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What's your favorite movie that you can watch over and over again with it losing the magic?I was discussing movies with a friend the other day and she asked me the following question: "What's your favorite movie . . . for example, if you were on a desert island with only one movie, what would you want it to be?" And I realized that that's two totally different questions, cause my favorite movie is not necessarily one that I can watch over and over.
I can't really pin down my favorite movie . . but for the sake of argument lets say it's Apocalypse Now (which I think is a great movie, de gustibus non est disputantum). It's a great movie, but I can only stand to watch it about once every three or four years. likewise with Godfather - great movie, but I can only stand to watch every couple of years.
On the other hand, I could probably watch Repo Man or the Blues Brothers once a week for the rest of my life.
Right now, I'd probably say that Repo Man is my favorite movie which I could see over and over and over without getting sick of it. I think it's a combination of excellent writing - where every single line is a joy to experience, and the relative lack of any slow or boring parts (long, drawn-out dramatic scenes just don't do it for me after the second viewing).
How about you? What's your favorite frequent-viewing movie?
Follow Ups:
1
Being the film fanatic and budding Director that I am, there are TONS of films I can watch over and over, heres some I can think of offhand:Star Wars
Two Hands (Non-Aussie readers, SEE THIS FILM!!!)(early Heath Ledger)
12 Monkeys
Superman : The Movie
The Shining
A Clockwork Orange
The Empire Strikes Back
AI
Blade Runner
Gladiator
Sleepy Hollow
Lawrence of Arabia
Pulp Fiction
Delicatessen
Oh Brother, where art thou?
Being John Malkovich
Starship Troopers
I think I forgot:2001 : A Space Odyssey
The Big Lebowski
The Third Man
Contact
Misery - I keep getting pulled into it each time it's on cable
High Fidelity
Chinatown - Yeah!!
Rear Window
The Birds
no text
nt
.
naw....naw, man!...SHIT NAW MAN, I reckon you'd get your ass beat for sayin somethin like that, man!hehe,
--tb
The Inlaws
Serial
Enter the Dragon
Guns of Navarone
Mediteraneo
Brain Candy
Thick as Thieves
Shoot to Kill
Buckaroo Banzai
Caddy Shack
Street Fighter (the Sonny Cheeba one)
Shaolin Master Killer
Starship Troopers
The Freshman
The Emerald Forest
Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels
Full Metal Jacket
Logan's Run
The Loved OnesI can watch these forever.
Without a doubt, The Abyss. But, I'm a diver.
The Abyss is always satisfying. But, I'm a diver.
Peter Fonda plays the great honney producer, stunning!Joking, must be one of the worst I've ever seen!
Real answer: Ususal suspects and Apocolypse Now.
Well, just off the top of my head:Raiders Of The Lost Ark - just because
The Commitments - a very bittersweet movie, and I love the music
Casablanca - just a great movie
The Thin Man - I go crackers over the Powell and Loy pairing.
The Rocketeer - for reasons lost in my childhood
Sanjuro - I think it's the funniest Kurosawa
Hard Boiled - probably the best John Woo film to date
Being There
This aught to be required watching before every presidential election.
nt
Shawshank Redemption & High Fidelity.
dce
Daniel C. Elmore
At close range: chris walken, shawn penn :riveting
phantasm: love it, but don't know why?
caddie shack: bill murry, rodney, couple sctv guys. best comedy ever!
stripes: love john candy, murry, eguene levy, trying to supress bursting out laughing as they try to make a movie together.
nt
Wages is a wonderful film.
This is real easy. For me it has to be Run Lola Run - in English language DVD with a good sound system of course. Favorite scene - sliding glass door scene when Manni contemplates entering supermarket as Lola races to stop him. - Stunning use of visual/music to creat emotional impact. Maybe not a "great film", but one I can watch much the way I can listen to a favorite album over and over.
Without any particular order:“Dog day afternoon” – randomly sliding energy
“Heat” – the most professionally built drama about good/bad man with a smart sparkle of females
“As good as it gets” - as good as it gets
“Casablanca”– stunning concentration of events within time/space
“Devil’s Advocate” – incredible unintentional mockery on the mental oligarchy of the western churchenism
“Amadeus” - the life is a play of a portrait of the play?
“Scent of a woman” – one of the very few movies which “doesn’t come” during the viewing
“People will talk” … and many other movies from that time - I would love to live at the time when people were able to make movies like this.
“Hudsucker Proxy” – fantastic non-American parody on American corporate environment.
“Annie Hall” - Woody Allen’s word at the summit of being Woody Allen
“Contact” – the best Si-Fi movies
“The Fisher King” - a rare example when the American-straight-forwardness approach did not kill the movie, almost…
“Dangerous Liaisons” – can you mange a flow of the river?
“Natural Born Killers” –one of the best American comedy based on not-American sense of humor, shot by the accidental-most-American-director. Laughing like crazy during watching.
“King-Dza-Dza” - …mama!
“The Ritz” – arguable the best American comedy
“Tom and Jerry” cartoons - I hate this freaking mouse! I am still waiting until this Koshka will swallow that annoying rat. I plan to sue them if she eventually will not….
Thousands hours of Discovery Channel and Nation Geographic about the life of Filenes – this is the best. It has all shadows of the life within.
I actually enjoyed recalling it…
Regards,
Romy the Cat
You love too much violence.
***“Scent of a woman”Did you see the original film with Vittorio Gassman? Makes that sugar-couted shit with Al look like it is just your average Hollywood thingy.
I have just about had it with trashy Hollywood remakes. Maybe they should now remake the 8 1/2 - something about Spielberg?
***“Dangerous Liaisons”Which one? The original one? The Malkovich one? Or - trully God forbids - the sleazy trash with Sarah Michele? That would make you even sicker... almost like Mart, I guess...
Victor,*** You love too much violence.
Though I never ageist if somebody call me a sick man (in many instances I get it as a compliment) but no one could consider me being a violence-liking man.
*** Did you see the original film with Vittorio Gassman? Makes that sugar-couted shit with Al look like it is just your average Hollywood thingy. I have just about had it with trashy Hollywood remakes. Maybe they should now remake the 8 1/2 - something about Spielberg?
If you were able to note then pretty much all movies that I mentioned are the Hollywood thingy. There is a reason for it and you failed to realize it. Besides the question was: “The favorite movie you can watch over and over again?” When I watch MY movies I don’t try to comply with the “absolute taste and knowledge”… but try to satisfy my own little “white trash demands”… and you know what… those movies do it to me. Besides, Victor, the hate is not a good motivation….
***Which one? The original one? The Malkovich one? Or - trully God forbids - the sleazy trash with Sarah Michele? That would make you even sicker... almost like Mart, I guess...
Yes, the Malkovich one.
Regards,
Romy the Cat
... the Clerks “Search for the perfect egg” I consider the best what was done in 90s…(if you know why I brought it up… I guess…)Rgs,
Romy The Cat
I also tend to repeat view adolescent "cult films", not necessarily the great films. So, with mild shame, I admit to regular viewings of "Tapeheads", "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation", "Sixteen Candles", and "Tromeo and Juliet".
Tampopo is wonderful, but not to watch over and over. Without an excuse maybe every five years or so? As to excuses to see it, for me it's a movie to gleefully share with people who've never heard of it. That tends come up every few years.Oh, and what about "Harold and Maude" or for that matter "Bringing Up Baby", "Philidelphia Story" and "Desk Set"...
Yeah, I like Tampopo though Kwaidan is higher in my replay stack. I'm also guilty of liking stuff like Breakfast Club, 16 Candles, Lampoon. Also like Genocyber, which usually ends up on most people's "worst anime ever" list.
I would not mind watching it again. Perhaps not too many times, but sure, a few more...And I usually always recall the Iresumi when thinking about the Tampopo.
several others. But those are my all time favorites.Mike
Love it everytime. I haven't tired of "Emporor's New Groove" either. I can also watch Midnight Cowboy days on end. Usually when I'm depressed, however. The feeling of old dirty New York is so real in that movie, you can almost smell it (since I missed the dirty Times Square era and all). Looking forward to the DVD.
Dan
I'll go with a few I've seen a zillion times:Seven Samurai, great framing for every scene and neat music
Chinatown, same as above
Starstruck, funny fun mucical
Aliens, best of the series. Push it, Bishop!
n/t
Two of my faves!
-best regards,
Rich S.
"Animal House" -- I know when the classic Belushi scenes are coming, but I laugh anyway."The Godfather" saga -- just saw that on television again. Al Pacino in a bravura performance, nicely set off by Diane Keaton.
"Chinatown" -- Jack Nicholson not doing schtick; best Faye Dunaway performance out there; Roman Polanski directs before he becomes persona non grata in the US on a morals charge.
"Maltese Falcon" -- prototype for "Chinatown" and lots of others. Bogie as 100% tough guy; the creepy Peter Lorre; the slimy Sidney Greenstreet; the deceitful Mary Astor. What a cast!
"Rear Window" -- The impossibly beautiful Grace Kelley, the nice on the outside but creepy on the inside Jimmy Stewart (see "Vertigo") and Alfred Hitchcock -- what an all-star combo!
"Run Silent, Run Deep" -- Ok, I'm a sucker for WW2 sub films; but this is the best. Tightly plotted and edited, atmospheric in gorgeous black and white, with Clark "frankly, I don't give a damn, my dear" Gable and Burt Lancaster. From the novel by WW2 sub skipper Edward L. Beach, so its the real thing.
"Annie Hall" -- California meets New York. Diane Keaton when she was young enough to get away with all her "cuteness"'; Woody Allen before he turned creepy.
"Remains of the Day" -- Two top actors showing what acting is really about -- Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. Nothing happens in the movie, which is precisely the point.
"Beauty and the Beast" -- Yes, the Disney cartoon. The cartoon as opera. The best of the Mencken-Ashman collaborations for Disney, and that's saying something. Non-intrusive use of the computer: check out the ballroom scene where Beauty and Belle are dancing to the title theme. An SG workstation did the "flying camera" animation -- breathtaking! Right from the quiet and delicate opening sequence introducing the story, which segues into a rousing ensemble musical number introducing all the players (except the Beast), you know this ain't no Mickey Mouse cartoon. Genuinely moving.
Close runner-up -- "Little Mermaid": not as good a plot and not as integrated music-story concept. But the music itself is tops: "Kiss the Girl"; "Under the Sea" -- broadway musical-style writing just doesn't get better than this. Regrettably, these two gems have been buried by the Disney studio's subsequent cranking out of increasingly bad attempts to capitalize on their success. The trajectory was, IMHO, pretty steadily downward, with a small uptick for "The Lion King." It didn't help, of course, that Ashman died of AIDS before the next film after "Beauty", "Aladdin," was finished. What a loss!
"Casablanca" -- I'm sorry folks; call me a sucker -- for "As time goes by," for Ingrid Bergman (today she would have had her teeth capped; but ask yourself: does it really matter that her teeth aren't perfect?) and for that wonderful plot device of having the whole story revolve around an affair remembered: ("We'll always have Paris, Elsa.") Sorry, folks, this ain't no "B" movie in my book. This is a romance between grown-ups, not adolescents (or grown-ups who act like adolescents) -- the kind of movie that is not made any more (although I will give a nod to "The Horse Whisperer" for at least making an attempt.)
Final call: -- "The Apostle": the only Hollywood film I have ever seen that shows any understanding of what Christianity is about. A fantastic, hold-nothing-back performance by Robert DuVall as the deeply flawed evangelical preacher. And, among other things, a really great performance by former T-and-A queen Farrah Fawcett as his wife. Who'd a thunk it?! Charlie's poster-girl Angel giving a serious performance! This movie is about the Big Stuff: sin, redemption, forgiveness, and so on. It does not disappoint.
A quirky group, to be sure, and I could add more. But there they are.
"...Beast" is brilliant, and I like your analogy to opera. I'm so sick of "gee whiz!" computer usage in the newer films (Pixar excluded) and the same old tired musical formula.
Keep Elton John the hell away from animation!!!
"Emporor's New Groove" was a blast of fresh air though.
Dan
==
Seen it a couple dozen times. Now there's a real movie.When I got the LD to show to friends, it came *just the day before* so I decided to qual-check it. Watched it all the way through and the next day happily too.
When I got the new (magnificently restored and resubtitled) DVD to show to friends, I *tried* to pre-audition it for only ten minutes, but failed.
Occasionally it plays on a big-screen revival and always I go.
Great movie, and let's not forget the mahvelous Luis Bonfa score and the virtual non-stop samba music in the background.
The recent remake is a major disappointment -- hip-hop, drug dealers, nasty cops -- oh it's a downer.
clark
My two favorites right now, but here's some more:"One, Two, Three" and "Stalag 17"
"Dr. Strangelove"
"One Eyed Jacks"
"Raging Bull"
That's enough
A mad mix but here goes
DuckSoup Marx Bro's
Nil by mouth (No matter how bad you feel this mob will make you feel like royalty)
Baraka
Dancer in the dark
Raising Arizona
Three Colours Blue
The Castle
Plan Nine From outer Space
Robot Monster
Thunderbirds (movie)
SEEYA Tim
nt
Regards
Steve
Hi,
it's a paean to childishness, after banging the Mommy, he decides he wants the daughter. Tough cookies. That advice...."Think plastics" could have made him rich. At the end of the movie, they're not making plans, or doing anything that would demonstrate they had a relationship. They're just sitting there like lumps. Which demonstrates my point as well as anything else. He wants what he wants when he wants it, no plans,nada.
Toot, toot!I have to agree with you. A pointless film.
Agreed it's not the greatest film. For me the film you can watch over and over is not related to great film art, it's about memories of a simpler happier time that is relived when re-watching those films.
Regards
Steve
.
Right now my wife and I are going through a Kevin Smith phase.
My personal fave up until this week was Dogma (I could watch that one until the DVD player wore out. My wife likes Dogma as well, but she also has a 'thing' for Chasing Amy.
As well, other ones that we never seem to leave out of the player for more than a week are ANY stupid comedy movies. it is our fave genre, the stupider the better!
Dman (and S.O. in tow)
:-0
nt
Say hello to my lil' frien'!
2001 (as enigmatic as ever)
The Right Stuff (real heroism)
The Maltese Falcon (you can keep your sappy Casablanca)
All About Eve (back when films were written for adults)Ok, the following may not have magic but they never fail to crack me up:
La Grande Bouffe (he he he)
Desperate Living (I sometimes think I live in Mortville)
Polyester (I think I was once married to Francine)Plenty of others including:
The Day The Earth Stood Still (what I could do with Gort...)
North by Northwest (or most of Hitchcock's)
nt
Totally agree, though it didnt really need to grow on me, I loved it the first time I saw it
I picked up The Big Lebowski on DVD last month . . and I've probably watched it at least six times since then. The Dude really does grow on you. Very subtle humor. Amazing cast.
.
The Cincinatti Kid and The Hustler
Hustler, The Day of the Jackal, Heaven Can Wait (Beatty).
Star Wars
Rob CThe world was made for people not cursed with self-awareness
... could convert solar energy to the 120V/60Hz needed to power up the system on a desert island populated by crabs and cocoanuts, ...I'd probably pick "Chicken Run" because it would fit the proper aspect ratio of my set and would keep me smilin' until help arrived.OTOH, a more practical selection would be "Starship Troopers." I could watch that action-packed flick repeatedly without tiring of it's stunning FX graphics and it might just keep my "crabby" neighbors in line. ;^)
Now if I was stuck on the island with a 4:3 perspective television my first choice would undoubtably be the original "Fantasia" (i.e., the 1940 version remastered to DVD); animation aside, I'm quite sure that I'd never grow tired of the music on this release.
If I were lucky enough to salvage additional films from the shipwreck, I'd probably grab (for 4:3):
"My Best Girl" Mary Pickford
"Foolish Wives" Erich Von Stroheim
"Citizen Kane" Orson Welles (if my ship sails after Sept. 25)... and/or (for 16:9),
"MIB" Tommy Lee Jones & Will Smith
"Matrix"
"Blade"
"Gladiator"
"The Sixth Sense"
"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"
The Jurassic Park set (inc. both "Jurassic Park" & "Lost World")
The Toy Story set (inc. "Toy Story" & "Toy Story II")However, I'd still feel great remorse for the many wonderful titles left out which went down with the ship. (Anyone got any scuba gear?)
AuPh :o)
Or "The Wedding March" or "Greed". Von Stroheim was brilliant.I've always thought it was a supreme irony that the Academy Awards' lifetime achievement award for producers is named after Irving Thalberg. Thalberg was a bully and thug who, with the hateful Louis Mayer, set up the "studio System" that gave power to the producers and reduced directors to little more than camera - pointers. I hope Thalberg is burning in hell for his part in destroying Von Stroheim's "Greed"; a critic who saw Von Stroheim's 8 hour rough cut of "Greed" in 1927 said the film was not merely a great movie but was one of the supreme artistic achievements of man. Thalberg had 75% of "Greed" cut out by a hack editor.
I hate to admit I've watched Troopers about 12 times.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and all the rest you mentioned.
*
no text
nt
That one scared the hell out of me when I was a kid seeing it at the local movie theater with my dad and older brother. I believe that was the one that led me to insist on a nightlight for the bedroom!
Well, we are certainly on the same wavelength concerning "Earth vs
the Flying Saucers"; I also recommend what I consider its companion
film, "20 Million Miles To Earth", in the sense that both films were
made by Columbia Pictures in the same time period, both filmed in
B&W, both featured some of the same cast members and both revolved
around marvelous Harryhausen effects. I like to watch these two
films sometimes back to back from the lounge chair, of course, guzzling soda pop, popcorn, pizza, cheetos, brownies and other
munchies! - AH
... it would be difficult for me to choose between any of his films because virtually all early Keaton is excellent. Interesting choice of a Harrihausen film, by the way. Is Earth vs. the Flying Saucers a guilty pleasure or personal fave? How about Jason and the Argonauts?AuPh
I have a hard time choosing just one or two Keaton movies. I'm such a Keaton fan that I've put flowers on his grave. On another day I might have written "The General and The Cameraman" or "The General and Our Hospitality" or "The General and Steamboat Bill".As for "Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers", a couple of years ago I realized that I've seen it at least a couple of dozen times and will happily watch it again whenever it's on. It's a great B - movie. Despite the obvious low budget it was made by people who cared about what they were doing and took it seriously. The script doesn't insult the audience's intelligence either. Harryhausen's stop motion effects are wonderful and the film has some genuinely creepy moments such as the flying saucer on the Maryland beach or the moment when Dr. Marvin's tape recorder slows down and he can hear the alien voice. I saw the movie on a big screen once in a newly struck print (at a sci - fi festival at NYC's Film Forum theater) and TV's limited gradations of grays don't do "Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers" justice.
I already mentioned this before: "My Fair Lady" and "Barry Lyndon".
nt
Either "It's a Wonderful Life" or "The Princess Bride" come to mind first.
Randy Bey
Movie on a desert island? Well, I suppose Elizabeth R as it is like 12 hours long so it would take me longer to memorize the dialog (^-^) Favorite DVD would probably be IRIA (anime), judging by the number of times I've tossed it in the player. Favorite documentary: The Silk Road or Steven Hawking's Universe. Favorite short Hollywood film is probably A Lion in Winter.
Thin Man series,
Star Wars series,
Meet The Hollowheads, (yeah I know it's strange, but I LOVE IT)
African Queen,
Hidden Fortress,
Yojimbo,
Music Man,
Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?,
Forbidden Planet,
(I could watch any of these over and over)
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