I used to go exclusively to art cinemas (I even worked in one), where no one talks or listens to their walkman and everyone sits through the credits, but these days I've gravitated towards the multiplex out of convenience... and the home cinema concept has become increasingly attractive.

Yes, it's on a smaller screen and the sound can never match up, but at least you don't have the bright light of someone's mobile glaring at you in the corner of your eye, or, as happened in Superman Returns recently, a guy down the front playing a video game (to be fair to him, it might well have been the Superman Returns video game, but he should still be shot through the head).

So when I arrived at Cineworld for Pan's Labyrinth tonight, my heart sank to find the auditorium almost full. I was expecting a mass walk out when they clocked that it was, horror of horrors, subtitled.

There was a bit of a kerfuffle as the first subtitle appeared, but no one walked out. And no one talked. And no one used their damned mobile either.

In fact, everyone sat quietly throughout this stunning marriage of fairytale fantasy and brutal Francoite suppression, and at the end (during the credits, but hey, you can't have everything) they filed out all raving about it.

I was almost as stunned by that as I was by Guillermo del Toro's screenplay and direction. Go see it and be amazed... if it can keep the arseholes quiet it must be good.

Scrap that.

Seems I was way too premature in renewing my faith in the cinemagoing public yesterday. One Shooter emailed me to tell me the people behind him watching the same film were chatting all the way through. Funny thing was, he was in the same auditorium as my apparently deaf good self!

Maybe I should go and get my ears syringed. Then again, maybe they're better the way they are.

By far the worst cinema outing I've ever had was on National Cinema Day, which they've now thankfully abandoned, because who needs the whole country and their kids watching a film with you?

It was Cronenburg's CRASH, which did not go down at all well with the delicate sensibilities of the assembled throng. Especially that man-on-man tongue action bit. There was nearly a riot.

The kids didn't seem to mind it, but then they were happily running around and around the place and having a lovely time all to themselves.