Westwood’s vintage theaters

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After Westwood’s National closed in 2008 and the Festival in 2009, without my ever having been there, I decided to catch movies at the Bruin and Village theaters, Westwood’s two other vintage single-screen theaters, just in case. (There’s also the Crest, where I saw “The Pursuit of Happyness” in 2006.) The Bruin and Village are now owned by the Regency chain, which vows to keep them going.

Early this year I saw “Invictus” (the Clint Eastwood rugby movie) at the Bruin (948 Broxton Ave.), and on Sunday I saw the latest Harry Potter movie at the Village (1036 Broxton), which is directly across the street. It’s rare that my tastes, the mainstream fare at these theaters and my schedule all align.

The Bruin is nice enough, especially the wraparound marquee, but the Village is beautiful, and much larger than it seems from the exterior. I sat in the balcony. It was a pleasant spot from which to try to remember what happened in the last Potter movie and who all these Weasley family members were.

Cinema Treasures has pages on the history of the 1,300-seat Village, which opened in 1931 as a Fox theater (the same year as Pomona’s), and the 700-seat Bruin, which opened in 1937.

Westwood also has the Regent, which from the exterior looks like a bland ’60s theater (it opened in 1966) and hence less interesting, but I’ll probably end up going there sometime too.

For you public transit buffs, I took Metrolink ($17 from Claremont) and availed myself of its free-transfer policy to ride the Purple Line subway to Wilshire/Western and then to ride the Metro Rapid 720 to Wilshire/Westwood, and then to repeat those steps on my way back to Union Station. The free transfers saved me the cost of a $6 transit day pass and public transit saved me from a $5 or $6 parking fee. Plus I could read the newspaper and part of a novel.

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