My favorite movies of all time!
I hate this sort of thing, the idea of having a favorite movie is ridiculous to me. It’s a nebulous thing, sometimes I love this thing and other times I only like it. It’s always fluid, and I’ll forget how much I love a thing until a decade or two later when I see it again and I think, my god, I can’t believe I’ve lived without you for so long.
Or, whatever.
So I was writing over the weekend, I had intended on writing a third chapter in my WIP (for the third time, btw) and I decided to just have some background noise on while I worked. I wanted a movie I’ve seen a thousand times that I can just leave running and ignore. I usually write in silence, but again, I just wanted… something.
In doing so, I selected a much loved movie that I haven’t seen in about a year. I have probably seen it close to a dozen times, so even though it’s been a while, it’s not something that I’m likely to forget major portions of.
And from 60 seconds in I knew I was screwed. I put my laptop down and watched, riveted, just like I was the first time I’d seen that movie. When I breathed again and it was two hours later I thought I might as well just go ahead and make a list. My Favorite Movies of all Time.*
4: The Abyss: I originally had some other Cameron movie here, but I decided that this is the one I like the best. It would be higher if the third act was as great as the first two, but as it stands I still can’t turn away any time it’s on. It’s aged very well in my opinion… and the deep sea is the creepiest place on earth. I’m tempted to go read Starfish again by Peter Watts after writing this. I’ve seen it about five times.
3: Zoolander: I don’t know why. It just is**. Seen it about 9 times.
2: Good Will Hunting: Look, this is pretty much the story of my life… except for the abuse, the super high IQ, the relationships, and the personalities. But aside from those things… oh, and the setting, and circumstances… it could have been a biography of my life.
Seriously, one my most loved movies of all time, and this is the one I put in the other day while I tried to write. Amazing flick. I never tire of it. I think I’ve seen this about a dozen times.
1. Contact: Based on the novel by Carl Sagan (which I’ve read a few times as well). One of those rare instances where the book, which was already pretty good, was improved on with the movie. There were aspects of the book I liked better, but Robert Zemeckis was genius in how he made some pretty heady material from the book compelling and emotionally gripping. I also tip my hat to the effort that went into making this as scientifically accurate as was possible, especially considering the made up technology that emerges later in the tale.
I must have seen this more times than I can easily count. There was a time when I’d come home from work and just hit play on the DVD player and let it be on while I did whatever I was doing. It was awesome. I’d guess I’ve seen it close to 50 times, more than any other movie I’ve ever seen by a long shot***.
*Okay, look, I saw Starship Troopers and thought it was the greatest movie ever made. I saw it a second time and thought it sucked. I eventually came to the opinion that it just isn’t very good. A similar thing can be said for Independence Day, I loved it at first, and liked it less upon each viewing. I simply can’t watch it anymore. My point is that I can be overwhelmed by spectacle and it can cloud my judgment early on, so I really don’t know how I feel about a movie until about a year later and after at least two viewings. And the reverse is true too. When I first saw Contact I thought it was okay. That was a movie that I liked a bit MORE each time I saw it. Same can be said for Zoolander – which I initially thought was the stupidest movie ever made.
**Another point, comedies in general are weird, I might laugh like crazy the first time I see one, then hate it after (Borat, Ms. Doubtfire) or I might love it every time I see it (Dumb & Dumber, Groundhog Day). But like I mentioned in my above point, some movies grow on me after not liking them at first, comedies seem to be that way for me more than any other genre though. I hated Austin Powers, but grew to like those films, same for Hot Rod, Joe Dirt, whatever other widely panned movie that finds its way into my heart.
*** I really wish I knew how to make that little cross thing instead of three asterisks. Regardless, the clear number 2 on the ‘most watched’ list for me would Rocky III, which played at the $.99 theater near my house back in the summer of ’82 (I think). I had a huge change collection and I robbed it daily to go see Rocky beat up on Clubber Lang… I even read the Rocky III NOVEL. When it came on VHS later I must have rented it with enough regularity to put my total views into the upper 20’s at least. For anyone interested in a list of my most viewed movies, here it is (and man, how awesome would it be to have a footnote to my footnotes, that would be meta-awesome):
Contact - 50 ish
Rocky III – 30 ish
Star Wars – 15 to 20 ish
The Empire Strikes Back - 15 to 20 ish
Star Trek IV – 15 ish
Raiders of the Lost Ark – 15 ish
Zoolander, Star Trek: First Contact, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Goonies, The Terminator, T2 – all somewhere between 10 and 15 times a piece.
Blade – 10 ish – it was the first DVD I ever purchased and was the only thing I had for a few weeks before I got my second DVD, which was Star Trek: First Contact.
I’m 40 years old. Don’t judge me for wasting my life. And also, I love the idea that I’d have more words in my footnotes than in my actual post. I love footnotes, love them. I’m thinking one day that my post will just be a single asterisk, then everything else will just be the footnote for the asterisk. Now THAT would be awesome.
