Best first-run movie house
Kendall Square, if you ask us, ranks as one of the most peculiar parts of Boston. No one quite knows how to get there. It's not a place at which you arrive; you just happen to find it. Or perhaps more accurately, in some wormhole-string-theory-fourth-dimension-genetically-engineered way, Kendall Square finds you. Amid the biotech labs and MIT, amid the atom accelerators and the purple squirrels with jellyfish tentacles, amid all the stuff of science fiction, there's the Kendall Cinema, repeatedly a Phoenix readers' pick for best first-run-flick house. When Kendall Square does find you, run from the androids in lab coats and head toward the blue light of the cinema parking sign. Duck in to chomp on some Milk Duds and watch a movie. The Kendall Cinema pick also proves our readers don't need to see bank-busting movies; the Kendall screens films a little left of Hollywood's center, such as Jonathan Caouette's wrenching mental-illness memoir Tarnation, or John Waters's randy romp A Dirty Shame.

Strolling off Boston Common and into the hyper-colorful, hyper-huge Loews Boston Common can be just as disconcerting as getting probed with a scientist's brain wand - that is, if you're not ready for it. If you know what to expect - two floors of screens, sprawling concession stands, giant popcorn-box figures looming in the corners, stimulation of all the senses - then you're in for movie magic. This is Hollywood, after all, because Boston Common screens the blockbusters. With its stadium seating, huge screens, and eardrum-battering sound systems, this Phoenix readers' pick allows you to exit the world you know and slip, for 90 minutes or so, into another reality. Grab your Goobers and get ready for the ride.

Kendall Square Cinema, 1 Kendall Square, Cambridge, (617) 494-9800, www.landmarktheatres.com; Loews Boston Common, 175 Tremont Street, Boston, (617) 423-3499, www.enjoytheshow.com/theatres/usa.cfm.