Best first-run movie house

It's as if even the lobbies of the Loews Boston Common were designed to prep moviegoers for two hours of abandoning reality. The giant popcorn figure beckons with open arms. It's surreal. It's nearly frightening. "What the hell is this?" you think. "Popcorn containers don't smile. They don't have arms. This isn't real." But then, as you stand in line to buy the ticket, while you're paying for a box of Goobers, you begin to surrender. You begin to allow yourself the pleasure of existing -- for a while -- in a realm of non-reality. It's Hollywood, after all. And the Loews Boston Common, with its huge screens, soft and sizable seats, state-of-the-art sound, and hyper-stimulating setting, is Phoenix readers' pick for best place to watch the blockbusters.

Across the river in Cambridge, it's not so much the lobby of the Kendall Square Cinema that creates the feeling of being in another world, but the surrounding neighborhood. Blocks of biotech buildings, warehouses, and labs give the area a science-fiction feel. Cloned creatures, human heads in vats of ooze, beings so genetically tweaked there's no telling what they originally were -- this is the stuff of Kendall Square. And yet, the Kendall Square Cinema ain't the place you'd catch The Matrix. And that's precisely why our readers select it as one of Boston's best. It screens an alternative to Hollywood budget behemoths, opting instead for independent and foreign films like To Be and To Have, Spellbound, and Thirteen. You won't find any giant concession-stand figures looming over you while you decide between Hot Tamales and Raisinets, but you will find the best Boston has to offer for against-the-grain cinema.

Loews Boston Common, 175 Tremont Street, Boston, (617) 423-3499; Kendall Square Cinema, 1 Kendall Square, Cambridge, (617) 494-9800.