Six movies that I can watch over and over again and never get sick of, as well as discover something new every time. If you want me to stick around your house someday, I guarantee one of this pictures will have my butt planted in your seat for the next two hours without interruption. (well not literally
your seat, but, well, you get it, sport)
The Apostle (1997)
I first caught this flick in the theaters when it came out, and at the time I remember liking it okay. But something about it ever since keeps drawing me back towards it, uncovering a new, intricate layer of Robert
Duvall's perfectly flawed southern preacher who seeks to redeem his sinful past through a calling from God to build a church in a tiny rural Mississippi town, and as a result uniting the community in fellowship as well as spirituality. Wonderfully quiet, authentic roles by the likes of Farrah
Fawcett, Miranda Richardson, June Carter Cash and Billy Bob Thornton -- but it's
Duvall as the spirited Sonny Dewey that keeps me absolutely
riveted. I pop this in the player about once a year -- twice, if it's been an especially
uplifting year.
Metropolitan (1990)
Even though the acting is often
stagy and the dialogue (although hilarious) is unrealistically contrived, Whit Stillman's
Metropolitan, about a working-class New York teenager who infiltrates the world of upper-class debutante parties lures me in every single time with its constant barrage of witty, cerebral banter. I love Chris
Eigeman as the snooty, sardonic preppy Nick and Taylor Nichols as the pedantic, jealous Charlie. And of course Carolyn Farina as the virtuous Audrey
Rouget, a
heroine straight out of one of her beloved Jane Austen novels (in fact much of the movie parallels Audrey's favorite Austen tome,
Mansfield Park). Guaranteed to keep me hanging around if you dangle this one in front of me.
Crumb (1994)
Something about this movie makes me want to draw. I know, Captain Obvious, much? But seeing as how little inspire me these days, it speaks volumes for a movie that will make me want to pick up my pen from the first moment of the picture, when famed underground cartoonist Robert Crumb explains how he can't function without a pen in his hand, moving it over a blank sheet of paper. Funny at times, the real tragedy of the Crumb story is Robert's brother Charles, an extremely gifted artist in his youth, whose descent into depression and insanity is truly harrowing. But it's the art, and the process of creating art, that captivates me each and every time. I never once thought to take random pictures of telephone poles and city blocks for artistic reference. It's amazing how much of all of that you tune out in everyday life, to where when you need to draw it, you can't even recall it to memory.
Ghost World (2001)
Directed and co-written by
Crumb director (and close Crumb friend) Terry
Zwigoff and based on Daniel
Clowes graphic novel of the same name, this was another film I caught in the theaters and enjoyed well enough as it unfolded, but grew to appreciate more and more with each repeated viewing. I was able to accept and enjoy the changes made to the original story (although Steve
Buscemi's character, as wonderfully as he played it, is still such an blatant
Zwigoff Mary Sue it's almost embarrassing) as they kept to the spirit and feel of the story, about two teenage girls (
Thora Birch and Scarlett
Johansson) during the summer after high school graduation, best friends since childhood, rebelling against the stifling tedium of their boring small town, and gradually transitioning into the adults that they will potentially become, all the while inhabiting that grey, disorienting "ghost world" state between adolescence and maturity. Fast becoming one of my regular annual rotation flicks, and probably the next one I watch really soon (I've been carrying around the comic a lot more these days, which is a good indication).
Persuasion (1995)
I remember seeing this at the
Naro when it first came out, and how difficult it was to understand, with the quiet, breathy dialogue and the audience tittering over every sentence ("What did they just say?"). But through the magic of video (and volume control) this gorgeously
nuanced film, made originally for BBC television before being distributed to worldwide theaters, is a gem for repeat viewings, and gives you something new to discover with each
whispery word and phrase. Based on Jane Austen's final novel, twenty-seven year old spinster Anne Elliot (Amanda Root) is awkwardly reunited with her former suitor, the dashing Captain Frederick
Wentworth (
Ciarán Hinds), whom she was persuaded to break up with back when she was nineteen years old. Still as much in love with him as ever, the volumes spoken between the two characters, the things unsaid, and the things that they wish they could say, just with their eyes alone could fill pages of dialogue that would have this girl repair to her fainting couch. I can never, ever get tired of this movie. And happily, I just got Joe into this one this year as well.
The Age Of Innocence (1993)
Based on the novel by Edith Wharton, Martin Scorsese recreates the world of 19
th century New York City high society with a study in detail that is nothing short of breathtaking. The decor almost threatens to upstage the story itself, about a man named
Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) torn between two worlds, as represented by the two women that he loves. One is pretty, yet conventional, like his existence in New York. One is exotic and unconventional, like the European world in which she was raised, the world in which
Newland would love to explore. Yet for all its conventional blandness,
Newland's life as a New York lawyer is something he still holds in high regard. He is divided by both his love for tradition and his desire to break from it, and at some point he must make a choice between these two worlds, for fear that they may dangerously collide. A movie that's very special to me. In fact screw
Ghost World, I think I might go settle back with this one right now. (fye:
Metropolitan's Carolyn Farina also plays Newland's sister in this picture)
