Always Watchable — Movies That Never Fail
Eight movies I can watch over and over again. And why
You might be expecting a rundown of the usual suspects. Those classic, endlessly rewatchable movies that crop up on every list: Back to the Future, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Jaws, to name a couple.
But I’m not going to write about those.
Instead, I want to open the doors to my own, slightly wonky film vault. My personal favourites I return to time and time again. Not because they’re on anyone’s “100 Greatest” list (although many are), but because they work for me.
No cinematic theory. Just stories that, for whatever reason: nostalgia, laughter, comfort, or pure emotion, lift me out of the fog. They entertain. They reassure. They make me feel good.
Sightseers (2012, UK)
When I first read the blurb to Sightseers, I wasn’t convinced. It seemed like Bonnie and Clyde go caravanning.
I was wrong. I loved it. It was everything a film should be: short (a glorious 88 minutes), sharp, charming, twisted, and very, very dark.
The story follows Chris and Tina, two drifting thirtysomethings who set off on a caravan holiday through the drizzle of northern England. Confronted by annoying hen parties, litter-bug tourists, and upper-class snobs, they unexpectedly discover a thirst for murder.
Sightseers follows on from director Ben Wheatley’s disturbing Kill List (2011). But this is better. Where Kill List is oppressive and slides into full-blown horror, Sightseers is a comedy. A twisted romance. And a story of hope and freedom.
What makes it brilliant is how strangely relatable the movie is. Chris and Tina aren’t monsters. They’re ordinary folk — almost painfully so. Chris has recently been made redundant, while Tina lives under the thumb of her bitter alcoholic mother. They could be anyone. They could be you.
And by the end, you find yourself quietly cheering them on. As if, somehow, what they’re doing makes sense. That it matters.
Sightseers is bleak, brilliant, and funny. A film that peels back the skin of British society and pokes at the quiet fury underneath. Horribly watchable.
Palm Springs (2020, US)
Imagine Groundhog Day colliding into Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in the desert. What you would get is Palm Springs.
A time loop film, but not just another clone of Harold Ramis’ 1993 classic. Max Barbakow, on his directorial debut, manages to sidestep the obvious. He doesn’t just retell it, he rewires it.
The setup is familiar: a single day (in this case a wedding in sun-scorched Palm Springs) plays itself on a loop. But instead of just one person in the loop, as in Groundhog Day, there are three.
Nyles (Andy Samberg), slacker and philosopher, has been stuck for so long he’s made peace with it. Drinks beer, wears Hawaiian shirts, and is happy to float through eternity.
Then there’s Roy (J.K. Simmons), pulled into the loop by Nyles by accident, exacts his revenge with crossbows. And then there’s Sarah (Cristin Milioti), newly trapped, newly panicked, and determined not to be stuck forever.
The dynamic is brilliant.
Nyles is numb. Sarah’s furious. Roy’s got a vendetta. Somewhere amidst the chaos, a love story forms. Not out of romance, but out of shared despair, curiosity, and the desire to move forward. Even if forward isn’t guaranteed.
The film is slick, sharp, and weirdly profound. It doesn’t try to outdo Groundhog Day — it quietly slips around it, and tells its own story.
I could watch it again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next.
Superbad (2007, US)
When I first read the blurb to Superbad (a bit like Sightseers), I thought: this is going to be terrible. Three whey-faced nerds trying to get popular by getting drunk and laid.
Hard pass, surely.
Even Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian admitted he went in with low expectations. And yet, ended up laughing uncontrollably. Just like I did.
Superbad is a bit like watching Beavis and Butthead: you know it’s peurile nonsense, but you can’t stop laughing. The humour is crude and juvenile. If the characters were a decade older, they’d fit right into The Hangover without missing a beat.
I still laugh when I rewatch it, and I’m not even American. I didn’t go to high school parties or drive to prom. I went to a cold, austere boarding school on the English-Welsh border, where the weekly highlight was an iced bun on Sunday night.
Maybe that’s why I enjoy this kind of movie. A glimpse of a life I never had. Or maybe, like Beavis and Butthead, it’s just plain funny.
Castaway (2000, US)
Robert Zemeckis’ Cast Away is one of those films I always come back to. Maybe because it taps into something deep from my school days, as I alluded to above.
As a kid, I dreamed of escape. Anywhere would do: London, the jungle, a desert island. It didn’t matter, as long as it wasn’t school. The idea of total isolation always held a strange appeal.
If you’ve ever been to boarding school, you’ll understand. You’re never alone. Not for a second. Unless you’re in the toilet. And even that’s not guaranteed. So the fantasy of peace, solitude, and silence was powerful.
Even now, at 51, I still long for escape. The memory’s long reach is always there, and I can picture myself on that island with Wilson. And no one else.
Tell No One (2006, FR)
Based on Harlan Coben’s novel of the same name, Tell No One is a French thriller directed by Guillaume Canet. The film tells the story of paediatrician Alex Beck, portrayed with ghostly finesse by François Cluzet.
One afternoon, he receives an email out of nowhere suggesting his wife, murdered eight years earlier, might still be alive. From there, Beck’s life is turned upside down as he’s plunged into a fast-paced, emotional mystery full of twists and secrets.
Watching it reminds me of The Fugitive and Gone Girl. It blends psychological thriller with classic whodunit, while throwing in a generous dose of action. Paris looms large, shadowy and indifferent, with Cluzet playing Beck’s vulnerability like a violin, trembling and urgent.
You watch a man unravel. One moment he’s a quiet, capable doctor; the next, a hunted ghost clinging to a truth no one wants uncovered.
It’s a great movie and hugely watchable. All the ingredients of French drama with the humming energy of an American thriller.
Sexy Beast (2000, UK)
On paper, this looks like it could be yet another Brit gangster movie gone wrong (and there are plenty). But it isn’t. This one breathes. It swelters. A gem baking quietly under the Spanish sun.
Gal Dove (Ray Winstone) is a man marinated in tan and past regrets, soaking up his twilight years poolside on the Costa del Sol. Sun, beers, and barbecues. He’s done with London. Done with jobs. Done with the past.
And then the past knocks on his door in the form of Don Logan, one of the scariest thugs in recent British cinema history, played brilliantly by Ben Kingsley.
Logan is like a lit fuse. His presence alone strips the colour from the landscape, and it’s terrifying. Logan wants Gal back in London for one last job. One last heist. Gal says no again and again. But Logan doesn’t hear, no. He only hears, yes. A broken record of “Yes! Yes! Yes!” until Gal cracks.
Back in London, Gal meets the boss, Teddy Bass, played with silky menace by Ian McShane, whose stillness is almost as terrifying as Logan’s yells. After the job is done, Teddy wants to know what happened to Logan. He didn’t come back from Spain and wants to know what really happened at the hacienda.
Sexy Beast is an odd movie. At first, it runs like a typical last-job heist movie. They’ll do the job, get caught and go to prison, where Gal will regret he ever caved in to Logan.
But the movie isn’t about the job; the heist is fairly irrelevant. The real drama is played out on the villa’s veranda, between cold drinks and creeping dread.
Very scary. Very watchable.
The Terminator (1984, US)
I first saw The Terminator on a pirated VHS video, smuggled into our boarding school like contraband. One night we sat huddled around a flickering screen in a cold dormitory, watching the future explode into the present.
I wasn’t at school anymore. I wasn’t trudging through the grey monotony of life on the Welsh/English border. I was hiding from cyborgs in concrete tunnels, fighting Skynet from under the floorboards.
That film carved itself into my brain. Raw, grainy, relentless. It had this brutal, low-budget charm. A cyberpunk snarl with a clanking, industrial soundtrack that made all the New Wave music of the day sound like nursery rhymes. It didn’t care about gloss. It just came at you.
It’s why I never warmed to the sequel. The Terminator isn’t the Terminator anymore — he’s the good guy. Yes, there was a new, more advanced machine, and the set-pieces were extraordinary, but something always felt off. Too polished. The grit was gone. The danger managed.
And who wants that?
Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987, US)
I couldn’t write a piece like this and not mention my all-time favourite. Yes, Back to the Future gets all the plaudits as the perfect movie. But for me, John Hughes’ Planes, Trains and Automobiles is up there.
It hits every note: funny, chaotic, touching, awkward, and painfully human. And most of all, we get it. We’ve been there. The rental car that doesn’t exist. The hotel room that’s been ransacked. The seat next to the guy who talks too much, eats too loudly, and removes his shoes mid-flight.
“My dogs are barkin’ today!”
It’s relatable in the most glorious way. We’ve all travelled with a Neal Page. We may even have been a Del Griffith. Some of us have limped home in a car held together by sheer will and a bit of string.
John Candy and Steve Martin don’t overplay it. Other comic actors would’ve pushed the absurdities too far, and made it a parody. But here, it’s all in the restraint. Candy is heartbreaking and hilarious. Martin’s slow, simmering breakdowns are masterpieces of comedic timing.
I’ve probably overwatched it. I’ve owned the VHS, the DVD, and now I just wait for it to appear, as it always does, on French TV around Christmas. Even though it’s a Thanksgiving film.
But who cares? Snow’s falling, Neal’s stuck at an airport, and Del’s dogs are barkin’.
Perfect.
Liked that, how about its companion piece Not Always Watchable — Classic Movies That Bore Me to Death
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My most common rewatch is Midnight Run
And you call your publication 21st century?!!!
When was the last time you went to the cinema? 1999?!