Lynchburg cinemas not showing several Oscar-nominated movies

Kate Winslet won a Best Actress Oscar for her role in “The Reader” Sunday night.

To hear critics tell it, she turned in a brilliant performance — not that we’d know, since the film has yet to hit Lynchburg theaters.

The same goes with “Milk,” which earned Sean Penn a Best Actor Oscar, and several other contenders in the major categories, including “Frost/Nixon,” “Rachel Getting Married” and “The Visitor.”

Larry Collins, vice president of film for Carmike Cinemas, which has two locations in Lynchburg, said there are several factors that determine what movies come here, and when.

The biggest part depends on the distributors and how many prints they release of certain films.

“Sometimes a film company will go so limited … (that) it’s not available for Lynchburg as of yet,” he said.

Movies like Best Picture winner “Slumdog Millionaire” and nominee “The Wrestler” go out in what is called a platform release, meaning that they hit the big markets like New York and Los Angeles first, before expanding to more and more cities over time, he said.

“Slumdog,” for example, was released on 10 screens in November before getting a wider release in February, likely buoyed by all of that award-season buzz. It is now playing at the River Ridge mall’s Carmike 4.

Collins said they also look at what types of movies have performed well here in the past and have done well in cities our size.

One factor that does not have any influence, however, is the film’s content.

“I don’t limit my people based on storyline,” Collins said. “The rating or content of movies has nothing to do with our picking and choosing.”

Some of the Oscar nominees and winners that did come to Lynchburg were big studio films, like “The Dark Knight,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and “Changeling,” all of which were released here on their opening weekends and stayed for a while.

But blink, and you missed the runs of “Doubt,” which earned Meryl Streep her 15th nomination (she lost to Winslet) in early January and Mickey Rourke’s big-screen comeback, “The Wrestler,” just last week.

For Carmike, how long a film stays in a theater depends on how many people come out to see it, Collins said.

That’s why “Doubt” was only here for two weeks, but “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” is still showing every night over at The Plaza’s Carmike 8. The latter also came out in January and has made $112 million in U.S. theaters, compared to “Doubt’s” $30 million.

“We hold a picture based on the business,” Collins said. “If nobody shows up, I guess we’ve got to move on.”

Adding insult to injury is that, unlike Roanoke, Charlottesville and Staunton, Lynchburg doesn’t have an art house or independent theater to show these films when the bigger theaters don’t.

“Lynchburg has got to come out of the Stone Age,” laughed Eleanor Salotto, chairwoman of Sweet Briar College’s English department and director of its film studies program.

“I cannot tell you how many of my colleagues go to different cities to see films.”

She doesn’t see why Lynchburg couldn’t have a small, art-house theater that catered specifically to independent movies.

“There are exciting things going on in downtown Lynchburg,” Salotto said on Monday. “We need a good film place. Why not here?”

Right now, Sweet Briar is filling that void, in a way, with its free spring film series, organized by Salotto. “Frost/Nixon” will be shown in the college’s Tyson Auditorium this weekend, followed by “Milk” next month, “Doubt” in April and “The Reader” in May.

Salotto said they pay a distributor for the movies, which she and a few others pick from a list of available titles every year.

“We really try to get films that, you know, have high production values and that are a little away from the mainstream,” she said. “Films that maybe our student body and faculty wouldn’t have the opportunity to see in this area.”