The Movies You Watch Over and Over

Last week I was in my favorite city, Seattle. It's always hard to come home from there, so I spent the day after I returned being nostalgic and watching Seattle-related videos (and I do mean actual videocassette tapes because my stuff from the grunge era is old), most of them were music videos (an Alice in Chains vid and then anyone remember the documentary Hype? Love that one.), but I also broke out Singles and made my fiance watch it. Hey, it's a romantic comedy, but it's still a comedy.

I think he enjoyed it and I was in eighth grade all over again, mouthing along to all my favorite lines ("I was just nowhere near your neighborhood." and "...a big record just broke in Belgium"), squealing, "Oh I love this scene!" at just about every scene, but especially the one where Cliff blows out Janet's car windows with her new speakers and Chris Cornell is an extra bopping his head along, then looking like he's been shot when the glass starts breaking. At the point, my fiance went "Oh that can't really happen," and I replied, "Shush! Suspension of disbelief." Because cheesy as this movie may be, it's one of my all-time favorites. I'll even go so far as to say that the only Cameron Crowe flick that came out after it that lived up to Singles for me was Almost Famous.

I was just addicted to Singles in 8th grade/freshman year of high school. Romance plus live performances by Alice in Chains and Soundgarden? It was a teenage grunge girl's perfect flick. I watched it over and over until I finally got my own loser wanna be rock star boyfriend like Cliff. Well and until The Crow came out and I started watching that one over and over because I wanted a beautiful Brandon Lee boyfriend too. All my guy friends loved that movie for the action and all my girl friends because we wanted a boyfriend as devoted to us as Eric Draven was to his girl, willing to come back from the dead and seek vengence. Isn't that romantic? And after The Crow came my Sid and Nancy obsession. Clearly my take on love was at it's most innocent during the Singles phase.

Before Singles, I was addicted to Beetlejuice in fifth and sixth grade. What can I say, I had goth tendencies even as a tween. I used to try to gel my bangs into points like Winona Ryder's. Next came Wayne's World and there was also a brief phase where, along with Singles, my best friend at the time and I also watched The Shining repeatedly. Um, I guess it balanced out Singles? Or else we needed therapy. Heathers and The Breakfast Club were also on constant repeat for me throughout junior high and high school. Especially as anyone from Chicago may remember, the played The Breakfast Club on channel 9 like every Saturday.

In my first year of college, it was all about The Lost Boys. I don't think I've had a real movie obsession since then. Unless you count the first X Files movie which I saw in the theaters three times, but I think that's just my X Files geekery. Oh wait, and there was a Velvet Goldmine phase. Johnathan Rhys Meyers as a pseudo-David Bowie and Ewan McGregor as an Iggy Pop lookalike in shiny leather pants, it's just too beautiful not to watch over and over.   

So yeah, those are my comfort food movies. The ones I still turn to when I'm home sick or feeling down in the dumps or nostalgic or just in need of good eye candy. What about you? Which movies did you watch so much you memorized them?

Tweet