Movies on the Side at Mattituck Cinemas

“This is a passion project for us,” said Matt Chizever about himself and his boss, Marc LaMaina, and their reinvention of the Mattituck Cinemas as more than a place to see a movie. “We’re doing this for the community. Kids need a place to go.”

For one thing, they can try the Axe & Smash Axe-Throwing Lounge in one of eight former movie auditoriums. It features four “lanes” that up to six players can use at a time, trying to plant a hatchet in the bullseye on a target on the far wall.

“I thought it was a fad, but it’s this generation’s darts,” Chizever said. “We’ve been booking it out every night” that it’s open, Thursdays through Sundays.

In the works are “Smash Paint” rooms where people can don paper suits and throw paint at each other. Two former auditoriums are being converted into a 1980s-themed miniature golf course. There will be lounge spaces to just hang out and listen to music or watch a streamed movie, Chizever said.

“We’re trying to make it a one-stop shop for family entertainment,” Chizever said. “You can make a whole day out of it with your family.”

LaMaina owns Lucharitos Mexican restaurant next door in the shopping mall. It’s “really the core of everything we’re doing right now,” Chizever explained. Its kitchen and bar have direct access to a concession counter in the former theater lobby, where patrons can order everything from snacks and sodas to full meals and wine, beer, margaritas and Lucha Punch.

LaMaina first opened what would become his Lucharitos chain in Greenport. Branches followed in Aquebogue, the shopping mall in Mattituck, then Center Moriches. Mineola will be next and “we just bought a property in West Sayville,” Chizever said.

The Lucharitos counter was LaMaina’s first step into the cinema space in 2021, before the landlord, the Cardinale family, decided to give up running the cinema, which dates back to 1973, when it opened with two screens. “Jimmy Cardinale owns the plaza,” Chizever explained. “He was running the movie theater” after Cineplex Odeon left “in the early 2000s. They got help through the pandemic” in the form of federal COVID relief funds “but when that ran out, it was over for them.”

LaMaina took over as a tenant and keeps one auditorium, the 240-seat Theater One, open for movies at $5 a seat Fridays through Sundays. There are no first-run films, which are expensive to book and require a time commitment that doesn’t work. “There’s just no demand for a new movie for more than 72 hours here in Mattituck,” LaMaina told the Suffolk Times in January.

“We started on Valentine’s Day weekend with ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ for the adults” and the 1994 remake of “‘The Little Rascals’ for the kids. They loved it,” Chizever said. Set for March were “Matilda,” “The Big Lebowski,” the “Back to the Future” trilogy, “Caddyshack,” “Thelma & Louise,” “The Secret of Kells” and “Grease.”

Chizever, an Aquebogue native, is an actor and film school graduate. “I still go to the movies but I’m part of the industry,” he said, “even though I’m on the outside looking in at this point. It’s sad to see the attendance dropping” for first-run movies “but a spot like this just can’t compete with an IMAX 3D movie theater.”

“I love the place because I’m a family man and there are so many movies that these kids haven’t seen, especially on the big screen,” Chizever said. “I have an 11-year-old son; I can’t force him to [watch] the ‘Back to the Future’ trilogy at home. But when I put [it] up here, then maybe he’ll be interested.”

— PETER BOODY