The reviews often are but having seen proper releases of some large format movies it is not that difficult to spot the difference these days. On the other hand you probably got these very long ago so if you wanted to watch them at home this was the best you could get. Agreed on Airport that...
Indeed all of the 65/70mm titles mentioned in this thread did:
Mutiny on the Bounty
Battle of the Bulge
Grand Prix
Hamlet
There are others both from Warner and from other studios:
Ice Station Zebra
Airport
Exodus
Krakatoa: East of Java
There is also a number of (Super)Technirama productions...
Because it is cheaper and the quality is considered to be "good enough".
Probably not an issue for any of the titles discussed in this thread, the negatives should be in decent shape.
These are the top 5 that I would like to see revisited:
Mutiny on the Bounty
Battle of the Bulge
Rio Bravo
The Searchers
The Wild Bunch
I would think that among these The Wild Bunch has the least potential for improvement but I like that movie a lot and it surely could show more detail that it...