The other night, I was lying in bed and thinking about the small handful of movies that I have latched on to so hard that I saw them more them once at the theater (this applies only to new releases at the time, and not classics like Halloween, The Lost Boys, Suspiria, etc. which I have watched a thousand trillion times at home). Of course, I made Henry try to guess (and then also Chooch, via text, after midnight, who takes these guessing games VERY SERIOUSLY). Henry did better, but Chooch required so many clues that I was practically resorting to sending him pictures of the official movie posters.

I know you are just CHOMPING AT THE BIT to know, pens poised on your NOTES ABOUT ERIN scratch paper, anticipating the super hifalutin’ classic cinephile picks to come.

Well, brother, it ain’t that, lol.

The first one will take us back to 1995, throw on a flannel and daisy choker, curl your bangs to a crisp ‘cuz we’re going to see CASPER, motherfuckers.

Keri (ugh, why does she have to come up twice in a week) and I went to see this once and afterward, we looked at each other, a moment of mutual understanding: we were smitten and knew we had to see it again.

Here’s the thing though – Keri, like normal girls, was into it because of Devon Sawa.

Me? I had the hots for the dad – PLAYED BY BILL PULLMAN.

And yes, we went back to the theater to see it again. I even bought the soundtrack! No regrets.

Two years later, my favorite actor was the imitable John Cusack. Still fucking love him to this day. 1997 was a big year for him and it had me double-viewing TWO of his movies in the theater! Sadly, I believe all of these were seen with my then-boyfriend, Psycho Mike.

GROSS POINTE BLANK – amazing, no defense needed. Now I want to rewatch it soon because I haven’t seen it in YEARS.

And the last movie is the one that usually really throws people off because it doesn’t make sense to anyone who knows me, and that movie is CON AIR. LOL, aside from Mr. Cusack and Steve Buscemi, I can’t explain the grip this movie had on my figurative balls but I have watched it so many times over the years and it never gets old to me. It’s like my Die Hard, I guess, and Chooch just thinks this is the dumbest thing ever and refuses to watch it (his loss). It comes up so often in my life too! In fact, we were recently playing that stupid Hum the 80s and 90s Songs games during one of Chooch’s last college breaks and my song was LEANN RIMES HOW DO I LIVE and I was so mad that no one guessed it, and I was screaming IT WAS IN CON AIR!!!!

Ugh.

I also want to note that the second  time Mike and I went to the theater to see this (I remember it was the Whitehall theater which is no longer there!), my mom had given me some of her WATER PILLS because I was trying to lose weight so yes, give your 18 year old some of your prescription pills (this has been my whole life since 6th grade you guys, frantically trying to lose weight). Anyway, I spent the whole movie running to the bathroom to pee so I’ll let you decide if this actually counts as “seeing a movie twice in the theater” when I spent most of the time seeing the inside of the bathroom stall.

If I dig ouy my journal from 1997, I’m sure I will have an entry about how Mike and I fought on the way home from one of these viewings because, knowing him, he was accusing me of being a whore and fucking John Cusack.

This is all a boring and pointless lead up to tell you that last night, I added a fourth movie to this list, and it is arguably the best movie on the list:

YES, we went to see it again! I am so obsessed with this movie, the lore, Matt Johnson, Toronto (always obsessed with Toronto though, one of my fave cities ever) that I have been watching interviews, the web series, guest spots, anything I can find ever since seeing it last week and especially now that we know some behind the scenes stuff, I felt compelled to go see it again. When I mentioned this to Henry the other night, he was like YEAH I’D GO SEE IT AGAIN! Luckily, AMC was still showing it this week.

My takeaways:

• It was just as delightful the second time around and especially fun looking for the things we missed on our initial watch.
• I’m glad we saw it in a little independent theater for our first watch though because it’s a charming film and the venue mattered, in my opinion. This is a movie meant to be seen in an art house / indie theater, preferably with a crowd of college-aged film nerds. The crowd last night was fine and there was LOLing but it wasn’t as festive-feeling and contagious as the night at the Harris Theater.
• I would dump Henry for Matt Johnson, let’s go, eh. Sore-y, Henry.
• I want to go back to Toronto STAT.
• All of my framed posters at home are concert/festival related but I’m about to make this the first movie poster adorning my walls.
• The second time around was obviously stripped of the shock value, but it made it feel like we were part of an inside joke.

I can’t recommend this movie enough, but I also can’t recommend it to everyone because I KNOW there are people who would be like “wtf why did you make me watch that, it was dumb.” But damn, the humor in this might not be for you but it is 100% for me, like just thinking about some of it, I’m on the verge of crazy-tears. It re-wired my brain or something, I was so bored and this invigorated me, electrocuted my mind with happiness. I don’t have the words! Also, if you can, don’t watch the trailer, don’t WIKI it, don’t LOOK ANYTHING UP. Just go see it. That’s how we initially went into it and it was the right move. We had NO FUCKING CLUE what we were watching, and it literally felt like – as a hat tip to the movie – lightning in a bottle. Just pure joy and excitement, like we really witnessed THAT.

If anything, now I just feel sad knowing that I can never see it again for the first time, and also because RIP Orbitz.