comfort movies

Thirded, Zodiac is definitely in my comfort canon as well

Jumping Jack Flash
Splash
Silver Streak
Sweet Smell of Success
Foreign Affair
Wonder Boys
Indy & The Last Crusade
A New Leaf
Shop Around the Corner
Stakeout
The Paper
High Anxiety
Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country

Oh, duh, and Soapdish

Beautiful Girls

Basically any movie I saw at the cinema or rented on VHS from 1984-92 is a comfort film, except maybe Santa Claus: The Movie (lame) and Regarding Henry (I thought it was an action movie)

Beautiful Girls

Definitely this one! Also:

Funky Forest: First Contact
I’m a Cyborg, but That’s OK
The Life Aquatic
LOTR

I've watched High Fidelity and Superbad just about all the way through every time I see them on TV, so perhaps they now qualify for me.

May have already said this on the zodiac thread, but that movie is almost the platonic ideal of a comfort movie for me. Slow paced procedural, strong ensemble cast, a film which is long and is itself about the passing of time...once you're past the berryessa scene the movie just settles into an almost dream like rythym, in which details of the case are discovered, then forgotten, and then return again.

Trayce ikwym about Love Serenade but it's weirdly comforting somehow

The Browning Version remake is another go to

every powell & pressburger film

re Zodiac; a whole bunch of us also picked that upthread!

Gremlins 2
Threads

The classic Leone westerns

she wore a yellow ribbon
defending your life
wonder boys
f for fake
tank girl
vivre sa vie (all those long takes)
california split
the wrath of khan
dr strangelove or how i learned to stop worrying and love the bomb

what a beautiful curve that list almost had. a lesson against parenthesis.

oh i see everyone including me already said wonder boys.

I've had so many over the years--I tend to comfort-watch them right off the list every couple of years. Right now, Zodiac, No Country for Old Men, Nixon, Fargo.

― clemenza, Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Basically the same three years later; would now add All the President's Men and Advise and Consent.

the third man
the 39 steps (or most pre-hollywood hitchcock for that matter)

wow, did not know about this: Crabbin was a single character in the novella. The screenplay's original draft replaced him with two characters, played by Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne.

Raiders Of the Lost Ark
The Quiet Man
The Empire Strikes Back
Do The Right Thing

90s jackie chan films

god yeah. i must have seen the HK import VHS of Drunken Master II about twenty times.

loads of HK stuff for me, tbh:

The Mission
Full Contact
God of Cookery
The Killer
Hard Boiled

also:

Raiders of the Lost Ark
The Right Stuff
Die Hard
Rushmore
Black Narcissus
Repo Man
Alien
Aliens
Blade Runner

may as well add Mad Max: Fury Road to this list at this point

All the President's Men

― clemenza, Tuesday, 1 March 2016 00:45 (20 hours ago)

Just logged in to post the very same!

For me at least I think the comforting effect is mainly down to a combination of the truth-triumphs-over-power narrative with the 'procedural' aspects of watching people adsorbed in a skilled task.

And now I want to go and watch it, of course.

swingers
the wedding singer
the Daniel Craig Bond movies
barcelona

Tootsie
The Lady Eve
JFK
Touch of Evil
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

Add Double Indemnity to my list--I watch that a couple of times a year.

Two 80s movies that are soothing to me (I think its mostly due to the awful/amazing very-80s look of the films) - Working Girl and Wallstreet.

Key largo

^^^ Key Largo, Double Indemnity for sure. Pretty much anything they used to show in the afternoon on the TV when I was sleeping on my mother's sofa, any noir stuff or screwball. Any of the Falcon films, any of the Thin Man films. These aren't the films I have seen most in my life, just the ones I can watch when I cannot function to any extent beyond the remote control and the bottle.

The Lost Weekend. Anything I know beat-for-beat really. Also any of the Scottish Ken Loach ones, cos they were no doubt cue'd up at my mothers. Gregory's Girl and Local Hero too. These days in my house I just watch absolute trash that I've never seen before for comfort, or less comfort than something in front of my eyes

Just finished re-watching Sorcerer, which I think I've seen a dozen times since buying the Blu-Ray last year.

Sorcerer I could see working this way, just for the pacing and the framing. I suppose I don't have any Comfort Films (as opposed to comfort music), or Comfort Books, I just turn to whatever can occupy my mind without a lot of thought

I remember watching Donnie Darko every day for a week, but that was not comfort, that was mental illness. I mean, I was fighting demons in the street with sticks that whole period. But yeah, as I understand this concept I'd go for fast-talking black and white stuff, that'd be closest to a warm place for me.

The late 80s setting and overall vibe of Donnie Darko made it a big one for me in the couple of years after its release. No one else was really tapping into that at the time, and the lack of smirkiness re: the setting (see, The Wedding Singer, Wet Hot American Summer for counterexamples) made it ideal for wallowing in comfortable childhood nostalgia.

Chef

Carol.

Watched Rounders again last night for something close to the tenth time. This can be added to my list. Found an old David Edelstein review--good paragraph on Malkovich.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/movies/1998/09/place_your_bets.html

fast times / dazed + confused

Shaolin vs. Lama these days.

I guess stuff that I've come to think of as "Thanksgiving movies" counts. The big epic movie series (LOTR, Harry Potter, Star Wars) that I don't have a huge amount of investment in but that are pleasant to have playing in the background while other shit is going on.

Enter the Dragon

it showed up on tv the other day, makes me feel like a little kid whenever I see it

vivid memories of it being on Sat night tv, staying up late while my parents & their friends played cards in the kitchen

oh totally

I second 90s Jackie Chan films. That stuff is pure joy.

Nothing makes me happy faster than Buster Keaton.

not much Merchant Ivory (or that ilk) in this thread. the trailer for a 25th anniversary revival of Howards End reminded me of its
comfort factor.

Bowfinger

Mistress America

My Bodyguard

My Bodyguard was the secret gay love story of my late teens.

Yeah Mistress America is a great one. Baumbach in general too I guess.

xpost

I vastly prefer it to most non-secret gay love stories.