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.