What are the films or shows you always go back to? The ones you know will cheer you up when you having a shitty day? The ones you know will entertain you when you can't be arsed to look for anything else? The ones you dig out that you can watch from under a duvet on the couch which you've seen so many times you can just mouth the dialogue in big chunks. The ones that just make you feel good?
I've a few I'll be going back to over the next weeks and months. More than a few.
The Sure Thing
You really can't go wrong with an 80's John Cusack film. Well no, you can, One Crazy Summer but let's ignore that one. The Sure Thing is the perfect film to cheer you up. An aul romantic comedy with a very recognisable and relatable main character. Gib, a loveable fuck up. But a fuck up in the Hollywood sense, one that can still get into an Ivy league school. This is a real opposites attract film, the type where you know how its going to end but you still love it. And that's why it's a perfect comfort watch. You know the destination so can lie back and enjoy the journey. Literally. It is a road trip movie after all. Throw in a few proper belly laughs and you have a super way to pass a couple of self isolation hours.
Midnight Run
My all time favourite comedy. A buddy movie par excellence. A bounty hunter and his quarry travelling across American while being chased by the mafia and the law. The film that made the vast majority of us realise there was more to Robert De Niro than menacing sociopaths. It's got characters you genuinely care about and it hits you in the heart and the funny bone. Profane perfection and full of the best quotes you'll ever hear."I got two words for you! Shut the fuck up." A salve for the soul.
The Seventh Voyage Of Sinbad
I've a great memory of the first time I saw this one and it's probably why I go back to it again and again. We are down in the cousins gaff, all young, deffo below 10, this was on tv and we were all glued to it. The giant Cyclops with his horny head and cloven feet was rampaging around his Island crushing and munching on Sinbads men. It was amazing, the action, the effects ( stopmotion and still better than any CGI ), everything. I was gobsmacked, as was my brother, and my two cousins Mairead and Jenny were roaring at the telly in terror, which of course made it even more enjoyable. A good comfort watch should bring back good memories. The first time you enjoyed it, of childhood, of easier times etc.
Tremors
Giant man eating worms terrorise a remote Arizona village. Not exactly the kind of film that sounds like it would cheer you up but it does. In spades. 100 minutes of charming, unabashedly entertaining monster fun. Great, well drawn and funny characters being attacked by monsters that look somewhat real, sort of, OK a bit shitty but that's all part of the charm of the film. Its a film that's impossible to get bored off and as such fits on here perfectly. It covers a load of bases, loads of action, loads of scares and loads of laughs. Plus we get the serious business of Val's (Kevin Bacon) existential crisis...... OK, haha I'm taking the piss with that last bit but its a film that has something for everyone.
Hondo
I had to have a western in the list. To me old westerns are the perfect comfort watch. I once heard a person describe watching Downton Abbey as being wrapped in a warm cosy blanket and that's how I feel about westerns. I remember watching Hondo with my Nana a long time ago. A John Wayne western I'd recommend to anyone. It's more fun than his most famous westerns but still has more heft than his lesser westerns. Plus it has one of the best bits of comedy the Duke took part in. I remember me & Nana in tatters laughing as Hondo teaches a young boy to swim by picking him up and horsing him into a pond. No messing around there. Even typing this makes me smile. Subtlety and safety didn't exist in Wayne movies.
What films do it for you?
No comments:
Post a Comment