Bedtime Story Movies — I’m Building My List

I don’t know if everybody has this kind of list, but there are about 60+ movies that I watch over and over– like favorite bedtime stories. If I can’t sleep… if I’m in overload… or just looking for big smiles and narrative comfort food– I go to one of those movies.

I’ve had copies of “Some Like It Hot” on VHS, DVD, and now Blu-ray — but so far, it’s not available for streaming or download. This is very troublig.

So by ditching cable and all it’s tacked on fees and equipment charges and line fees and this and that and whatever — we cut over 175.00/mo out of our budget. I replace that with 7.00/mo Hulu Plus, and 8.99/mo Netflix, plut the new Wii-U that comes out this year will run both of those services through our flat-screen.

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So that eats about 2 months worth of savings.And in the last few days, I’ve bought and downloaded digital copies of many of my bedtime-story movies that aren’t available through either Hulu+ or Netflix Streaming… (though many are still not available digitally) and every last one of those purchased and stacked together still costs less than one month of cable.

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I know. I’m missing Treme and a couple of other great things from HBO. But that’s really about it. I certainly don’t miss the political bile or the corporate news. Or the endless bank and credit card ads. Or the knee-deep “entertainment, infotainment, and reality” shows. God, no.

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But I’ve got my treats, now. and they’re portable, and loaded on a 500g palm drive.Technology is a wonderful thing.

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Some of these movies are a little dated and lean toward politically incorrect on race and gender, but for the most part, art is ahead of society on such things, so it’s just a few that raise eyebrows.  Many of the older films are a bit like museum pieces — and what a gift to be able to look so clearly at the world our grandparents and great grandparents grew up in!  This has never been true for any other time in history!

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And some are just treasures.  Little gems of storytelling — that define “art” in moviews.  Mmmmmmm.

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Now, if they’d just digitize “Midnight.” — at least the #3 screwball comedy of the US 1030’s. — and where we get the line, “every Cinderella has her midnight.”

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Lynn’s List of “Bedtime Story” Movies

[criteria: Must stand up to repeated viewing; must not be so “jarring” that they are impossible to fall asleep to; must be fun.  This is NOT the “film school” list of great films; nor is it the ratiosinativ list.  These are stories — like all the great stories — the kind sung by bards and told around the campfires of thousands of years.  Some are great films.  Many have great sound or great images.  Some are mythic or epic.  But they all have great narratives.]

Plot, character, diction, thought, melody, spectacle

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— in no particular order:

4 Indiana Jones movies
Original 3 Star Wars movies
Lord of the Rings trilogy
8 Harry Potter movies

4 Pirates of the Caribbean movies
V for Vendetta

The Scout
Some Like It Hot

Trading Places

Top Hat

The Phantom

Brassed Off

Sabrina (Bogart version)

Cinema Paridiso
Monkey Business (Grant/Rogers)
The 5th Element
Leap of Faith

Finding Nemo

Bells Are Ringing

My Sister Eileen

My Friend Irma

Joe vs the Volcano

Swing Time
We’re No Angels (Bogart)

Independence Day

Il Postino

A Good Year

My Favorite Year

Enchanted

Bottle Shock
Wizard of Oz

Greencard
Under the Tuscan Sun
His Girl Friday

Hancock
Lady in the Water
The Odd Couple

The Stunt Man
Ghostbusters

Witness
Midnight (Colbert)
Shakespeare in Love
The Butcher’s Wife
Holiday (Grant)

Enchanted April

Bell, Book and Candle

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

The Rocketeer

Ironman

Ironman II

Batman (Keaton)

Batman Forever (Kilmer)

The Dark Knight (Bale)

Mrs. Winterbourne

The Music Man

Gunfight at the O-K Corral
Father Goose

The Shadow

Chocolat

Casablanca
Ratatouille

Four Weddings and a Funeral

I Married a Witch

Houseboat
Groundhog Day
As Good As It Gets
Kinky Boots

Topper

Beauty and the Beast (Cocteau)

Beauty and the Beast (Disney)

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Disney)
Love Actually

Harvey

The Coca-Cola Kid

42nd Street
UP!
Stargate

White Christmas
Singin’ In the Rain
My Man Godfrey

Pretty Woman
I.Q.
Notting-Hill

The Englishman Who Went Up A Hill And Came Down A Mountain
The Talk of the Town

French Kiss

City Slickers
North by Northwest
Pretty Woman
Arsenic and Old Lace
Robin and the Seven Hoods

The Adventures of Robin Hood (Flynn)
Monsters Inc.
Sherlock Holmes (Downey)
Sherlock (Cumberbatch)
Young Sherlock Holmes

Transformers
Labyrinth

When Harry Met Sally

Pinnochio (Disney)

The Canterville Ghost (Laughton)

The Canterville Ghost (Stewart)

The Canterville Ghost (Gielgud)

The Importance of Being Ernest (Firth/Everett)

Arthur

Tootsie

The Ruling Class

Mr. Lucky

Lillies of the Field

Peggy Sue Got Married

American Grafitti

Valley Girl

Adventures in Babysitting

Simply Irresistable

Julie & Julia
Star Trek (reboot)
Star Trek: The Voyage Home

The Shop Around The Corner

Big

Big Trouble in Little China

Lady For a Day

Pocketful of Miracles

The Princess Bride

Ninotchka

Casino Royale (Connery)

The Court Jester

Men in Black

The Producers (Wilder)

The Producers (Broderick)

People Will Talk

Strictly Ballroom

Shall We Dance? (Japanese version)

Shall We Dance (Astaire/Rogers)

Palm Beach Story

L.A. Story

Wonder Man

The Invisible Man

After the Thin Man

The Old Dark House (Karloff)

Frankenstein (Karloff)

Dracula (Legosi)

The Werewolf (Chaney)

The Mummy (Karloff)

The Mummy (Fraser)

The Mummy Returns (Fraser)

American Werewolf in London

Young Frankenstein

Van Helsing

The Goonies

Gremlins

It’s a Wonderful Life

Giant

It Happened One Night

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Cooper)

Gentlemen Prefer Blonds

Stage Beauty

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Ball of Fire

Stalag 17

The Legend of Zorro (Banderas)

 

And yes.  From this list, you should be able to tell the following:

1.  I think Billy Wilder/I.A.L. Diamond are probably the best comic screenwriting team in history.  Some of their dialogue clips by with the rhythm and timing of a perfectly tuned Model-T engine;

2,  I have a soft spot for magic, masks, witches, people in costumes in the woods, ghost stories, and magical realism —  fantasy these are bedtime stories, after all…’

3,  I am a fan of the character actor S. Z. “Cuddles” Sakall (and all the great studio charachter actors of the 30s and 40s);

4.  Some movie remakes are as good or better than the originals (and many are not) — and sequels, prequels and reboots are never a given — but when a story keeps being redone, remade, repeated… it’s probably because the story or the central characters really are JUST THAT GOOD.  see: The Canterville Ghost, The Front Page, The Odd Couple, Sabrina, Pygmaleon, Romeo & Juliet, Sherlock Holmes, Robin Hood, King Arthur et al, etc;

5,  A tight, well-paced story is everything; and, really well written dialogue covers a multitude of sins — and both are as rare as any other great art.