We all have them.
Certain movies just have a hold over us. When they pop up on television, you will watch them — no negotiating. It doesn’t matter that you watched this exact movie a month ago. It doesn’t matter that you’re tuning in two-thirds of the way through and missed all the setup. You are finishing this movie, and honestly, who’s going to stop you? For me, the usual suspects are A Few Good Men, Legally Blonde, anything from the Charlie’s Angels franchise, the Bourne Identity films, Star Wars, John Wick… the list goes on, and I’m not even a little sorry about it.
This past weekend, my husband was off at his Business School Reunion, which meant the remote was entirely mine — and one of my go-to movies was on, already nearly at the end: Jaws. Jaws has always been iconic for me, and I remember the first time I saw it with almost suspicious clarity. I was too young for the theatre, but it finally hit television when I was six. I remember it so vividly because at the time I was deep in rehearsals for a Bengali Cultural Dance performance. The instructor expected discipline and effort but my dance skills were subpar, so very much Not My Thing. Our instructor ran a tight ship, hardest of all on her own daughter, but the results were always spectacular, and you left every show weirdly proud to have been part of the chaos.
Between rehearsals, the kids could talk about nothing else: Jaws was airing, and for most of us, this was going to be our very first viewing. Lucky for me, my father’s love of movies meant I was never on the “too scary” restricted list. So I watched. And I fell hard. He’d already eased me into horror movies by then, so fear wasn’t really on the table — I just sat there, six years old, fully appreciating a cinematic experience for what it was, which, frankly, is a lot for a six-year-old. The rivalry between Quint, the grizzled fisherman hell-bent on catching the shark, and Hooper, the shark-obsessed academic, felt eerily familiar — it was basically my parents’ dynamic, just with more nautical rope. Their bickering and one-upmanship felt like home. And even now, after devouring every documentary and behind-the-scenes stories about that famously temperamental mechanical shark, the wonder I felt at six hasn’t faded one bit. If anything, I find new things to love every time.
Once Jaws wrapped up, I flipped over to Patriot Games — a movie I have watched more times than I’d like to admit, and my true comfort-movie champion. The cast is stacked, the story pulls me in every single time no matter how many times I’ve seen it, and let’s be honest, I am powerless against an Irish accent. I’m never bored, I’m always fully invested, and somehow I still get emotionally torn between both sides of the story, every time, like it’s the first time.
In a world that feels genuinely out of control most days, there’s something wonderful about knowing a handful of movies will always show up for you exactly the same way. They’re the cinematic equivalent of a well-worn blanket — a little frayed at the edges, endlessly reliable, and exactly what you need when the world gets loud.
But that’s just one Diva’s view.
