Looking over my self-proclaimed “Favorite Movies” on my Facebook profile, I was struck by how many of my “favorites” I’ve seen only once. Usually when I have a favorite movie I watch it many times, as I suspect most people would. But the following movies, though they made a great impression on me at first viewing, I still haven’t gotten around to seeing a second time:
[ul]
[li]Pandora’s Box (starring Louise Brooks)[/li][li]Nashville (dir. Robert Altman)[/li][li]The Cameraman (starring Buster Keaton)[/li][li]The Sweet Hereafter (dir. Atom Egoyan)[/li][li]And Life Goes On (dir. Abbas Kiarostami)[/li][li]Homework (dir. Abbas Kiarostami)[/li][li]Ten (dir. Abbas Kiarostami)[/li][li]Vive L’Amour (dir. Ming-liang Tsai)[/li][/ul]
I wonder what I’d think of them on the next go-round.
What are some of your “favorites” you’ve seen only once?
I believe I’ve only seen Fargo once. It’s utterly brilliant, and I love it, but it’s just too freaking intense. The murders are completely real and believable.
Taking that back a bit - if it’s on and it’s at one of the lighter Marge Gunderson parts, I’ll watch a few minutes before veering off.
The Sixth Sense, Dark City, Life Is Beautiful and A.I.: Artificial Intelligence were all, to me, amazingly powerful and impressive movies, but not movies I’ve been eager to see again, either.
Crash (the good one, not the one that won the Oscar), American History X, AI: Artificial Intelligence, Reservoir Dogs, Deathproof, and Fargo. All for different reasons. Crash, American History X and Reservoir Dogs were just too intense for me. I love them, but I didn’t enjoy sitting through them. I don’t think AI needs another viewing. I want to see Fargo and Deathproof again, but I have to be in the mood to watch them…I don’t want to just have them playing in the background. i want to sit down and really watch them. Except, I never sit down to watch movies. Ever. I’m always doing something else, too.
Saw it in the theater with my wife, and she got me the DVD, but I haven’t watched it yet. I wanted to wait a while so that I could hopefully enjoy it as much as I did the first time. I’ve been feeling strong urges to watch it, and I guess five years is long enough.
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? It’s as though I got everything out of it that I possibly could on first viewing. I’d love to see it again, though, but I’m not going to seek it out. Which is weird, because I almost never promote a movie into “favorite” category unless I’ve seen it at least twice.
Grave of the fireflies: Excellent movie, but so sad it left me literally traumatized. I still mist up will just thinking of the ending.
Funny Games: I watched the original (finnish?) version a few years back and it left me feeling like taking a shower for days. Haven’t watched the remake and I don’t intend to. And keeping in mind how much I love watching Naomi Watts in anything, that’s really saying something.
SFW: Some crazy movie with Stephen Dorff I watched in my teens late at night. It rocked my world in a nineties teen angst sort of way. But I don’t really want to watch it again because I know it’s not going to be half as good as my memory of it.
Schindler’s List: Even THINKING about that movie moves me to tears; I’m not sure how I would handle a repeat viewing. Especially the very last scene, where the descendants of the actual holocaust survivors place stones on the graves…wow, even now it makes me tear up.