Inside last night’s AMC Dine-In plex on Maxella, I ordered a regular-sized bag of popcorn and a Diet Coke. “That’ll be $18,” the girl said. Something froze inside, perhaps a twinge of hostility. I apologized and cancelled the order.

At the Aero on Montana, they call a popcorn and a small Coke combo a “Roosevelt” or something that sounds like that. The cost is $6 or thereabouts, maybe $7.

There’s a small restaurant-deli not far from the Maxella plex, across the street and 100 yards down. 45 minutes before the show, I ordered a small salad with two spicy meatballs on the side. I had envisioned a tab of $16 or $18 or $20, somewhere in that realm. “$26 plus a suggested tip of $4 for a total of $30,” the computer said. I politely cancelled the order.

Adding insult to injury to my AMC Dine-In experience, during the Noovies! promo crap that they show before the trailers and the feature, I had to watch Collider’s Perri Nemiroff announce a slate of hellish upcoming features (CG-driven, high-velocity, barf-bag franchise stuff). It has been my view all along that Nemiroff smiles too much, and way too strenuously at that. Now she’s shilling for Satan.

Plus our viewing experience was suffering from gross sound attenuation. As I struggled to hear Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield mouth Jim-and-Tammy dialogue, boomy bass tones from the theatre next door kept intruding. I could actually hear the melody from Lou Reed’s “A Perfect Day,” which is used for the Spencer trailer, bleeding through.