After so many years of doomy predictions about their coming demise, these are suddenly boom times for cinemas. A clutch of massive releases – most recently the all-time-record-breaking Spider-Man: Brand New Day – along with a heatwave that has transformed Britain’s parks into the Oklahoma dust bowl, has sent the nation sprinting (or at least fast-walking) to the air-conditioned environs of their local picture houses. In fact so packed are cinemas that, in order to find a free seat for Imax screenings of Spider-Man and the Odyssey, punters are having to resort to quite literally the lowest of the low: the front row.

Not that those same people are happy about it. Social media is full of grumblings from those lumbered with seats situated directly in front of the screen, often accompanied by pictures showing how vertiginous their views are: Agamemnon’s distended, helmeted head looming threateningly above them, say. I’m pretty sure a lot of these pictures are AI-generated fakes – mainly a chance to give Robert Pattinson a massive chin – but they are still spooking cinemagoers: Reddit is full of threads of panicked patrons asking just how painful their neck is going to feel after craning up at a screen for three hours.

This, I think, is a fairly recent phenomenon; I can’t remember such vitriol directed towards the front row of the cinema when I was a teenager, though then again there wasn’t social media then to share and amplify that sentiment. Regardless, you are all wrong about the front row. It’s nowhere near as bad as many pretend it is – in fact it’s often pretty great.

The front row is the place where a movie feels most like a movie. Watch one back in those nosebleed seats you all seem to covet so much, and often you might as well have viewed it from an iPhone on the end of a selfie stick, so tiddly are its relative dimensions. No such problems in row A, where the screen dominates your eyeline, drenching you in light and colour. Gawp at the sheer scale of the atomic explosion in Oppenheimer. Luxuriate in the cosmic Technicolor wash of Project Hail Mary’s space scenes. Marvel at being able to see in extreme close up every last perfect pore on Tom Holland’s shimmering forehead. This is cinema, not the glorified inflight entertainment the seats at the back are experiencing.

What’s more, it is an entirely unobstructed view. That means no frustration at the bored teen scrolling away on their 100-percent-brightness phone screen somewhere in your peripheral vision, or the person reclining their seat back to its full extension right against your kneecaps, or the patron getting up in front of you for their sixth bathroom break of the film. Oh and if you have to get up for the loo yourself, you’ll be able to do so without having to squeeze past half a dozen irritated filmgoers, all of whom (and this is a semi-related gripe) have inexplicably decided to swing their legs to the side while staying seated instead of doing the best thing for everyone and standing up to let you pass. As for your own legs: stretch them out! There’s no seat in the way – a pleasure not granted to the squeezed middle, back in rows B to Z.

It’s cheap too: thanks to years of anti-front row bias, some cinemas have been forced to reduce the price of those seats to get them filled. And there’s the extra bonus of being able to leave promptly, rather than being stuck in a slow-moving trudge down a narrow set of stairs.

Granted, I’m not going to pretend there aren’t drawbacks to the front row. Cinema firms’ eagerness to squeeze every last penny out of their punters has led, in some cases, to seats being squeezed right up to the screen. There’s no sugar-coating it: in such front row seats, the view will be pretty sheer. Neck pain in those cases will be a serious concern. I’d argue those are minority cases and at most cinemas row A is far enough back to make for an enjoyable viewing experience, particularly with the widespread adoption of those reclining seats.

So, don’t be afraid: if you do spot a couple of spare front row seats at that otherwise fully booked 70mm screening of The Odyssey (every showing of Nolan’s film at London’s BFI Imax is sold out until late September, staggeringly), take the leap. You will be rewarded with an immersive, transporting, eyeball-frying cinematic experience – and if not, well at least you’ll get back to the car quicker than everyone else.

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