I went to see the new Dune movie yesterday in our one and only IMAX theatre here in Finland (as it was intended to be seen). I gave a praising review to the movie, but I don't know how much of it was influenced by the IMAX experience (I might need to see the movie in a "regular" screen too). The IMAX viewing experience was an experience of it's own.
This was my first movie I've seen in an IMAX theatre. I was lucky to get us rather good seats: right in the center, but maybe a bit too front. The viewing angle was a bit too high on our row. A couple of rows back might have been perfect.
The huge screen basically filled the whole field of view. Only at the edge of the peripheral vision I could see a little black beyond the screen without turning my head. It was great when you could practically take a look around and still be immersed in the movie.
Of course sometimes you had to look around to not miss some action happening closer to the edge of the screen. But this movie was made for IMAX and such details sort of worked nicely. There were scenes where it was part of the experience that there was something happening in the corner. It really built the mood for those scenes.
Then there is the resolution and image quality. The ads and trailers before the movie weren't all shot in an appropriate resolution so they looked crappy. Also the screen size and curvature made them look disproportionate. During the first seconds of the movie I was disappointed at first: the picture was grainy - until I realized those were grains of sand, perfectly cast on the screen.
The experience overall was great, but not perfect. While the tech on the theatre might have been top notch the seats weren't anything special. I've actually seen much better seats in many regular theaters. The picture wasn't perfect either all the time. Sometimes it got slightly blurry, especially when there were wide panning shots with a lot of details the picture started to twitch noticeably.