I was going to start this week’s blog by examining the rewatchability factor in movies.  What is it that gives a movie its rewatchability quality?   After yelling at God for hours, drunk as shit, I slept it off and realized that what gives a movie its rewatchability is entirely personal, and solely up to the individual.  For me, the movies I love to rewatch are often my favorite movies of all time.   It’s been a while since I thought about or even made a list of my top 10 favorite movies ever, so I’ll break them down now.  For me, this list is constantly changing; as I change as a person and become affected by the world around me, so does my outlook and how I see movies.  A couple of these have been staples in the top 10 but may have moved around a bit, some are new entries.  I realize most of these are from the last 25 years and cinema has been around for a lot longer than that.  I also have three favorites starring Robert De Niro.  Shut up.

10. True Romance

My favorite movies usually blend genres.  Like most Tarantino penned movies, True Romance remains genreless.  It’s funny, romantic, and has the right amount of action.  Alabama and Clarence Worley may not appear to be the perfect couple, but they’re perfect for each other.  Because of this, you pull for these kids to ride love out into the sunset, and that’s what makes it one of my favorites.  I tried writing “You’re So Cool” on a napkin and giving it to an ex-girlfriend, and she blew her nose on it.  That’s why she’s an ex.

9. Die Hard

This is one of the movies that has remained in my top 10 since I started keeping the list.  It’s hard to knock off one of your favorite movies since childhood, and Die Hard still continues to be an enjoyable watch every time I happen to catch it.  As far as action movies go, you can’t get much better.  Even some of the more campy, 80s elements of the movie still holds up.  The sequels are okay (really, I mean just 2 and 3), but the original is still the best out of the bunch.

8. Midnight Run

I hadn’t included this in any previous incarnation of my top 10 and I have no fucking idea why. My brother and I used to watch this movie at least twice a day for years, way younger than we had any right to.  We would act out the whole movie, switching off dialogue.   As a buddy movie, Midnight Run is often overlooked and criminally underrated, and is one of the funniest, best written movies in that subgenre.  I would see 13 more Midnight Run movies if it meant De Niro and Grodin would reprise their roles.

7. The Usual Suspects

The Usual Suspects wasn’t the first movie to throw the ol’ “swerve” at you, but for a young, barely getting laid twat like myself, it fucking floored me. I must’ve thought about the ending for weeks after first watching and even knowing the reveal, I still find myself captivated by the movie.  It’s tightly written, wonderfully acted, and Singer’s direction give it a classic film noir feel while maintaining a modern sensibility.

6. The Royal Tenenbaums

I really want to put Tenenbaums much higher but my top five is impenetrable at the moment.  That may change.  I’m a sucker for Wes Anderson’s film novelizations.  That is, movies presented as visual books.  Or at least that’s how I take it.   It’s uniquely his own vision and I fucking love it.  Anderson’s ability to get Oscar worthy performances out of every single actor in Tenenbaums is incredible.  Movies about a family or dynasty usually aren’t my thing, but you can’t help but get pulled in by the dysfunction of the Tenenbaum clan.

5. Taxi Driver

If you’ve ever seen the fantastic documentary “Decade Under the Influence”, you’ll know the 1970s were a golden age in cinematic history.  So many unique voices were creating interesting and captivating films.  Scorsese being one of the more prominent voices to come out of the decade, his look at 1970s New York will crawl under your skin and fester like an infection.  I’ve been obsessed with this movie since I first saw it as a teenager; something about the “mood” Scorsese gets across is noxious.  The world feels hopeless, evil, dirty, and like quicksand, will pull you in deeper the more you try to escape.  Did I really just use a quicksand analogy for one of the best movies of the century?  Fuck me right in the stupid mouth.

4. Fight Club

I think Fight Club now gets looked at a little different than it should.  Fight Club has a lot of important things to say but it seems most of the world remembers it for Brad Pitt’s abs, and using Tyler Durden’s quotes for memes and t-shirts, pretty much the exact opposite of what the whole fucking point is.  Fincher took a book that had a very specific narrative, did his Fincher-y thing and gave us a visually mesmerizing, thought provoking piece of film that still manages to hit audiences hard almost 20 years later.

3. There Will Be Blood

I remember being absolutely transfixed watching this for the first time.  I don’t think there’s a single piece of wasted film in TWBB.  Paul Thomas Anderson’s story of an arrogant, egotistic, ruthless and successful oil tycoon is a symbol of how corporations work today, where only the bottom line matters.  When Plainview first takes that fall in the tunnel, then drags himself to the office to sell the mine, we’re in it to win it.  When he’s done beating Eli’s head in and says, “I’m finished,” he’s allowing us to leave his presence.  Every moment in the journey you as an audience member are taking, is done by the commanding word of Daniel Plainview.

2. Pulp Fiction

My #1 and #2 are interchangeable, so I’ll list them alphabetically.  I probably should have a definitive #1 but shut up.  Not taking anything away from Goodfellas, I feel Pulp Fiction is more of my generation, so I have a closer attachment to it.  It was and still is one of the coolest movies I’ve ever seen, in every sense of the word “cool”.  From its non-linear storyline, to every single character’s arc, Pulp Fiction can still floor me at every viewing.  And much like TWBB, I don’t think a single frame of film is wasted here.  Brilliant.

1. Goodfellas

If you can’t tell, I’m a Scorsese mark.  The guy makes ballsy movies and Goodfellas is arguably his best.  Watching Goodfellas is like having story time when you’re in kindergarten.  Only you might develop a coke problem and your classmates may grow up to kill you.  When Henry Hill says, “As far back as I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster,” you know you’re in for, what he calls, a “glorious time”.  You take that and bookend the film with “I’m an average nobody, I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook,” and you have a complete journey with a character who’s done some horrible things with no redeeming qualities.  That he ends up as a “nobody”, a place even worse than death, is probably the biggest satisfaction you can gain from this.