The Cuba Quar­ter’s newest enter­tain­ment venue is a wel­come addi­tion indeed, with the well-respect­ed Light House Cin­e­mas spread­ing into Welling­ton prop­er (sor­ry Petone but whatch­agone do, you’re Petone) via their new loca­tion oppo­site Havana on Wigan Street. If Cuba Street and Courte­nay Place had a fight (what do you mean “if,” right?), this now gives the lat­ter one less media-form to which it can claim exclu­sive access.

The new cin­e­ma sits com­fort­ably along­side estab­lished faves like the Para­mount (slo­gan: “What, You Think Read­ing’s Get­ting This?”), Embassy (“You Deserve This For Liv­ing Here”) and Read­ing (“XTREME POPCORN BUCKETS IRON MAN MIDNITE SESSION 2‑MILE SCREEN 4D BLAAAAAAAST”). Where those flick­er-pits all have their draw­cards – as do fine sub­ur­ban pic­ture-palaces like the Pent­house and Empire, have you noticed yet how hard it is to get us to say any­thing neg­a­tive about a half-decent movie-house? – the Light House Cuba seeks to pro­vide what they’re call­ing a “mini­plex” expe­ri­ence, with an awful lot of moviego­ing packed into an awful­ly cosy space.

In fact, this might be down­town Welling­ton’s first new cin­e­ma to acknowl­edge as its pri­ma­ry com­peti­tor not the city’s oth­er jaf­fa-deal­er­ships, so much as your very own home. Time was that see­ing a new movie meant shuf­fling past patrons only too eager to favour all and sundry with their thoughts on the qui­et bits and con­fu­sion as to who that guy is and whether he was in the oth­er movie with that lady; but nowa­days we’ve the option of just watch­ing movies some­where where you can reg­u­late the con­ver­sa­tion, pause for a cof­fee, and put your feet any­where you damn well please. Those who still val­ue the big-screen, dark-room­ful-of-com­muning-souls expe­ri­ence will find a hap­py medi­um in the Light House­’s com­fy two-seaters and immer­sive view­ing envi­ron­ment.

The cin­e­ma prides itself on exclu­sive fare such as the MET opera series and upcom­ing mas­tur­ba­tion dra­ma The Ses­sions, but is also fit­ted out with an envi­able 3D set­up and isn’t averse to show­ing movies where white guys point guns at each oth­er for polit­i­cal rea­sons. That is to say, it’s not all wor­thy fare that you’ll skip when a new super­hero movie comes out. The venue bestrides the shores of seri­ous cin­emah and Fri­day-night fun like a colos­sus of com­pet­i­tive tick­et pric­ing, with every night bring­ing some way or oth­er of get­ting into a movie with­out tak­ing out a sec­ond mort­gage to pay for 3D glass­es.

For those keep­ing score, this means Cuba Street has music (almost as much music as the Inter­net, lol now let’s go bank­rupt some indie musi­cians), the writ­ten word (Ferret/Quilters/Pegasus et al vs Whit­coul­l’s, sadtrombone.wav), and an answer to the Embassy Dis­tric­t’s hith­er­to-unas­sail­able grasp on the dom­i­nant art form of the 20th Cen­tu­ry. (Cuba also gets comics, videogames, and clothes you can browse with­out get­ting hard-sold by a wad of hairgel with a lit­tle dude hang­ing out the bot­tom, which is a bonus). Your move, Allen/Blair/Cambridge.