America Cinemas de Phoenix

They’re open!

Pity. It was a great place to see a movie either in Spanish or with Spanish subtitles. It will be missed.

General Cinema launched the Westridge Mall Cinema I, II, III, IV, V, & VI with a May 21st, 1982 grand opening. General Cinemas dropped the location on March 30, 1995.

Harkins Theatre rebooted the location as the Harkins Westridge Mall 6 on May 5, 1995. It was then renamed as the Harkins Desert Sky when the mall changed names. Harkins closed the venue after shows on January 30, 2003.

Colorado-based Sonora Entertainment Group used its Cinema Latino nameplate when it took on the venue renaming it Cinema Latino de Phoenix with a grand opening on November 13, 2003 including the Spanish-languge, “Lucia Lucia” and “El Crimen Padre Amaro” both shown with English subtitles and several dubbed major Hollywood films. The mini-circuit had recently closed in Las Vegas and Colorado Springs, but had its Aurora, Colorado and Fort Worth, Texas locations running.

The theatre was rebranded as Sonora Cinemas in 2016 and got a major refresh at a relaunch in July of 2016. That included the transition to stadium seating. Sonora Cinemas suspended all of its programming following movies as of March 16, 2020 for the COVID-19 pandemic in its three remaining locations, here at the Sonora Cinemas Phoenix (formerly Cinema Latino de Phoenix), the Sonora Cinemas Aurora, Colorado (formerly Cinema Latino), and the Cinema Latino in Pasadena, Texas.

Sonora filed for voluntary Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection on August 6, 2020 leaving an uncertain future for the locations which remained closed into 2021.

I worked as an usher here in 1988 while going to college. There are/were 2 ramps (from the mall & exterior entrance) that lead down into the center snack bar. Which is circular shaped. And the theaters were split into 2 hallways, 3 on each side. I remember 3 Men & A Baby playing for most of that year, I can still recite the dialogue of the last 5 minutes. We also had midnight movies on the weekends, including Rocky Horror & Heavy Metal. At some point, I was allowed to make popcorn, which was made upstairs in a room next to the booth. We popped about a week’s worth of corn and stored it in plastic trash bags, yumm.

This theatre opened in 1981 as the Westridge Cinemas, first run theatres inside the brand new Westridge Mall on the west side of Phoenix. It had an exterior entrance and an entrance inside the mall. In the 90s, the mall changed its name to Desert Sky Mall and the theatre adopted the same name. In the 2000s the theatre became Cinema Latino. There is no longer mall acess to the theatre and only the exterior entrance.