Movies You've Seen a Million Times or Movies You Never Tire of Watching

Rear Window for me.

I shall finally get around to watching Sans Soleil for the ….

(I am literally mentally counting here)

eighth time, in Marker’s honor!

Edit: Ninth. Maybe tenth.

—PolarisDiB

Martinus I completely agree with you on Taxi Driver and The Shining, two great movies that I could watch hundreds of times.

i shall watch a grin without a cat

for the first time thx to david ehrenstein. world cup can wait

Sans Soleil is one of my ultimate ‘been meaning to watch it for as long as I can remember but never have’ films. This is the perfect occasion.

Throw in La Jetee for good measure.

I’ll dig up and bump an old thread where I get into the structure of Sans Soleil for you to read after you’re done watching. It was a good discussion that deserves reverential reprisal.

—DiB

I have to add Sans Soleil, it’s literally the only film I never get sick of. It’s always such a friendly experience.

I wonder what it is in a film and in the viewer when repetitive viewing doesn’t make the experience boring. It’s as if you want to watch it again because you can’t quite understand why you love it so much. You start analysing it, but the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts. I think it is related with the mystery of music. We love a piece of music without knowing why and just want to hear it again and again. It’s a strange psychological thing. Something in the feel or mood of a film that touches something deep.

Those pieces of art that ignite the Spark of Recognition are usually the ones I return to again and again — the one where audience (me) and creator (artist) and, if narrative, narrator (piece) all feel like the exact same entity with no communication lost or filters in between. It would be a very personal thing.

—PolarisDiB

Sans Soleil, Andrei Rublev, Mirror, Satantango, and almost all of the 1930’s-40’s Universal horror films and 1950’s-1970’s Hammer horror films.

In my youth I never tired of watching The Blues Brothers. For a few months I watched Gregory’s Girl every day. Haven’t seen them for a while now, but if I were flicking through the channels and either one of them was on I’d sit and watch them again.

Most of my favorites. 2001, Taxi Driver, The Godfather Trilogy, The Shining, and several Hitchcock films come to mind- Psycho, Vertigo, Rear Window, Rope, and The Birds.

Alright. Allowing myself to not be so Marker minded, some others that I return to always:

Jurassic Park
The Man Who Fell to Earth (for the longest time I was having a debate with myself over which was my favorite Roeg. This is the one that, ultimately, I want to watch over and over again)
Stalker
Videodrome
Sherlock Jr.
Brick
The Big Lebowski

These aren’t just my favorite movies list. L’Eclisse I account as one of my top five movies and I return to it often for reference and to remember finer details but it’s not one of the movies that I, while looking through my collection or thinking of revisiting something, am enthusiastically interested in. Even if the movie is so-called ‘intellectual’ there is a quality of escapism I do desire as a matter of immersion, which is why most on my list are science fiction minded.

—PolarisDiB

In my dusty noggin, these perennial favorites which pass the “never tire of watching” test are aligned in some odd way with trust. When I drop in on Casablanca for the umpteeth time, I know all the character actors at Rick’s bar, even some of the regulars at the tables whispering and sipping cool drinks. None of them will let me down, or embarrass me by “not dating well.” Perhaps that’s why many of those I can think of are romances. The Long Hot Summer though not anyone’s idea of a masterpiece, is a good example. Joanne Woodward’s speech to Paul Newman at the summer picnic tables always makes me rewind and watch it again, there’s some “life lesson” afoot and I don’t want to miss it. Another favorite, especially around the holidays, is The Apartment. Chilly Scenes of Winter has become one of my perennials, largely through the input from my son, who tried to become Charles during his teen years and after. Like Scampi with Gregory’s Girl, my son seemed to watch that film every week for years. The mania over a love affair gone bad seems to fit my family’s life like a glove. If I’m in a funk and need a pick-me-up, I can always count on My Man Godfrey or The Thin Man. During April, when pitchers and catchers begin Spring Training and the smell of allergens are in the trees, I count on Damn Yankeees. When I’ve a mind, I also put on a DVD of “Who’ll Stop The Rain,” with its perfect harmony of existential doom, women strung out on heroin cheating on their husbands, automatic weapons, danger, crisscrossed friendships and some good old Semper Fi. I wish I wrote it. Oddly, all of these are American films, and yet I pride myself on my love of foreign films. Another oddity, most of these were made before I was born. Call in the sorcerers, the shaman, the good doctor, what’s it all mean? I don’t know what it means, as Martinus mentioned with music, there’s a mysterious pull to it all, one I’m not about to destroy with analysis.

1. Rio Bravo

The rest are just films that I find myself watching multiple times. Some of them are great and some are not, but mostly they’re all just watchable in a variety of circumstances.

2. The Departed, The Asphalt Jungle, The Public Enemy, One Two Three
3. The Whole Shootin’ Match, Last Night at the Alamo, The Long Goodbye
4. Albert Brooks movies
5. Jurassic Park, Die Hard, The Thing, Alien, Night of the Living Dead, Poltergeist, Blade Runner, No Country for Old Men—a lot of these king of films.
6. Shop Around the Corner, It’s a Wonderful Life, Twentieth Century

Yojimbo, Freebie and the Bean, Southern Comfort (1981), Casino, Goodfellas, The Gunfighter and Hard Times. When I’m really drunk I watch Sonny China in Streetfighter.

Chiba.

Now that Night of the Living Dead has been mentioned, I’m strangely pulled back to Romero’s Dawn of the Dead quite a bit. In this case there’s the storytelling but also the editing, and undersung masterpiece of the craft worth visiting for anyone interested in film from that perspective.

—DiB

@Polaris Dawn of the Dead takes me back to my child hood, watching my uncle’s VHS. I think I could watch it over and over as well. Do you think the decision to change the ending in the 11th hour helped or hindered the movie?

Reds
The Graduate
Guys & Dolls
The Godfather
Swing Shift
The Wizard of Oz
A Christmas Story
Trash
Cabaret
The King of Comedy
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane
Network
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
The Taking of Pelham 123 (orig)
Rosemary’s Baby
Oliver!
Pickup on South Street

Anything by Kubrick I will watch again and again. Most Hitchcock. Silent films after midnight, especially Vampyr, Nosferatu and almost anything starring Lon Chaney from the 1920s. I love silent films, especially expressionistic cinema.

Cameron’s Aliens seems to find it’s way into the DVD player over and over. Also Point Blank, Die Hard and all the great films noir.

We don’t always agree, JASPER LAMAR CRABB, but I’m tellin’ ya, we could be friends

funny none of the films I watch again and again are exactly my favorites (tho Dangerfield is a favorite)

As Good As It Gets
Hannibal
My Five Wives
Back By Midnight
The 4th Tenor
A Girl in Every Port

Oh, Christmas movies!! :)

So many but, All About Eve is always fabulous, Some Like It Hot always makes me giggle and smile, I never tire of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and I have to admit, I know every word of Clueless.

Ghostbusters
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Pulp Fiction
Boogie Nights
The Shining
North by Northwest
etc.

The Apartment
Princess Mononoke

I’ve watched Clerks about twenty or thirty times and it still never fails to make me laugh or continue to impress me with its wealth of pure knowledge and awareness on the world today. I also can never get tired of watching “the time warp again,” if you know what I mean.

When I feel that way about a film, I usually put it into this list:

Since I’m Comfortable with My Masculinity, Films that Make Me Scream Like a Little Girl