Millennium Park Summer Film Series!
I had a really fun night at the Millennium Park Summer Film Series. Did it start raining halfway through the movie? Maybe, but it still turned out to be a great night! This is one of the awesome and free programs put on by the city, and these are the types of events that make Chicago so fun year round, and especially in the summer.
The Millennium Park Summer Film series takes place on Tuesday nights from mid July to late August, and it’s held at the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park. They show a ton of different movies, and the night that I went they were showing the Disney movie Coco, which I purposely chose as a huge Disney fan. Other options throughout the summer were E.T., Wonka, Barbie, and the Chicago classic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Something else to note are the very similar Movies in the Parks events, which are free screening events for a ton of different movies on big screens at parks in the city. They also try to tie the movie into something happening in the city, and in this instance with Coco it was the 40th anniversary of the Chicago Latino Film Festival.
At these events, you are allowed to bring your own food and drink, and so they are perfect for a little picnic. That is exactly what my friend Jackie and I did when we went, we just stopped and got some food on our way and it worked out perfectly. We also spontaneously decided to stop by the Lego store before the movie, and we got a little airplane Lego set to build before the movie started. That is definitely not a typical moviegoing tradition, but it was pretty fun and I would recommend it. The views in the background as you’re watching are absolutely spectacular, and I think it might be the coolest spot to see a movie in the city.
I brought up earlier that it unfortunately started raining while we were watching the movie, and although this is true and we had to leave it actually sparked a pretty fun ending to the night for us. We decided to embrace the rain and walk around downtown for a while, and it was a really fun time. That is one of my personal favorite things about Chicago, you can be in a situation like ours where your event gets rained out, and then you can just venture into the city and have endless things to do and see. Another awesome thing about events like these are the people. I really enjoy the people of Chicago and I think they are for the most part kind and nice to be around. In my experience, the people that come to events that are put on by the city and take advantage of public spaces are usually the best of the best, and it is so cool to be surrounded by a group of people from your city who are all having a great time.
I would highly recommend looking into these screenings both at Millennium Park and in the other parks throughout the city. They are a perfect, free opportunity to get outside and hang out with people in a nice setting. Plus, you might end up getting rained on and then sent out into the city to have an adventure!
~Jeff