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11 April 2009
Movies that you never get tired of watching→[More:] The Royal Tenenbaums instantly pops into my head.
seconding Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Singin' in the Rain and This is Spinal Tap. I stumbled upon the second half of Tap the other night and laughed as hysterically the hundredth time as I did the first. "Tonight...puppet show and Spinal Tap." "I told them a thousand times -- Spinal Tap, THEN puppet show!"
I also can never resist L.A. Confidential. Stumbled on that the other night, too, and we totally abandoned the DVD we'd actually rented for the evening in order to watch it. I still carry a grudge over it being robbed of Best Picture by fucking Titanic.
Magnolia
Cool Hand Luke
Blade Runner
House on Haunted Hill
Dr. Strangelove
To Sir, with Love
Zardoz
A Clockwork Orange
My Favorite Year
Children of Men
Rosemary's Baby
The Abominable Dr. Phibes
Magnolia
The Great Gatsby
Pan's Labyrinth
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
The Great Escape
The Cowboys
The Lord of the Rings
The Searchers
The Great Escape
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
Goodfellas
King Kong (1933)
Zulu
and...
Stereotypically, P&P and Persuasion never, ever get old for me.
Fried Green Tomatoes, Steel Magnolias, and The Princess Bride were ones my sister and I watched constantly growing up, along with The Ten Commandments every Easter and probably two or three other times during the year for good measure.
I also have a weird, lasting love for Ushpizin which features a truly beautiful citron, and a little French movie called Sequins.
Miller's Crossing
Dr. Strangelove
The Hustler (Paul Newman/Jackie Gleason)
Network
Midnight Cowboy
Dog Day Afternoon
Goodfellas
Barton Fink
and with the young 'un, each and every PIXAR release, they're all so damn good... also "Sen To Chihiro" is a family-viewing fave (that's "Spirited away" in its English title).
A Fistful of Dynamite
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Mulholland Drive
Dawn of the Dead
Two-Lane Blacktop
Jackie Brown
Brazil
Harold & Maude
Suspiria
Blade Runner
Willa Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
Life of Brian
Candyman
Blue Velvet
Trainspotting (I need to be in the right frame of mind to see this one, though)
Oh yeah, BoPo, Good/Bad/Ugly is a heavy rotationable one for sure. Eli Wallach was pure genius in that. Brazil is an interesting choice: I love it too, but I think I probably find it a bit too depressing for repeated viewing!
I think I've just seen Brazil so many times that it doesn't depress me anymore. (It still cracks me up in a lot of places, though...)
I should have included Dog Day Afternoon (from your list) and Best In Show (from gaspode's). Those are both ones I could definitely watch over and over again.
Some that have been mentioned already and so many more.
I'll give my short list: Mighty Aphrodite, Muriel's Wedding, Night at the Roxbury, Groundhog Day, Election, Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, Bullets Over Broadway.
The BirdCage
A League of their Own
The King and I/Anna and the King
Wild, Wild West (I love Will Smith!)
Men in Black (see above)
Triple X (with Vin Diesel)
Clue
Beaches
Steel Magnolias
And any of the Pirates Of The Caribbean movies!
A Night at the Opera
Amadeus
Back to the Future
Batman Begins
Casablanca
Clockers
Darkman
Das Boot
Freaks
Friday
Gallipoli
Here Comes Mr. Jordan
King Kong
King of Hearts
Lethal Weapon 2
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Shaolin Soccer
Somebody Up There Likes Me
Strange Brew
Super Troopers
The 13th Warrior
The Blues Brothers
The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer)
The Public Enemy; White Heat
Total Recall
Trading Places
True Romance
War of the Worlds
What About Bob?
Zatoichi (Kitano)
There are lots more, including now that I preview many of others' favorites; these are movies that I would watch at any time or even start watching partway through the movie (something I normally dislike). Can I get a star for alphabetical order?
The Truman Show
School of Rock
Zoolander
Meet the Parents
Groundhog Day
Best in Show
Total Recall
Echoing others in that, while these are not necessarily the *best* movies I've seen, they're the kind that I can sit down and watch all the way through from any point and enjoy it. And I'm probably missing a few -- I've thought about this before, which is why I have a few, but they're surprisingly hard to come up with. It's definitely a know-it-when-you-see-it thing.
So many good ones. There are a lot of these which I have and will see again (or have lurking somewhere in my queue to see for the first time). I can never understand why I have to watch a small handful of movies every other month or so, no matter what, despite having so many new ones available, but my brain craves them.
King Kong (any of them)
Superman
Primer
2001
The Shining
Excalibur
Alien
The Maltese Falcon
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1950s version)
North by Northwest
Charade
Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Apollo 13
The Big Chill
When Harry Met Sally
Good Will Hunting
High Infidelity
Sleeper, Annie Hall, Manhattan, Everybody Says I Love You, Hannah and her Sisters (lumped for combined Woody Allen awesomeness)
Auntie Mame
Mr. Deeds Goes To Town
Serenity
The Sixth Sense
The Exorcist
Pee Wee's Big Adventure
The Big Lebowski
What Dreams May Come
Blazing Saddles
The Big Lebowski
PeeWee's Big Adventure
Shaun of the Dead
any Wallace & Gromit short or movie
Clerks
American Hardcore
Disc 2 of We Jam Econo (all the live footage)
A few more
Brazil
The Princess Bride
Midnight Cowboy
Dip huet seung hung (The Killer)
Willa Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
Brazil
Night Of the Living Dead
The Big Lebowski
Godfather 2
American Psycho
Glengarry Glen Ross
No Country for Old Men
Also, it's not one of my favorites, but for a while IFC played Beautiful Girls (with Timothy Hutton and a young Natalie Portman) constantly and I could never turn away.
The Hustler (Paul Newman/Jackie Gleason)
Awesome. I never hear enough love for that movie. I'm also a sucker for the Color of Money.
It's my favorite. So there you go, there's some love.
Too tired to come up with my own list right now. But a few that come to mind are Hard Eight, The Closer, most Clint Eastwood movies from the 70s, and Fargo. Sure there are more.
Instead of seconding or thirding or nthing dozens of things (BP, mullacc and Janus, among others, named a bunch of things I love), I'll just add Baraka, Koyaanisqatsi and Powaaqatsi. And Don't Look Back. And Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
Miller's Crossing (easily my favorite Coen, though Fargo is the superior film)
Where Eagles Dare (possibly the most perfect preposterous adventure movie of all)
Practically any of the Bonds (as clunky as some are, I'm still a dyed-in-the-wool 007 fan)
Aliens (one of the best sf/action films ever made)
The Abyss (a template for the character-infused blockbuster)
Broadcast News (intelligent heartbreaker, Holly Hunter is never less than delightful)
L.A. Confidential (indeed, and read the book, they cut out the main plot and if you do you'll understand why -- a great story saddled by a bad joke)
The Rock (Nicolas Cage is the most deeply weird action star ever)
Armageddon (cheesy fun, I actually love the way Bruckheimer gets somebody like Tarantino or Carrie Fisher or whomever to fill in the little character and dialog bits)
The Third Man (in those days they let you have endings that showed consequences for your actions)
Casablanca (sure, wny not)
Hmm, I don't actually own enough endlessly rewatchable movies, I suppose. I could add a few I'd LIKE to rewatch but they're never at hand so I don't.
Oh how I love that version of Persuasion. One of my favourite movies, ever. And the mini-series of P&P with Colin Firth is wonderful too.
Others: Godfather 1 and 2, but especially 2
Miyazaki, Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, Princess Mononoke
The Age of Innocence
Portrait of a Lady
Frida (not the recent one with Salma Hayek, the 1983 one)
Sexy Beast
Magnolia
The Lion in Winter (Peter O'Toole and Katherine Hepburn chew, masticate, and devour the scenery)
Spinal Tap
Zoolander
Can I say that I'm a little disappointed at how many people with otherwise excellent taste seem to like Magnolia, which I found laughably bad. And I say this as someone who normally likes artsy pretentious movies.
My dad confided to me that when he's in the living room with all three of the boys -- both grandsons and the dog -- and things get out of hand, he just turns on the 50" plasma TV my mom won last year and plays Microcosm in high definition from the DVR. All three of them immediately quit whatever wildness they're up to and sit mesmerized for at least six minutes.
There are a fair number of movies that I can be easily sucked into if exposed to them, but the one absolute tradition is that I watch "Jaws" every Memorial Day Weekend.
LOTR
Casablanca
Sleeper
Oh Brother Where Art Thou
Big Leb
Possession
Red
Diva (The french flick)
Blazing Saddles
The Producers
Once will probably be on that list
Withnail & I
Ronin
Ghost In The Shell I and II
Mononoke, Nausicaa, Spirited Away - I could watch pretty much anything by Miyazaki over and over again (with the exception of Pom Poko)
High Noon
Zatoichi
Vidocq
Amelie
The Seven Samurai
Das Boot
Stalker
Donnie Darko
Snatch
Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels
Brat (Brother)
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