The Next Ten Movies I've Enjoyed Again & Again

After the positive feedback from my recent movie blog The Top Ten Movies I've Enjoyed Again & Again I thought I'd strike again while the iron's hot.

If you recall in that post, I mentioned my list was more like 20 movies, but thought it was too many for one blog-post.

I want to stress these aren't necessarily what I consider the best films ever.  I saw a horror movie in 2020, Saint Maud that I consider a masterpiece--but I couldn't sit thru it again. 

These movies are 'wonderful comfort movies', that I enjoy revisiting whenever I can.

So in ascending order...

10.  Every time I watch Butterflies Are Free (1972) I'm struck by Edward Albert's portrayal of a young blind man.  It's flawless. He's a 20 year old aspiring musician, living on his own for the first time (in a very slummy apartment in hippie-San Francisco) and Goldie Hawn lives in the adjoining unit, an aspiring actress who spends most of the movie in her underwear eating his food.  She's wonderful.

I love when Goldie takes him shopping for some far out threads, but there's a scene where she pretends to move on and Edward's world is suddenly very dark again.  It makes me tear up every darn time.  Goldie won an Oscar for her performance but Edward Albert deserved the prize.  I'm glad I own this on dvd.

9. Breaking Away (1979) is about 4 young men from blue collar lives who just graduated high school with no idea what's next--except for David who loves his Italian bicycle, singing opera and dreams of becoming a professional bike racer--in Italy.  His father (Paul Doolie, God bless him) is a used car salesman in Bloomington Indiana struggling to understand what happened to his boy.  

This coming of age drama was released one month after my own high school graduation, and like these four boys I knew college wasn't in my cards either--at least not yet.  But it's poignant and original, and after all these years this movie still resonates with me.  

8.  This movie bears the distinction of being the first thing I recorded on a vcr when I got one in 1983.  (I think it aired on Sunday Night at the Movies but I can't be sure.)  It's The Final Countdown (1980).  I replayed the recording so much I wore out the tape.

The USS Nimitz is a nuclear aircraft carrier in 1980 (102 aircraft, 6000 men) that is mysteriously thrown back in time to 1941--right before the Japanese are set to attack Pearl Harbor.  The captain (Kirk Douglas) must now decide if he should use his vessel (which contains more firepower than the US & Japanese fleets combined) to stop one of the greatest attacks in American history. 

I'm not into war movies, but I do love time travel stories--and I love this one.  Also, this movie is unapologetically patriotic.  It's like a Navy recruitment film, but it works.  Watch this just once and you'll want to enlist, I guarantee it.

7.  I miss Jill Clayburgh.  I can't believe she's been gone since 2010.  The first time I saw Starting Over (1979) was the night of my 18th birthday.  I'd been on my own for a few months and this cheered me up so much.  After Burt Reynold's wife Candice Bergen announces she's leaving him to pursue a "disco songwriting" career, his brother (Charles Durning) convinces him to leave a slushy New York City and start over in slushier Boston.

Charles wants to fix Burt up with their friend Jill Clayburgh--who is dubious of Burt the first time she meets him, let alone all the baggage he comes with.  And then his ex-wife decides she wants him back... did you know this movie was written by James Brooks of The Mary Tyler Moore Show?  

I feel the need to watch this every couple years, and every time Candice Bergen breaks into her hit song "Better Than Ever" to a stone-faced Burt Reynolds I burst out laughing.  It's so good!

6.  I can't remember the first time I saw Moonstruck (1987), but boy did I fall in love with Cher here.  Cher plays Loretta, an Italian bookkeeper on the brink of middle age who is swept off her feet by her fiancé's younger brother Nicholas Cage.  The film is laugh out loud funny, but when Cher agrees to attend the opera with Cage, gets a glorious makeover and meets him at the Met... his look is priceless and so is hers.  It almost stops my heart every time.

5.  I'm going to say something that will bring the house down.  I am not a fan of Singin' in the Rain.  I'm not.  But I am a huge fan of Gene Kelly, and in 1944 MGM loaned him out to Columbia Pictures to star in Cover Girl (1944) with Rita Hayworth & Phil Silvers.

MGM later regretted this--the movie was a huge success.  I'm talking Oscars.   

Three pals dream of hitting it big, so what happens when one of them becomes a Broadway star?  "Make Way for Tomorrow" steals the show, but I LOVED the Broadway finale with giant sized 1940s magazines--Vanity, McCall's, Coronet, Woman's Weekly just to name a few--all with a living cover girl.  

My God this movie is awesome.  I'm glad I own it on dvd.

4.  Betty Hutton is picture perfect as Annie Oakley (sorry Judy Garland, originally cast) in Annie Get Your Gun (1950) as the real-life Wild West Show gunslinger.  I just loved how her jaw dropped every time she saw handsome Howard Keel!  And of course, "You Can't Get a Man with a Gun" & "Anything You can do I can do Better" are show-stoppers.  Did you know this movie was unavailable until 2000 because of music right disputes with Irving Berlin?  It was worth the wait.  Note: Bobi, thank you for reminding me of this one--it's my third favorite musical. 😊

3.  Jimmy Stewart is a photojournalist with a broken leg, in that marvelous run-down Greenwich Village apartment.  Thelma Ritter is his home nurse.  And Grace Kelly the socialite is in love with him!  Yes it's Rear Window (1954) and I've probably seen this 15 times, easy.  

Here's a fun fact--my first time seeing it was at our local theater in 1983, after Universal Studios bought & released 5 of Hitchcock's movies he had squirreled away for 30 years.

It was released on RCA Videodisc a year later.  I snapped it up and probably watched it 10 times with my sister.

Note:  Steve from Toronto, thanks for reminding me about this one! 😊

2.  How many times have I seen the best Star Trek movie of them all?  Countless.  I first saw Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn (1982) on a date with a very Trekkie woman named Amy and the moment Spock died, she literally screamed "Noooo!!" in the theater.  When I frantically whispered "Amy--stop!" she cried "Have you no emotions!!"  I swear to God, I'm not making that up.  

Fyi, when Leonard Nimoy died in 2015 I cried like a baby.

 1.  Wizard of Oz (1939)  Judy Garland, I am yours forever.  The End.

Finally, if I didn't give Honorable Mentions to The Graduate, When Harry Met Sally & every Charlton Heston movie between 1968 & 1973 (Planet of the Apes, The Omega Man & Soylent Green) I'd have to make a third list and we don't want that, do we? 😏

Meanwhile, at the Tiffany: Some of the people in here are pretty out there

Recently, a woman who lives down the hall from me knocked on my door.  I’ve seen her a few times on our floor, rode the elevator with her a couple times, but we’ve never spoken to one another.

So I said hi, can I help you?  She asked me if I ever smelled marijuana in my apartment.  I said no, never.  She said “I smell it in mine sometimes, could it be coming from upstairs?” 

I said that was certainly possible.  Whenever the woman who lives above me cooks something with garlic, I can smell it down here—it must come down through the heating vent.

She said “I haven’t smoked pot since I was 19 and that was over 50 years ago, but it’s not a smell you forget. Have you ever smoked it?”

I was pretty surprised she asked, but said no, I never did.

She said “If I got some pot would you like to smoke it with me?”   

What the--!!  I said no thank you, and she should be careful.  Steiner has a strict policy regarding marijuana.  Not even for medical purposes unless you ingest it, like those cannabis gummies.  She said she hoped she didn't upset me.  I said of course not, and asked if she was an undercover cop or something.  She laughed and said no.

Later that night I told my (very Christian) friend Diana what happened.  Diana said "She probably thinks you're a real square." 

There is another woman on my floor (a little younger, name unknown) who keeps to herself, talks to no one—but she recently hung a sign in our laundry room that read:

Below her loud words she taped 3 tiny pieces of fuzz on the bottom of the paper.  Even without my glasses I could see it was just dryer lint—is she crazy?  Steiner does not like crazy.  They do not like reports of bedbugs either.  In the 7 years I’ve lived here, 4-5 tenants on various floors have reported bedbugs—and all 4-5 tenants were gone in a couple months time.

I don’t know what happened to them.  I don’t know if it was their choice to leave or Steiners.

Lastly, I recently had a couple run-ins with my 70 year old neighbor Dee.  The first was a couple weeks ago, when I was exiting the building as she was coming in, and she asked if the recent ‘door slams’ from her apartment bothered me.

I said they made me jump a couple times, but it was no big deal.  She said “That’s Rosa, honey!  She’s my housekeeper.  She’s here one day a week, I’m not going to say anything.  Good housekeepers are hard to find.”

So are good neighbors Dee, and you are taking yours for granted but whatever.

The second time was a couple nights ago when her tv was louder than usual.  When I knocked on her door, she shouted “YEAH?” without opening it.  I said it was me and asked if she could turn it down a little.  She shouted “I CAN’T HEAR A WORD YOU’RE SAYIN’ HONEY!”

I shouted back “NEVERMIND I’LL CALL STEINER AND LET THEM HANDLE IT.”   Jeez Louise!

She opened her door then, just wide enough to peek out and asked if her tv was too loud.  I said yes.  She said she had hearing aids but often forgot to put them in.  She added “I don't know how far my tv is from my couch, probably 20 feet."  I said “I have a pretty good idea.  The same as mine, 7-8 feet.”  

She said “No honey, Steiner told me when I moved in all the apartments are different.”

Oh Dee… they meant there are 3 layouts: studios, 1 bedroom units, 2 bedrooms.  We both have 1 bedrooms, yours is a mirror of my own.  I was friends with the tenant who lived there before you, plus I caught a glimpse of your stuff the day you moved in.

I wish I could show Dee this layout I came up with showing my apartment and hers, but she might not appreciate my view on things.  Especially when my view includes her things.  The End!