Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Two See, or Not Two See

I ventured to the theaters to see films 35 times in the year 2008. It intrigued me today to think of the movies which became repeated views. The question I asked myself was: do I tend to see movies a second time when I view them at home, or is the theater the one and only time I see most movies. The conclusion is not as shocking as I had led myself to believe.
Just out of memory, I could name 9 movies that I never saw again after the initial theatrical view. But upon returning to my stack of saved ticket stubs, I found an intriguingly large number of one-time views.

Here are the movie I saw in 2008:
Juno (1/19)
Cloverfield (1/26)
Michael Clayton (2/02)
Jumper (2/16)
Vantage Point (2/27)
Horton Hears A Who (3/27)
The Bank Job (3/28)
21 (4/04)
Iron Man (5/03)
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (5/17)
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (5/22)
Get Smart (6/22)
The Incredible Hulk (6/24)
Wanted (6/28)
Hankcock (7/01)
Hellboy II: The Golden Army (7/15)
WALL•E (7/16)
The Dark Knight (7/18)
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (8/02)
Swing Vote (8/04)
Pineapple Express (8/09)
Tropic Thunder (8/14)
Burn After Reading (9/12)
Eagle Eye (9/26)
Quantum of Solace (11/14)
Australia (11/29)
The Day The Earth Stood Still (12/12)
Yes Man (12/22)
The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button (12/26)
Valkyrie (12/28)
The Spirit (12/29)

The red movies are those I saw only once. The blue, of course, are those I saw twice if not more times (in fact, the Dark Knight I watched 3 more times in the theater, and 3 times since then on DVD and Blu-ray. WALL•E I saw 4 more times on DVD.) Is this saying that those red movies are all terrible? Is is saying the blue ones were great? Not at all. Many of the red ones were wonderful, one of the blue ones was awful.
It is very surprising to me that there are only nine movies which have had repeated views since their theatrical release. Of note are those which I absolutely loved and yet remain red: Iron Man and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It's been a long time since I've seen those movies, and they were very well made, so why have I not seen them again? Why, instead, do I chose to re-watch movies such as The Day The Earth Stood Still and Horton Hears a Who, when there are more decent films to watch? These questions I cannot answer. I only know that I long for new movies daily, but enjoy revisiting those which were wonderful.

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