Always profreed. (copirite, Peter T., 1999).
I hate seeing movies on video, as I have always loved big black and white and colour movies (video cannot capture the beautiful light of a good 35mm print), but the talking has become so bad that I have evolved a pretty good strategy. I always go to movies that I want to see on the last Thursday afternoon before they are replaced. I am almost invariably the only person in the theatre. If there are other patrons who are talking, I can always move 100 feet away somwhere.
However, this does take away from the "common ambience" feeling of a good film with a large audience, especially comedies. I have a technical solution, which I am prepared to sell to someone. The idea is to provide everyone with headphones, and to have microphones that pick up the general audience sound, and feed those into the headphones with the soundtrack. You would then lose the sound of idiots nearby, and get the audience reaction as well. Brilliant? I think so.

yours, Peter T.