Lumiere

1572 California Street, San Francisco, CA 94109
(415) 267-4893

Review by David Jones on 08/18/08

The screen was laughably small. The first comment my girlfriend made was that the screen seemed about the size of the screen I use with my HD projector at home. In reality is was larger, but only by about 2 or 3x. Even worse the screen was inexplicably high on the wall given its size.

Additionally, the picture was shaky, and it wasn't masked properly. There was about 2 inches of white space at the top of the screen. I couldn't tell if the image was projected off the screen or if this was just extra space.

The sound was not good, but other problems overshadowed this.

The auditorium was bad all around. The worst problem was the sound proofing.

I have never been in *any* auditorium where the neighboring theatre's sound was as audible. This wasn't the typical problem where you could hear the rumbling bass. You could actually hear the music. At times, it was difficult to understand the dialogue (Our movie was in 'British.') because the sound next door was so loud.

It was clear to me that a larger auditorium had been twined to create the current auditorium. The ceiling was asymmetrical, sloping up from its lowest point on the right to a peak on the left where the ceiling meets the wall.

The only worse theatre in SF than the Lumiere is the Stonestone.

Cinema Grade = F