This means the following things are totally, completely, and utterly true:
1. I'm grumpy.
2. It's flipping cold. Except when it's not. Then it's irritatingly warm.
3. I'm stupidly sick with some unavoidable cough/drainage/mucousy stuff that I have had every January since the beginning of time.
4. Really all I want to do right now is lay in bed, watch bad movies and eat mashed potatoes.
5. I'm grumpy.
I'm thinking there's a pretty good chance I have just a touch of that Seasonal Affective Disorder stuff, because I can't remember a January that I didn't feel like this to some degree. It may also be the vestiges of a post-holiday season retail manager hangover, which I still experience occasionally like phantom limb pain or something.
This year I've decided to give in to it a little bit. Usually when I feel like this I might stick my nose (and my crabby, crabby mind) in a good book, but since I finished the last Dresden book
So I've been watching bad tv (let's hear it for Restaurant Impossible!) just for background noise and in order to avoid... well, pretty much everything. But the Food Network can really only keep me going for so long, so I've started re-watching some movies that are old favorites. I think most people have a list of movies that when you see it on tv, NO MATTER WHAT, you will drop everything and watch it for just a little while - ok, until the bitter end - and it usually leaves you feeling like you just had a nice chat with an old friend. It doesn't hurt that you can recite most of the lines right along with the actors, either.
Yeah, I have a list like that too. So here, in no particular order, are the fifteen movies that I can (and do!) watch over and over.
1. UHF
2. Coal Miner's Daughter
3. Blazing Saddles
4. Top Gun
5. Footloose
- the original, of course. What's better than a coming of age story about religion, judgey small town life (a subject I'm a bit of an expert on, by the way), great music and dancing? Nothing, in my opinion. Nothing at all.
6. Gone with the Wind
Everybody's always "Scarlett this" and "Scarlett that" but to be honest, I think she's a brat. I'm really more of a Melanie fan. She's sweet, kind, pure and good. Such a shame about the dying part, though. Oops. I guess that's what's known as a "spoiler," huh?
7. To Kill a Mockingbird
Great books do not always equal great movies. However, this is a major exception to that rule. Gregory Peck is SUPERB in this movie, and if I had to guess, I'd say I've watched this movie a hundred times. True confession time - I pushed HARD to name one of my kids "Atticus." Sadly, I lost. Also, I'm still bitter about it.
8. The Shawshank Redemption
Here's another great example of how a good book CAN be made into a good movie. Hollywood, take note. It can be done. This is, in my humble opinion, Morgan Freeman's best role out of a million fantastic ones.
9. Lonesome Dove
I mentioned irascible old men were kinda my thing, right? Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, cowboys, justice... all the things I love. Now TECHNICALLY this is a mini-series, but it's my list and I want Lonesome Dove on it. So there.
10. The Incredibles
Yeah, it's a cartoon. Yeah, it's about super heroes. But it's so so much more. It's actually a pretty complex story about how marriages change over time, about finding your place in the world, and about doing hard things and making sacrifices to keep your family safe. I cry every single time I watch it. Which is pretty often.
11. Great Balls of Fire!
Jerry Lee Lewis was tortured and brilliant and damaged and that's just my kind of thing. Also, Dennis Quaid.... Wowza. And when that guy that looks JUST like a young Elvis shows up in his Army uniform and says "Just take it. Take it all." I get chills every single time.
12. JFK
A three+ hour movie about history would not normally be my thing, but I've always had such a fascination with the Kennedys that this one holds my attention time and time and time again. And we still don't really know what happened, do we? Not really.
13. Overboard
This is one of those movies in which the plot can't hold water, the acting is marginal... yet inexplicably, I still love. I think it's because the deep theme in it is that people really can change. Also, Kurt Russell in a wife beater and overalls doesn't hurt.
14. Hoosiers
When I was a kid, my entire elementary school got to go to the theater to see this movie right after it came out, and for a poor rural elementary school like mine, this was a BIG deal. I remember how the small theater was full of kindergarten through eighth graders who fidgeted during all the "talking" parts and cheered loudly and wildly during all the basketball scenes. When I watched the movie again as a grown-up, it struck me how bizarre a choice that was to take a group of elementary school kids to, but I also fell truly, madly and deeply in love with Dennis Hopper's character, and he continues to be the star for me.
15. Big Trouble in Little China
Here's one more "bad plot, terrible acting" example that I inexplicable love. Hey, I can't explain it; I just live it.
How about you? Are there movies that you can watch over and over and over? Let me know - I need a few more to add to my list ;)
This post contains affiliate links. Just trying to keep the lights on here, yo.
Agreed about Overboard. Terrible movie, love it.
ReplyDeleteThe Food Network has sucked away hours of my life with its addictive, yet silly programming.
ReplyDeleteAnd, the Incredibles is not a cartoon. It's an animated film, which makes it sound much more classy.
This is a fun list of movies.
Between the Food Network and HGTV, I barely ever have to get up off the couch. And you're right, "animated film" does sound much better. Thanks for stopping by!
DeleteI can quote Coal Miner's Daughter, line for line.
ReplyDeleteIt's a sickness, really.
including but not limited to:
"Doo, you sound like a old bar a-grallin"
"Woman, if you want to keep that arm, you better get it offa my husband."
"Yeah, I'm sick. We're a-gonna have a ba-by."
...and on and on and on. I am still in deep mourning over Levon Helm. I can hardly speak about it.