Welcome to Takilya

Where should I watch this film?

I've been a longtime member of r/FilmClubPH, and some of the top posts we get are "where should I watch this film?", "what's the best theater to watch this in?", and so on. The answers are gold, but they get buried. A month later, someone asks the same thing because nobody digs through old threads.

Everyone there is reviewing cinemas all the time, and there is no one place that collects those reviews. That gap is the whole reason this site exists.

So I built an all-in-one place for cinema reviews: every chain, branch, and theater, ranked on a 5-star system. You can review with your own account or anonymously!

What a review looks like

Every review rates the same four things: projection, audio, seats, and booking. Past that it is up to the reviewer, and most of them add the small stuff that actually decides a trip, like whether the aircon was comfortable, whether parking was easy, and how loud the crowd got. You also get the seat they sat in and the aspect ratio they watched in.

Leaving one yourself

Writing one takes three steps: pick the cinema, rate it, then add anything you want to say. The stars are the only part that is required. The quick labels for projection, audio, seats and booking cover most of what people want to flag, and there is a second set for the toilet, the aircon, the food and the parking if you want to go further. Post it with your account or anonymously.

The review page

To start it off, I collated posts and comments from r/FilmClubPH where people shared their cinema experiences and turned them into a review page. If you've ever posted a cinema review there, you just might find your name!

I highly encourage everyone to review a cinema, good experience or bad. It will be really helpful so we can build on our community and help people who want to know which theaters are actually worth their money!

Showtimes, saved cinemas, seat occupancy

The other big feature: schedules and showtimes from the largest chains in the Philippines, all in one place. Save your preferred cinemas and theaters, find the closest ones, and get recommended cinemas for specific films. For some of the largest chains, you can even check seat occupancy, so you know if it's worth booking without opening their actual website!

Pick a day, then narrow it down

Choose a date and you get every screen carrying that film, grouped by branch. Narrow it by format, by budget, by area or by chain, and the branches you saved carry their own mark so they are easy to spot. Under every showtime is how full that room was, which is the part I use most.

How full the room is

Tap any showtime and you get the rest of it: the ticket price, the booking fee on top, how many seats the room holds, the seats at the center of it, and how many were already gone the last time we read the seat map, with the time of that reading printed beside it. This one had 19 of 478 seats taken.

Every screen has its own page

Each screen has a page of its own: the formats it runs, the projector, the sound system, the seat type, how many seats, and what a ticket costs, with what reviewers said about it sitting on top. It reads the same on a phone as it does on a desktop, which matters because most of you are on a phone.

Where to sit

For the cinemas where we have the seat map, you also get the room as it is actually laid out, with the middle of it marked. Picking the actual seat still happens on the chain booking site. This is so you know what you are choosing from before you get there.

Box office tracking

And the big one I'm working toward: box office tracking. Once the data gets stable enough, I want to publish a weekly or monthly write-up on how films are doing in Philippine cinemas. It has to live up to the name takilya after all!

Insights

Insights is where those write-ups live, and this post is the first one in it. Weekly box office and occupancy updates go there, along with site announcements and anything else worth writing about Philippine cinema. Every one of them says which window it covers, so you can tell what was counted and what was left out.

Ad-free and independently developed

The website is completely ad-free, no bloat, independently developed, and a passion project.

I'm actively maintaining and developing this! Some upcoming features: photo support per cinema and more UI improvements. Your feedback is appreciated. There's a feedback button right on the bottom right of the site.

If you find the site useful, the best way to support it is to leave a review after your next cinema trip. The more of us reviewing, the better it gets for everyone!