Today I got the chance to see a double feature which is something I don’t think I’ve done since the Jimmy Carter administration.

I was able to do this thanks to a day with no classes falling on the first day of the month. Most Japanese theater chains offer discounts on the first of every month. Prices drop from around $18 to around $11. Since both Logan and Guardians of the Galaxy, Part 2 were showing at convenient times, I decided to see both back to back.

(Note: Since I am technically under house arrest on days off according to the rules of the company I work for then, officially, I was doing research on local entertainment facilities and will write about them in the future. Really.)

For complicated reasons I’ll mention in a minute, I had to choose a theater chain I’d never been to before. This had me worried about the popcorn. As I’ve mentioned in the past, part of my critique of a movie includes the quality of the popcorn served by the theater.

The morning started with Logan which, although it is a great movie, is not a particularly good breakfast movie. That said, the only actual flaw with the movie was the popcorn. I don’t blame this on the theater though as I chose poorly. My Hokkaido butter and soy sauce choice turned out to be some kind of dry spice and not something buttery. Luckily, this didn’t ruin the movie for me. Also, since this served as my breakfast, I was hungry enough to finish it all.

The only other flaw was people.  When I chose my seat via the chain’s website, I chose the exact center of the theater, which put me far away from the nearest person. However, five minutes before the movie started, in a large theater with only a dozen people in it, a guy sat down in the seat immediately to my left. Right as the lights went down for the trailers, a second guy sat in the seat immediately to my right. My space was suddenly reduced and the popcorn wasn’t that good.

Luckily, the theater has terrific seats with adequate space and armrests so that it was still comfortable if a bit unnerving. Also, the movie was terrific and I barely noticed the company.

For the second half of the double feature, I chose regular salted popcorn as my lunch. (Note: this theater chain’s biggest weakness is they don’t have an actual butter-like substance dispenser.) This turned out to be a good choice, though, as the popcorn was good.

No one sat next to me, which surprised me, as it was a much smaller theater. However, it’s been hard to find subtitled versions of Guardians of the Galaxy, Part 2–my usual theater didn’t offer any at all–which tells me there must not be much demand for English with Japanese subtitles. As such, there were only a few of us in the theater.

Luckily, it was another terrific movie. In fact, these were the best major studio movies I’ve seen in a long time.  Unlike the original Guardians of the Galaxy, which I liked despite a weak third act, I may actually remember events from Part 2.

Tomorrow, though, it’s back to regularly scheduled work.