I want to give it 5 stars because I want more places like this to exist, but there are a few issues…read morestanding in the way. This review may seem mostly critical, but that's because I really love the place and these issues stand out against what could be such a great experience.
1. I come here (and to to the Williamsburg location) regularly for anime screenings. I've noticed that the selections being shown lately at both locations are sometimes via low-quality video files from (I assume) torrent sites.
The subtitles can be poorly positioned and contain formatting and spelling errors; the same type of positional and grammatical errors that occur when subtitles are converted directly from PGS to SRT with little to no extra formatting or QC passes.
The video encodes are also sometimes poor quality. I noticed a while back that the Galaxy Express 999 showing had video that was aggressively smoothed over, destroying the finer details available from better sources. I know that movie well, so it was the first time I became really aware of the problem. The copies of some of these films I have at home look way better than the processed versions I'm paying to see in the theater, and that should never be the case.
I can't imagine the Nitehawk staff are encoding these themselves, since if they had the source material they could just as easily just play the raw video files or encode at a really low CRF for much better results. And if they are downloading the films, they could instead pay the $20 for a Blu-ray or at least source higher quality encodes and subtitles, since these screenings are many people's only opportunity to see these movies in a theater.
2. The selection of films has been not great lately. This year, we had: The Dagger of Kamui, All You Need Is Kill, Urusei Yatsura 2, 100 Meters... these movies are not good. Some are awful.
That said, we do get good stuff often! We get more good than bad. But these special screenings don't happen often (once a month, usually) and we've been on a losing streak lately so it's worth mentioning.
3. Theater 4 sucks. I saw a 4:3 movie there, which is already limiting the screen real estate, but the projectionist also closed curtain over part of the left side of the visible image. It stayed that way for the entire movie, and I was seated way over on the left so I was getting wrecked by it. On top of that, the projector in that theater seems of especially low quality, with an obvious screen door effect that distracts from the experience.
4. The food has dropped in quality. The donut dish they are currently offering is dry, oily, and totally inedible (my partner and I couldn't finish more than one each, we ended up tossing them). The other food items are also of lower quality than the Williamsburg location. I assume the ingredients are all the same, so maybe it's just an overworked staff since it's much bigger? Anyway, I really don't spend as much on food at Prospect Park as I do in Williamsburg because I'm not confident in the quality of the food I'm about to get.
Overall, I love the Nitehawk theaters. I definitely dump more time and money into these places than any other businesses, really. I just wanted to voice my disappointment with recent showings in the hopes that things will change, because traveling to Prospect Park (not close to me) to see a hand-picked movie that isn't good, is visually compromised, is poorly subtitled, and is being shown on a low quality projector with the screen partially covering it just bums me out. Hoping my review does some good in improving things, I guess.
Looking forward to changing this to 4 stars this year if/when any one of the above issues are resolved, and then up to 5 stars when a few more of them are resolved! These spots are still my homes away from home. The staff work their asses off and the food CAN be solid with some more care. Don't let my bitching about anime screenings turn you off to seeing any other film there. My complaints are hyper specific, and odds are you aren't going there to see anime anyway.
