Meet Lillian & Mercedes
Welcome to the A Reel Cinema @ Home website. We are a mother daughter collaborative of movie critics and home theater vloggers. We share our love of physical media movies, television shows, and streaming in a small, comfortable, and budget friendly home cinema. We share our unique perspective with fans who share the same passion and are proud to be film nerds.
Lillian enjoys all things home cinema. She appreciates all the action, drama, and suspense are on the movie screen and not in her life. When the blu-ray turns on she loves to be immersed in a film without disruption. When in the home cinema, she loses track of time like being in a Las Vegas casino with no clocks, no windows, and all the trappings of cinematic life that makes her want more.
She considers movies as therapeutic and helpful to her mental health. She uses cinema therapy to decompress from daily life stresses. Movie therapy is a legitimate medical, self-help treatment. She notices that watching movies helps her to manager her thoughts and feelings similar to people who need comfort dogs.
Her favorite movie of all time is any film starring Eddie Murphy and Will Smith with special honorable mention to Boomerang and Seven Pounds. She also loves all movies with Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Angela Bassett, Tom Cruise, and Tyler Perry. Films starring the sexy chocolate men of the decade are a must watch for her and in her weekly rotation (Morris Chestnut, Taye Diggs, Idris Elba, Michael Ealy, Denzel Washington, D.B. Woodside, Lamman Rucker, Djimon Hounsou, L.L. Cool J., and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson).
You can always start a conversation with Lillian by mentioning martial arts films. Her favorite martial arts film of all time is Comet Butterfly Sword starring Michelle Yeoh, Donnie Yen, Tony Chiu-Wia Leung, and Joey Wang. Honorable mentions include The Grand Master, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon 1 & 2, The Protector, Hero, House of Flying Daggers, and all Ip Man movies.
Lillian is an excellent home chef and comes from a long background of excellent cooks. Her grandmother owned a restaurant in the heart of the city for over 25 years. Lillian’s mother, Willie Doris, was an excellent cook and worked in the restaurant business for years. She also had aunts, Shirley Jean and Arrie, that shared their budget friendly meals that feed a crowd for a few dollars. The elders of her family passed their cooking skills to Lillian who now shares those same skills with her daughter.
All the food prepared and feature on the upcoming A Reel Cinema At Home YouTube channel (February 2021) is made from scratch with real food ingredients. As you get to know Lillian, you will find she doesn’t like prepackaged, premixed ingredients. She doesn’t consider that cooking. She considers that opening boxes and bags and adding water.
Lillian loves event planning and organizing and does not consider it work. She enjoys hosting events for the friends and family who love and support her. The fun events featured on the YouTube channel and AReelCinemaAtHome.com started with a small vision. Those small visions have evolved into the many different bling and things events you all have come to enjoy.
Lillian is a WordPress master and writer of posts for AReelCinemaAtHome.com. She also edits the videos for the YouTube Channel. She is responsible the modern mouse bling cinema décor. She is a huge Disney fan as you can see from the home cinema design.
Mercedes is a beautiful and helpful person. A quiet soul who is loved and admired by everyone she meets. Her comedic timing, quick comebacks, and sense of humor will have you laughing for hours.
Her favorite movie of all time is Inception starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Marion Cotillard. She also loves all movies starring Will Smith, Matt Damon, Tom Cruise, Idris Elba, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Angelina Jolie, Lupita Nyong’o, Regina Hall, and Regina King.
She enjoys the extra content provided by the special features blu‑ray more than the movie itself. If there is a documentary on how the film was made, a music video, deleted scenes, or bloopers those items are just as important to watch to Mercedes as the film itself.
Mercedes also loves to cook with her mother ensuring the cooking legacy is passed to the next generation. Her perfection on a plate dishes include a melt in your mouth vegetable quesadillas, a to die for faux buffalo chicken sandwich with blue cheese, and perfectly seasoned vegetable fried rice.
Mercedes’ is the technical guru responsible for all the wonderful YouTube videography and photography for A Reel Cinema @ Home. She is always searching for the next big movie to add to our must watch list. She enjoys previewing movie trailers and creates our home cinema viewing schedule.
Mercedes is a true film nerd; however, her first love is fashion design and styling. She sews, knits, and crochets. She has a passion for fashion and is an extremely talented fashion designer and creative thinker by trade. She is responsible for creating the fantastic, custom curtains featured in the home cinema and all of our admired home cinema pajama fashions.
Our home theater is ready for the changes to come in 2021 and beyond. As more blockbuster movie releases go straight to streaming platforms (i.e., Wonder Woman 1984, Trolls World Tour, Coming 2 America, and Mulan), we will be ready to watch the latest movie releases in the comfort, safety, and convenience of our own home.
Our home cinema provides a private, clean, and affordable space to watch movies. The 135 inch screen and 2,500 lumens projector provide a crystal-clear picture. Our 3D setup makes movie action jump off the screen. Our 7.2.4 Klipsch Dolby Atmos speaker set-up immerses us in surround sound. Our theater seating allows us to recline in comfort with plush pillows and warm fuzzy blankets for a luxury experience. Our home theater concession area includes a fully stocked espresso/hot chocolate/tea station, liquor bar, and concession area. To make our event watch parties special, we add a variety of delicious meals/desserts and/or drinks. If we needed a bathroom break during the film, we have no worries about missing the best part. The pause button is our friend.
We know our theater seats, floors, luxury pillows, comfortable blankets, and bathrooms are clean and coronavirus free. We are 100% confident the dishes our meals are served on are cleaned and coronavirus free. We know the people watching the movie with us are coronavirus free. We have no doubt the food is fresh and the chef is the best.
We have created a better, luxurious, and leveled up movie watching experience for the new “date-and-day” movie releases right in our home. The idea for this website and our upcoming YouTube channel is to showcase how we enjoy our home theater on a daily basis. Hopefully, it will inspire you to create your own space or we can be inspired by your space.
The gap between what a retail movie theater can offer us and what we have created in our home theater is non existent. Retail movie theaters can only offer us overpriced concessions with a dirty, unsafe, fight club experience.
We would rather not see the movie AT ALL if we have to watch it surrounded by 198 STRANGERS. Our movie watching experience is greatly enhanced by simply staying home. We enjoy the movie or television series in a clean and comfortable space with people we know.
Thank you for sharing our nerdy obsession of home theater and all things related to watching movies and television shows at home. Again, welcome to our clean, safe, private, and coronavirus free home theater. Now you know a little bit more about us.
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