Good Movies to Watch

Nothing quite beats coming home at the end of the day, kicking your shoes off, and settling in on the couch with a bowl of snacks and a good movie. Nothing beats the escapist and cathartic possibilities of a really excellent film, and besides, you’ve got to put that expensive surround-sound home theatre system you spent your tax return money on to good use.

Sometimes, though, it can be difficult to pinpoint exactly which movie you’re in the mood for. If you’ve been staring at your DVD shelf for the past 20 minutes, trying to figure out if you’re more in the mood for comedy or Kung Fu, western or crime drama, horror or musical, never fear. Here are five good movies to watch, along with the best times to watch them.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Surrealist director Michel Gondry’s 2004 collaboration with equally surrealist writer Charlie Kaufman is perhaps the strangest meditation on the joys and suffering of love ever put to film. Starring a surprisingly subdued Jim Carrey as the long-suffering Joel Barish, a man who has just had his heart broken by the fantastically named Clementine Kruczynski, played by a deliciously flighty Kate Winslet.

Clementine is so self-centered you wonder at what attracted the gentle Joel to her in the first place, but Gondry, using Kaufman’s non-linear plot structure and some mind-bendingly fantastical imagery, reveals why even those love stories with unhappy endings are worth remembering. Elijah Wood, Kirsten Dunst, and Tom Wilkinson all put in good supporting performances.

Best time to watch – When the high-maintenance love of your life has just broken up with you, and you’re not sure if you’re depressed or relieved.

Singin’ in the Rain

Perhaps the most joyful of old-time studio system musicals, this 1952 film is the ultimate cure-all for the stresses of modern life. Just saying the title out loud will have you humming the tune of the movie’s main theme, a song about being happy despite life’s obstacles. Gene Kelly plays the dashingly handsome (though slightly orange-skinned) movie star Don Lockwood, who’s fallen in love with a sweet young Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds, better known as Princess Leia’s mom).

While the musical numbers are the best part of the movie, the plot itself offers delights, telling the story of how silent film actors struggled with the change to talking pictures. A movie about making movies, it offers plenty of surface-level entertainment value as well as potential for deeper meta-analysis with your fellow film geeks. Look for a hilarious Donald O’Connor as Kelly’s sidekick Cosmo Brown and a young, smoking hot Cyd Charisse as the fantasy girl in the visually dazzling “Gotta Dance” number.

Best time to watch – When you got caught in traffic, you spilled coffee on your shirt, you left your lunch at home, and everything else in your day has gone wrong, and you need a good, old-fashioned, all-American cheering up.

Drunken Master (Jui kuen)

A young Jackie Chan, in his acrobatic physical prime, stars in this 1978 film about Chinese folk hero Wong Fei Hung. This is the same Wong Fei Hung portrayed seriously in Once Upon a Time in China and Iron Monkey, but it took the particular genius of Jackie Chan to make this kung fu comedy.

Drunken Master (not to be confused with the slightly inferior Drunken Master II that actually got a theatrical release in the U.S. several years ago) contains several of the best fight scenes in kung fu movie history. Watch for the scene where Jackie fights an old lady in the marketplace, or the epic one-versus-one hundred beatdown in the noodle shop.

Best time to watch – When you’re hanging out drinking beers with a couple of buddies who have already seen this movie dozens of times before (but not as many times as you have).

Airplane!

This is basically the funniest American movie ever made. Writer/director David Zucker went on to create the inferior Naked Gun series and several of the vastly inferior Scary Movie films, but to really get the best of his ultra-goofy, joke-a-minute style you have to go back to Airplane!

Nearly every line of dialogue in this absurdist comedy is highly quotable. Watch for the “What’s our vector, Victor?” scene, or perhaps the scene where Barbara Billingsley translates “jive talk,” or maybe the scene where Leslie Nielson demands not to be called Shirley. Or really, any other moment in this hilarious movie. Any student of American pop culture should be intimately familiar with this film.

Best time to watch – When it’s 3 a.m., you just got back from the bar, you’re extraordinarily loopy with insomnia, and you’re ready and willing to giggle until you pass out.

The Sixth Sense

M. Night Shyamalan’s 1999 masterpiece is the type of horror story that Hollywood doesn’t make much anymore, a brooding, psychological ghost story. While it doesn’t lack for jump-scares or horrifying images, (for instance, the image of a little girl covered by a red blanket may haunt you for days) the movie’s real strength actually lies in the bravura performances of Bruce Willis and young Haley Joel Osment.

The movie’s unforgettable twist ending is a true shock upon first viewing, but subtle clues scattered throughout the film as to the actual nature of the relationship between the two lead characters allows it to stand up to repeated viewings. Shyamalan never matched The Sixth Sense in terms of storytelling, although his 2000 follow up Unbreakable (also starring Bruce Willis) comes close. Forget the director’s disastrously awful recent movies such as Lady in the Water and The Happening and stick with this breakout blockbuster.

Best time to watch – When you’re by yourself stuck home sick with the swine flu on Halloween.

Choose any of these five films and you’re guaranteed a good movie to watch. Each movie stands up excellently to repeated viewings and provides the cathartic release needed when you’re in the midst of a particular emotional turmoil. For over one hundred years, artists have been using the medium of narrative cinema to tell their stories. Make sure you take full advantage of their efforts.