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Why do we use Do you ever go to the movies? and not Do you ever go to a movie? Is the latter also correct?

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Someone else may know, but I expect all you'll get is people saying what they say. The singular is perfectly grammatical, but most people just don't say it. Also note that with "Do you ever watch movies", we never include "the". That's because "the movies" is a set idiomatic phrase that really means the place where films are shown, rather than the films themselves. Note that no-one talks of "going to the films", but they do talk of "watching films". – FumbleFingers Mar 17 '12 at 3:24
Wait... People watch only one at a time? :p – Manishearth Mar 17 '12 at 14:06

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Per the Macmillan Dictionary, the movies refers specifically to "movies as a form of entertainment," or, secondarily, "the industry involved in making movies."

(In the British version of Macmillan, the movies refers to "the cinema or the film industry.")

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I'm guessing it dates back to the old days, when motion pictures first came out. Instead of saying: "Let's go to the theater where they show those new-fangled motion pictures."

Folks would say, for short: "Let's go to the pictures."

Eventually 'movies' became more commonly used, so the phrase became: "Let's go to the movies."

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I thought about "the pictures" (also "the flicks" in my UK youth). It rather begs the question why those, and "the movies", became established, but the most obvious one - "the films" - never had any currency. And there seems to be no equivalent in other spheres - no "the plays", "the gigs", "the concerts", etc. – FumbleFingers Mar 17 '12 at 17:06
Good point. I have no idea why. – Lynn Mar 17 '12 at 18:25
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When you ask a general question about habitual behaviour (however frequent or infrequent that may be), you use the indefinite term "the movies" because you're asking about any movie. If you used "a movie" instead, you'd be asking about going to a particular movie, which doesn't make as much sense in conjunction with behaviour (unless maybe you're referring to a particularly long-running movie).

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