Personally, The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
I knew it was going to be quite the experience before I went for the first time‡ but it was so much fun I had to keep going back bringing friends each time.
It’s still a fun tradition to do though we haven’t done it since last year, we’re probably going to try and go again in a few weeks.
‡ I had seen it many times before going to see it in theaters for the first time.
I saw The Fellowship of the Ring nine times in theaters. Once i hit time #4 or #5, I realized i had to keep going until I could say i saw it once for each member of the fellowship.
Dune is the only movie I willingly rewatched at the cinema. Looking forward to the second part.
The Mummy (Brandon Fraser)
Shawn of the Dead
I actually walked out of Schindlers List and bough a ticket for the very next screening.
Bleak as hell but I’d never seen a film that locked me in the way that film did.
Why did you walk out? Did you not want to see the ending the first time?
I thought it would build anticipation.
BMX Bandits
I also went to see this in the cinema a few times as a kid and loved it. I happened to rewatch it a few weeks ago as I hadn’t seen it since.
My advice is to keep your treasured memories. It unfortunately doesn’t hold up well. :)
The Fellowship of the Ring. Probably the other two movies as well but this one stands out in my mind.
The first Pirates of the Caribbean as well. Back before they turned it into a franchise. Such a fun adventure movie.
I have a huge soft spot for the second and third pirates films. I think looking at the first and thinking it could make a great trilogy is totally valid and although they’re definitely much more long winded than the first with less lovable characters, they’re good films and if I ever revisit the first, I generally revisit the second and third too.
I watched the Dungeons and Dragons movie when it came out and really enjoyed it, but it definitely felt like I was watching a marvel movie, albeit a well written one, Pirates may be the last YA action adventure franchise that isn’t just the re-skinned marvel formula, which makes it far more watchable than 80% of the genre since.
Also Pirates 3 is basically the creator of the horrible pressure CGI artists have suffered under for the past 15 years, so take that as you may.
While I enjoy the Pirates trilogy, I feel like they could just as easily have kept it a single movie. It was fine, the story was conclusive enough to satisfy and open ended enough to tickle the imagination.
Not everything has to be turned into a franchise or a ‘verse.
I do agree, and generally I don’t want everything to be a franchise or a verse. However I feel that a trilogy although generally profit driven can expand a film in a nice way, such as the original star wars or Indiana Jones trilogies.
Original Star Wars as a kid. The whole summer. 13 times. Have probably watched it more times since on streaming.
Nostalgia is a drug.
Saw Star Wars 26 times in the theater
We all paid for George Lucas’s second swimming pool that summer…
Shit, you got 1 more time than I did!
Back when they didn’t kick you out of the theater between showings; it was the only thing I asked my mom for money for that summer, as I recall.
Do you also feel like Lucas’ recut is a blaspheme?
I just look away during the Jabba scenes and the Han/Greedo shootout.
As a little child, Asterix and the 12 trials (very lose translation)
As an adult, Mad Max Fury Road. Fucking amazing on the big screen.
Inception. I saw it 4 times in theaters. Every time, I noticed new details. It was such a unique and original story, and it was executed incredibly well. I had never seen a movie where the score was so essential to the storytelling. It’s such a dense movie that despite being 2.5 hours, I don’t think I could cut 2 minutes out of it without really hurting the pacing or missing necessary moments. Inception is the reason I can understand and appreciate both filmmaking and the composition and arrangement of instrumental music.
Dream or no dream?
Same here. But even after rewatching it so many times, I never realized that the iconic Inception BWAAAH is actually a super-slowed down version of the dream world cue song (Edith Piaf’s Non, je ne regrette rien). There’s a really neat analysis done by Rutgers’ Christopher Doll, which explains how Zimmer uses the slowed down motif to signal which dreamscape we are in as the viewer while watching the movie. Link here.
That’s exactly what I meant when I said that the score is essential. And it’s super fucking cool that the orchestra includes an electric guitar and an electric cello. As much as I love the score for Interstellar, I don’t know if Inception’s score even can be topped! Star Wars is the only thing that comes close imho.
RHPS doesn’t really count imo as it’s more of a musical or social event than a movie… it’s honestly on a completely different level.
Iron Man. Two or three times, depending if you count when they fucked up the reel and restarted it over partway in.
Multiple cinema tickets for the same film? What am I, made of money?
Spirited Away. Before it won the Oscar it was in limited release in the US. A friend drove me nearly three hours to the closest showing. After the Oscar it came to most theatres. I took other friends to see it on two separate occasions.
Baraka – I’ve seen it at least a dozen times, most of them in movie theaters.
Oh man, lucky you!
I want a double feature with Samsara 😱
Too bad there doesn’t seem to be a third (or fourth if we count Chronos) one coming…
Not the same director, but a similar spirit - you don’t count Koyaanisqatsi?
I was only counting the movies directed by Fricke, have yet to watch the qatsi movies
I spent a long time living in places that had saved their one last ‘classic’ movie theater by turning it into a rerun palace for ‘art films’, cult classics and other specialty cinema.
Also, I bought the DVD of Baraka that came out in the late 90s or so, and I was so disappointed in how visually awful the digital transfer was at that time, the disc was honestly not even worth watching. Not just because of small screens, the problem was that whoever did the digital transfer had completely fucked up the frame rate conversion in a way that caused every one of the many time-lapse sequences to move with a really annoying jitter. There was no possible playback setting or processing to fix it either, the process had removed information making it impossible to smooth or recover, at least back then.
So that junk DVD motivated me to just keep grabbing anyone I could, or no one if no one was around, and going out of my way to see the movie every time it came to a big screen within an hour of me. Now it’s been years since my last watch… I’m not sure how much more I could take of it now that it’s so clear the human race already sold out its long term survival for short term gain.
The Room - not a good movie but I did enjoy it.
