Belizean moviegoers generally have 3 options when a movie they want to see premieres: hope that it is available at the Ramada Cinema, pirate it for free at home, or travel to another country - likely Chetumal - to view it.
For those that were excited about "Sinners" - a film that came out on in the US on Thursday - they were pleasantly surprised to see that Ramada would be having two viewings yesterday. However, what they didn't expect was that the whole movie would actually be a bootlegged version. And on top of that, the logo from the website that it was pirated from was dancing across the screen the entire time.
It's a blow to all the moviegoers who paid almost $20 per ticket - and don't ask about snacks. One of those viewers spoke to us today about his experience.
Victor Quinonez, Moviegoer
"It was awful,, very hard to even know what you'd actually see and hearing was over-modulated, it was like distorted and the movie is 50% based on music and african rhythm and and the slave, you know their music."
"So it was really really hard to see and understand. Of course you could make the different stars and what is happening, but you don't get the full detail and to know that the movie was shot with IMAX cameras it's a complete dis-service to the movie itself."
Reporter
"And the logo was bouncing on the screen right?"
Victor Quinonez, Moviegoer
"Despite the logo bouncing from screen to screen, I mean it was like about two minutes in or less and then it started to bounce from left to right, center, middle and I mean when you grow up in Belize and you bought your bootleg DVDs for $5 for it and you get what you used to get."
"But going to this and having it just premiered for one day and they're telling you just two viewings and still charging me 18 dollars and I took my wife, so thirthy six dollars and then I spent 20 dollars in soft drinks and stuff - 56 dollars outing and I got something I could have watch free on the laptop."
"I was pissed and I was like I was like surprised that they had the *explkicit* to even go ahead and continue showing it. I thought it was a gag for like the beginning, I'm going like okay maybe it's just uh they had they had to show like a bootleg beginning and then the the movie was gonna actually pick up and start showing a HD. But at the same time what I wasn't gonna do, get up and nobody would not follow me and go up and make a lot of noise then I get banned from the cinema or what? they're not giving me back the 18 dollars you know and I already told my wife we're gonna have an outing and everything so we're already dear she's pissed, I am pissed and what can you do? But it just feels like they had a heist, but no plan to pull it off because any movie that's going to show from here, we're going to have to question if it isn't going to be in HD quality, is it going to be to a theater standard?"
"So for common people who love movies like me, the theater experience, we don't have always the funds to go Chetumal to watch a decent movie in a good theater surrounding. So we rely on the Princess, to give you some kind of standard quality for movies."
We reached out to Operational Director at Ramada, George Blasco, who told us that while he does not follow the operations of the hotel at that level, they only buy original films. He explained that there is a Mexican technician arriving tomorrow to fix the projector and he wants to believe it was a problem with the system. However, he committed to investigating the matter further and contacting to manager to get to the bottom of it. He also stated that they take copyright laws very seriously.
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