FSM # 18: What is the film you’ve seen the most times?
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For me, I think it must be JURASSIC PARK — which I’ve seen between 30-40 times, 3 in the theatre.
Runner-ups are the ALIEN films, which are probably also close to 30. At least for the first two. Never seen the first two in the theatre, though.
What about you?
I should add that now, 12 years later, JURASSIC PARK is nearing 100. ALIEN films also up there. And I have seen the two first ones in the theatre since then.
I have not counted anything but the old classic westerns RIO BRAVO and EL DORADO might lead as they were traditional favorites of my father and me we often re-watched. The Star Wars, Indy (just last year a three movie special) and Jaws (also last year) I for sure saw several times.
Probably the Bond films. The first I was old enough to see on release was You Only Live Twice (although I was so excited I spent the whole pre-credit sequence in the toilet, and to this day, his “assassination” in Hong Kong seems like a new sequence, so impressionable was the young TG.)
Taking this into account, the older the film, the more I’ll have seen it. Until the mid-70s they were only watchable in the cinema, but I used to go to the pictures inveterately during the school holidays, and Bond double bills were common. I’ll have watched them all scores of times up to the Brosnan ones, where it reduces to dozens of times.
I’m still a huge fan, although I’m well aware of their shortcomings (some uncomfortable moments when judged through a modern prism relating to race or sex, plot holes, some silliness, the occasional slide-whistle) and still watch them all every so often.
Other than that, we watch Scrooged, It’s a Wonderful Life and The Muppet’s Christmas Carol every Yuletide.
My most watched giallo would be “Eyeball” (aka Red Cats in a Glass Labyrinth), which is a comfort watch for reasons it’s hard to explain.
Oh yes, Bond films of course as well, especially the Connery and Moore ones. And ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST I saw often, too.
I doubt I have seen many films more than five times. I guess films like Forrest Gump, The Stand, The Langoliers, The House Of The Spirits, The Green Mile, Rain Man and The Game are up there.
I have never seen Jurassic Park and I doubt I ever wiil.
There used to be a time when I had a few movies on Sony’s Video8 format, so we watched them as teens more often.
I don’t know which movie I’ve seen the most really.
But there are movies I have seen multiple times, movies I don’t tire of watching. Those are the movies I tend to get on Bluray/4K.Movies I watched many times (at least five) and never tire of watching include but are not limited to (* indicates I’ve seen them at least once in a theatre):
Casablanca
Star Wars Trilogy (1977-1983… though I don’t like Jedi all that much)*
Indiana Jones Trilogy (1981-1989)*
Alien*
A Christmas Charol (1951)
The Big Country
Once Upon a Time in the West*
Papillon*
Chinatown*
Basic Instinct*
Bram Stoker’s Dracula*
Duel
Jaws
Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)
Shining
Escape from New York*
Blade Runner*
The Thing (1982)*
Se7en*
Dawn of the Dead (2004)
RatatouilleThere are more. Not sure which one I’ve seen the most. Also, some movies I’ve seen often, but haven’t seen in years, others I have not yet seen often, but will probably revisit in coming years. I’ve seen Jurassic Park also a number of times, including in its original theatrical run.
In theater probably E.T. and Star Wars might be my most watched movies. Don’t remember how often I went.
On regular TV it’s more difficult. As a kid I watched comedies a lot. It’s a Mad Mad Mad World might be a contender, Some Like It Hot, Pillow Talk or Die Feuerzangenbowle.
Ich I wonder what movie I have watched most on VHS, DVD, BluRay or streaming it becomes more confusing.
Maybe some action flick. Some Star Wars film probably, Terminator 2 or something like that.There are some movies I think are great that are just not on that list because I have not seen them that often, but still several times. They include Peter Jackson’s LORD OF THE RINGS (which I have seen at least four times so far), or Ridley Scott’s KINGOM OF HEAVEN (great movie, have seen once the theatrical cut and once the director’s cut), THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY (which I’ve seen a number of times, including once in a theater). There is THE GODFATHER TRILOGY, which I’ve just seen last month in the 4K restauration (and the improved Coda cut for the first time), so that was at least the fourth time I watched the movies. I’ve seen APOCALYPSE NOW a number of times as well.
The number of times I have watched a movie does not necessarily say something about the quality of the movie. Of course I don’t rewatch a movie I completely dislike.
But there is something like a rewatch factor for movies. Especially movies, that are more form and aestetics than plot or story.And there are great movies that I watched just once because I think, it is impossible to reproduce that impressive first time watch experience. So, I can better preserve that memory and don’t desecrate the experience.
Yes, fully agree. Which is why this thread is about the movies we’ve seen the most, not the ones we hold to be the greatest
The movies I saw most often are probably the ones I had (copied) to video back in late 1980s, when I had my first VCR and both the option to watch movies at home was new, and I only had a few. I have not seen any movie as often as Thor has seen JURASSIC PARK. As I said, I don’t know which movie I’ve seen the most, but there are a number of movies I’ve seen quite often. If I had to take a guess, I would say BLADE RUNNER and CHINATOWN may be the movies I’ve seen most often, and both are (or definitely belong to ) my all time favorite movies. I did have the (theatrical) cut of BLADE RUNNER on Video 8 in the 1980s, I saw the theatrical cut in the theater, I saw the Director’s Cut in 1991 or 1992 in a theater. First time I saw CHINATOWN I saw it in a theater (obviously in a re-release), had it on Video8, later on DVD, and now on 4K. So CHINATWON and BLADE RUNNER may be the movies I’ve seen the most, I don’t know of often I’ve seen them. Though last time I saw BLADE RUNNER was in November 2019, so it’s still a while.
The Thing (1982)*
I found The Thing not so suitable for a rewatch. Because a lot of the tension is lost when you know what is going to happen.
Some movies really live from the tension that anything can happen at every moment. When you already know that in a certain scene nothing surprising is going to happen it can suddenly be quite boring.
That is how I felt in many scenes at rewatching The Thing.
Still a great movie. Probably Carpenter’s best.For me, the most interesting aspect of THE THING, and that’s why I love watching it, is one of the very few movies with an actually “alien” lifeform, one the protagonists struggle to comprehend because they are trying to survive.
There is a terrific science fiction story by Peter Watts which tells the Carpenter movie from the point of view of THE THING (which is often just as puzzled and frightened as the people). This is a perspective I have always found interesting from the first time I watched the movie. It’s an obviously intelligent alien, but one that’s so different from us, it can no more communicate with us than we could with it… an intelligent “bio mass” (which, in the story exploration by Watts, gets more intelligent when it absorbs more mass, and is less intelligent when it’s just a few cells). This “Thing” was really an alien intelligence. That’s my favorite aspect of the movie, the truly “alien alien”.
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