Way back in 1988, I came this close to seeing Die Hard. My friends and i were right there about to purchase a ticket but decided at the last second to explore the mall instead since the theater was connected to it.

I finally saw in on vhs about a year later with my jaws dropped and i was like, OMG this was meant to be seen at the movies. It was still great to finally see it, but i will always know that nothing was ever going to beat the first time watching a movie like Die Hard on the big screen.

Anybody have similer experiences? I mean more like a BIG movie opposed to something you wanted to see but missed out and had no problems renting it later.

I regret skipping the first two or three Harry Potter flicks in the theater.

2 Scorsesse's come to mind, Goodfellas and Casino.

Yeah! I missed out on Goodfellas also. That's definetely another movie i regret not seeing but i did see Casino on the big screen thankfully.

Sunshine. Pirated a copy months before it came to the US, watched it many times. Wanted to go to theater so bad but it was only showing at one theater and ended up seeing Rescue Dawn instead.

Recently Live Free or Die Hard. Kept hearing so many good things about it but I just never got around to it. Same with Knocked Up. There's like a 2-3 week period where I realy want to see something that's out, but once that time passes I move on to something else and just wait for the DVD.

I missed out on both myself, but last year a local arthouse played classic films every Friday/Saturday night and Goodfellas was one of the movies screened when they had a special Scorsese week.

It was an amazing experience. Too bad they never got around to showing Casino, as it is my all time favorite movie. I would have died a happy man

Full Metal Jacket and the 1st Jurassic Park.

I think I catch most of the BIG Blockbuster type movies in the theater (at least the ones I'm interested in). But I regret not seeing some of the once in a lifetime (or at least once in a great while) 3D movies - Polar Express, Chicken Little, Superman Returns, etc. I still haven't seen Beowulf either...

Tons of movies as I hardly go to the theatre. Looking back on it I'm disappointed I never saw Eyes Wide Shut, Fight Club, American Beauty, or The Sixth Sense in 1999. More recently, I avoided Grindhouse because it looked awful but Death Proof was pretty good.

Absolutely. Saving Private Ryan is my biggest regret.

I am in a similar boat. I had a chance to see Goodfellas, and passed it up. By 1995, I made sure to see a midnight showing of Casino opening weekend.

The others films that I missed in the theater and regret not doing so are:

LA Confidential
Almost Famous
Shawshank Redmption
Aliens
Chasing Amy (I am one of the few to see both Clerks and Mallrats in the theaters, but kept on putting off Amy until it was too late)

Twice in 1982.

Missed Blade Runner in the theater in 1982 because it flopped and didn't play long enough for me to eventually see it. (However, I did read Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? that same Summer - I even did a book report on it during the following school year - and eventually saw Blade Runner on VHS later that same year in its "European Cut" version.)

Then I actually bought a ticket to John Carpenter's The Thing that same Summer, but the stooge at the ticket collecting booth stopped me and made me see E.T. (yet again) instead with my brother (these were the only two movies playing there - this was a few years before the advent of multiplexes when sneaking a movie was still hard instead of easy.) And I have long regretted missing The Thing in the theater since this unfortunate event.

Batman Begins, Return Of The Jedi (SE), Revenge Of The Sith, and Star Trek: First Contact are all films I kept putting off and putting off until it was too late, then regretted them all after seeing them at home on video or DVD because of how visual and 'big' they all are in some way.

I never saw Moulin Rouge in the theater. That's probably my biggest regret.


Blade Runner's another one I wish I'd seen on the bigscreen. But I was 4 when it originally came out and 15 when it was re-released in '92, so it was a little more difficult to make it the theater back then without a license or a car.

Akira

Recently, Once. It ran at one of our local indies for over two months, and I still didn't make the time to get over there.

I made sure to see the Alien Director's Cut when it was released theatrically a few years ago, and have every intention of driving to Columbus to see Blade Runner. I was too young to see (much less appreciate) the original theatrical releases, and I don't recall Blade Runner getting the '92 re-release in this area.

Harry Potter 5, just never got around to seeing it...and although its coming out on dvd soon, it just won't be the same as the "in theater" experience.

Several:

The Road Warrior
Once Upon a Time in America (the uncut version played for one weekend in my hometown the year it opened)
The Big Lebowski (friends of mine said it was awful - I don't listen to friends anymore)
The Hudsucker Proxy (again, one weekend)
Children of Men (guilty of not supporting a film that really deserved it)

and recently -
The Transformers (those effects had to play much better on the big screen)

If you watched the HD-DVD version the effects were a lot more clear.

Live Free or Die Harder
Moulin Rouge. A friend of mine went to see it and it didn't really interest me at the time. Then I caught up with it on DVD and thought that really would have been awesome to see on the big screen.

than regular dvd? no way.

I didn't get to see RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK in the theaters.

I blame my parents (I was only 11 at the time).

okay now that aint right...

I resent not seeing Kenneth Branagh's 'Hamlet' in 70mm in the theatre

I missed the first two LOTR moves in theaters because I was too lazy to go see a movie that I would have to wait another year or so to see the seconf/third part of.

I opted to wait until the weekend the 3rd movie hit theaters. My GF (now wife) and I watched the first two on DVD for the first time, and promptly went to the theater to finish the trilogy - all in one day.

In retrospect, I'm glad I did it that way. There was really no wait because I had never seen any of the movies and thus my anticipation wasn't too high until mid-way thru the second film when we realized, "Holy shit, we need to finish this - TODAY", and so we did. What an awesome day

Still, I would have loved to have seen the first two on the big screen at some point.