a year ago, being a huge film fan and a hopeless victim of pop culture.

But these days, I'm finding it hard to care.

Hard to care about paying for a film I'll be able to rent on DVD in fewer than six months. Hard to care about paying for a film I could, in theory, download off the Internet right now. Hard to care about a movie that is certainly not for me. Hard to care about paying $10 to sit in a hot, crowded theater full of inconsiderate people with their cell phones turned on and their mouths permanently agape.

But that's a personal feeling, not something indicative of the public's feelings writ large. We've been hearing for years that the movie theater experience is becoming less and less important, but people are still turning out in record numbers, every single year. "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" shattered the midnight show record set earlier this year by "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," and the L.A. Times reports that the film is on pace for the single biggest day in box office history, beating the record set last year by "The Dark Knight." (I don't think it can beat TDK's total gross, but you never know. For all I know, "New Moon" is "Titanic" with vampires.)

So is my problem just with this particular movie? Not really -- my filmgoing in general has dropped off dramatically this year. I have gone to see 28 different movies this year. Of those 28, four were films I was paid to see as a fill-in critic for the Daily Herald, and one was a free AICN screening. So I've only paid to see 23 films this year. (In 2006, for example, I paid to see 49 films. I don't think I'm going to see 26 films in the next six weeks, but you never know.)

Is this a product of age? Of annoyance? Am I becoming a creepy recluse?

That last one might have some merit. It didn't even occur to me -- at least, not until right now -- that I could ask a young lady to accompany me to "New Moon" this weekend. That would seem to be a pretty darn good first date. But alas, I have no game. Even more, I have no thoughts of having any game.

Hmm. And yet I wonder why I feel so lonely, all while playing pinball and watching "Star Trek" for the 11th time ...

Does anyone else share my sense of cinematic malaise?