As a medium, a movie is generally thought of as a one-time experience. We listen to favorite songs over and over, but most of us watch a typical film just once.
Which makes it all the more extraordinary when we encounter a film that cries out for repeat viewing. Each of us has our own particular list of what I call “go-to movies” — those films we would happily seen again, and again, at the drop of a hat.
There is a small list of movies that I have seen so many times that I have lost track of the number of times I’ve watched them. The following list is incomplete, but it is representative. Each time I see one of these films, I discover something new:
Annie Hall
Blade Runner
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Casablanca
Citizen Kane
Dr. Strangelove
Mary Poppins
Singin’ in the Rain
The Wizard of Oz
I suspect other people reading this have their own such list. Care to share?
One comes to mind immediately: Primer. I think I watched it twice within a few days of discovering it!
Nothing from the last 30 years makes the list?
If you count TV shows, then there’s Buffy. But I can’t think of any film more recent than Blade Runner that I’ve watched over and over again. I might be forgetting one.
Family Touche
Chic!
About a Boy
Last Holiday
Love Actually
Odette Toulemonde
Romantics Anonymous
A Slight Case of Murder
Mr. Hulot’s Holiday
Big Fish
The 5th Element
SW: A New Hope
Kill Bill
Spirited Away
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
It’s a Mad Mad Mad World
The Abyss
Airplane!
Back to the Future
The Little Mermaid (1989)
Logan’s Run
Poltergeist (1982)
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back (original editions)
Toy Story
The Wizard of Oz
I would like to go back to Blade Runner, Moon, and The Prestige, as I think those could become movies I watch again and again given the opportunity.
Citizen Kane
Breakfeast at Tiffanys
The Apartment
Yojimbo / Sanjuro
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Kitano’s Brother
Life is a miracle
Donnie Darko
Southland Tales
Office Space
Damsels in Distress
Fight Club
The Matrix
Too many really.
There is also a kind of movie I both love and hate, because everything excepted a teeny tiny sneaky part I have yet to identify makes me vibrates to them, leaving me but confused and frustrated.
Blade Runner is the first one that makes me feels that, along with a lot of Wes Anderson’s movies.