Forum Theatre

this small, nonprofit theater shows films as well as stages theatre productions, and there is a theater academy here, of which i know nothing. as a cinema, it seems promising because they do tend to show independent and/​or arthouse films, as well as old classics and occasionally an oscar-​nominated film. example: i saw «argo» here, as well as «searching for sugarman,» disney’s «alice in wonderland» (1951), and «nebraska,» to name a few. you might encounter technical difficulties, but give them a break, they’re the only ones around showing most of these movies. they also have hosted some really cool events like screenings followed by Q&A with the directors. you should have a thick skin to deal with the clientele though. this place is definitely a community institution, with a somewhat cliquish mentality among the patrons — everyone seems to know each other and you might have to deal with tittering and chitchatting during films, as well as people feeling free to get up during a film. they seem to come for the company, not the films.

I love going to the movies. The Forum shows independent films in cute downtown Metuchen. Weekly there are films to check out, like the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy, or Waiting for Superman or the amazing Winter’s Bone. But what I have been going to is their special horror events. They had the east coast première of 2001 Maniacs– Field of Screams by Tim Sullivan who is from Metuchen and who came to the screening and talked. It was so cool, the film was amazing its definitely getting nominated for a Splatcademy Award (which is the coolest horror award you can get), and Tim talked about filmmaking and his show on VHI Scream Queens, it was great. I ended up watching that too and loving it. That was over the summer. This November a group hosted a screening of Street Trash, and the director was there too, and talked all about the making of the film. It was inspiring. If you go to the Forum in the cold weather you better dress warm its a big old space that must be expensive to heat. Its a really cool old theatre, with a bright marquee– i love it. I saw Grease there when I was little. Im so glad I can still go there.