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State-of-the-art meets Art Deco charm, with gloved ushers helping you to your seat. Pay a little more and get a chair on the mezzanine level with snack service.

This cutting-edge theater has been subtitled “cinema de lux” for very good reason. Enjoy recently released movies sitting in large and luxurious leather chairs.

The exquisite 14-screen ArcLight is the shiny new neighbor of the futuristic Cinerama Dome. ArcLight’s lobby, lorded over by a giant digital board, leads to a lively café-bar with terrace.

Old-time Hollywood glamour has returned to LA courtesy of the Walt Disney Corporation, which restored this 1926 theater. It functions as a first-run cinema showing Disney flicks, sometimes preceded by lavish live shows.

This flashy 1927 Chinese fantasy palace is still the site of movie premieres. Catch a blockbuster here – you never know which famous name might be sitting next to you. Note that the sixplex next door to the theater has none of the original’s historic flair.

This oldest of Hollywood Boulevard’s themed 1920s movie palaces houses the American Cinematheque. It presents art house fare and the documentary Forever Hollywood on weekends. Regular events feature famous directors and actors.

The movies of Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino, and other silent era legends regularly reel off at the nation’s only remaining silent movie theater. Live music from the 1920s and classic cartoons often precede screenings.

One of Los Angeles’s finest independent theaters shows the kind of experimental and foreign fare that most multiplexes would avoid. The cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show still runs every Saturday.

LA’s famous art museum (see Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)) presents high-brow retrospectives of a particular actor or director in its on-site theater with a top-notch digital sound system. On Tuesdays at 1pm, catch classic films for a small fee.

IMAX stands for “maximum image” and with a screen that is seven stories tall and 90-ft (27-m) wide, it’s a fitting name. The giant screen with its six-channel surround-sound system ensures total sensorial immersion (see California Science Center).