What is the best movie?
As advertised, my mind was expanded in college. The first thing I learned was that some people brush their teeth in the shower. The second thing I learned— based off dorm room decor— was that there were only four good movies: Pulp Fiction, Scarface, Trainspotting, and, if you were emo, Donnie Darko. When I confessed that I hadn’t seen any of the above, a condescending sophomore told me, “You’re young. It’ll take a while to develop a cinematic taste of your own."
Each of these was more debilitating than the last. Terrified of looking into a mirror after dark, I ritualistically covered the house’s mirrors with beach towels each evening at sunset while my family ridiculed me and I wept with dread at the prospect of the night ahead. And after seeing The Sixth Sense I had to sleep on the floor of my parents’ room—first begging them to remove the dust ruffle from their bed lest it conceal Mischa Barton’s ghost.
It had never occurred to me to choose movies using criteria beyond when I could get a ride to the theater. I saw everything and anything, from Wild America to The People vs. Larry Flynt. I get nightmares from mere previews of horror movies, but I watched Scream, The Ring, The Blair Witch Project, and The Sixth Sense.¹ Someone had gone to considerable expense to create and share these; who was I to turn up my nose at their offerings? I trusted the mainstream media and my local multiplex.
Now the sophomore was telling me there was a different way. I longed for this promised cinematic taste the same way a tween girl longs for puberty. When would it come? What magic would it bring?
Each of these was more debilitating than the last. Terrified of looking into a mirror after dark, I ritualistically covered the house’s mirrors with beach towels each evening at sunset while my family ridiculed me and I wept with dread at the prospect of the night ahead. And after seeing The Sixth Sense I had to sleep on the floor of my parents’ room—first begging them to remove the dust ruffle from their bed lest it conceal Mischa Barton’s ghost.
What magic would it bring? What magic would it bring?
Per the sophomore’s instructions, I sat through David Lynch movies that were like two hours of someone telling you about their dream, waiting for a big reveal that never came. My roommate’s hobby was to take mushrooms, curl up with her beefy Dell laptop, and fire up her screensaver, which captivated her for hours. I sometimes watched her screen instead of mine, desperate for an escape from Eraserhead.
A Reservoir Dogs DVD case I found in the dorm lounge became my prize possession. I brought it out whenever I was expecting company, artfully composing still life tableaux: the DVD case peeking out from under a notebook, or, if the weather was nice, balanced coyly on the windowsill, where a young lad going to the window for a cigarette couldn’t miss it. I kept a Tae Bo disc nestled inside.
In case I turned out to be more of a classics buff, I took a film studies class and watched films of yore: Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Citizen Kane. It’s hard to say if I genuinely enjoyed any of it, or if I was just marveling at the sight of something from the past, dispatched across a vast distance of time and space. It was like the thrill of understanding a foreign language for the first time. You don’t truly care that Jean-Paul is at the bibliothèque, but it’s satisfying to have decoded the information. And while I didn’t understand Inland Empire or other cinematic equivalents of a jam band, I got the gist of The Bridge on the River Kwai. Between that and my Reservoir Dogs DVD case, I survived college. But what about real life? What holds up outside the sophomore’s dorm room, in the average American living room?
Movies are such a crucial way of passing the time when with family. You don’t have to talk to each other, but you run other risks—primarily, sex scenes. The sophomore was always ranting about sex scenes and the MPA ratings system. It was fucking warped to give a blow job an R rating while a PG movie could basically show someone getting decapitated. America made him sick. Privately, I appreciated the prudish ratings. It was a safeguard preventing me from inadvertently watching an erotic tour de force with my grandmother. I don’t personally enjoy that, although it doesn’t seem to bother some people. I once joined my friend’s family for a movie night, wedged in between her elderly great-aunt and her nine-year-old brother, only to encounter a relentless series of sex scenes. In agony, I ducked out to fake-pee during an explicit, extended onscreen tryst. When I returned, I was devastated to find that they had paused the movie on my behalf so I wouldn’t miss a second of the ecstatic thrusting.
That never would have happened in my family. When my dad read Anne Frank’s diary aloud to fourth-grade me, he skipped all the stuff about Anne’s makeout sessions with Peter, her fellow teen attic resident. We focused instead on the more appropriate chapters, which detailed a genocide, resistance fighters being shot in the street, and Anne’s schoolwork. I didn’t realize his omission until I reread the book on my own as an adult.
While my father was withholding information about how cute Peter was, I, in turn, tried to keep my grandma shielded from the vulgarities of modern society. Viagra commercials at halftime were my nightmare. And I was nervous whenever we left the house, sitting in the backseat of her Buick praying she wouldn’t notice the lascivious billboard across the nearest intersection, glistening cleavage two stories high. As a diversion, I would point out a phantom on the other side of the street—“Isn’t that your neighbor?”
Of course, of the two passengers in the car, she wasn’t the virgin.
I’ll take Cozy Content wherever I can get it. A friend once complained to me that her boyfriend didn’t know how to fantasize in the bedroom. She would ask him to come up with a role-playing scenario and he’d get hung up on logistics, going off on non-sexy tangents. She described a few of his failed attempts and one really captured my imagination: a G-rated tale he’d spun about being a fugitive in the woods, raindrops drumming on the sides of the tent. I stole this narrative and used it to lull myself to sleep for years. Thank you, Kevin.
But I stand behind my family’s protective tendencies. These early brushes with censorship have made me into the critic I am today. I don’t watch movies to be ‘challenged.’ Instead, I primarily value what I think of as Cozy Content ⓒ. Cozy Content is best achieved in a live-action PG-13 or R-for-language vehicle. It should be funny, set somewhere scenic, hold up to multiple viewings, and have a happy, or at least optimistic ending.²
Much of the charm of children’s animated movies lies in the scary or repulsive creatures who are defanged, portrayed as cute and lovable (Antz, Ratatouille, James and the Giant Peach, etc.). And all Cozy Content movies follow this same principle. It’s not escapism so much as it is a rebrand. The hellish, unpredictable world we live in is depicted as manageable, meaningful, and dare I say, even kind of fun. This special feeling is especially important for audiences stunted from a decade of binge-watching TV shows; it’s hard for movies to compete with hundreds of hours of character development. And no, the best movie isn’t actually TV. Character development is wonderful, but nothing is cozier than the closed environment of a movie. It’s a complete, contained work, a snowglobe of entertainment, with no risk of a traumatic reboot or a dismal final season.
So: what is the best movie? Hmmm. It’s a straightforward question, one that the Oscars tackle each year. Yet they evade, never giving us a straight answer. They declare a best movie (pardon moi, picture), but then immediately undercut their decision with qualifiers—there’s a best movie, but somehow a different film had the best costumes, and yet another one had the best score? I don’t think so. Check your math. The answer is Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, the 1987 John Hughes comedy.
I’ll take Cozy Content wherever I can get it. A friend once complained to me that her boyfriend didn’t know how to fantasize in the bedroom. She would ask him to come up with a role-playing scenario and he’d get hung up on logistics, going off on non-sexy tangents. She described a few of his failed attempts and one really captured my imagination: a G-rated tale he’d spun about being a fugitive in the woods, raindrops drumming on the sides of the tent. I stole this narrative and used it to lull myself to sleep for years. Thank you, Kevin.
In January through March, when the holidays have just ended and it’s too painful to watch a Thanksgiving movie, My Cousin Vinny briefly takes the top slot.
I can’t believe I have to convince anyone, but:
It’s funny. I don’t think a lot of other eighties movies are funny, so trust me on this.
There’s a twist! Always thrilling.
- John Candy, human angel, is the star. ❤️ 🍬
It revolves around the holidays, which gives it 12 cozy points.³
It’s just far enough in the past to have items of historical interest (manual credit card imprinters, fashion oddities).
There’s logic. In so many movies, the entire caper could be averted with a simple 911 call (don’t get me started on Home Alone), but there’s no such frustration in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.
It’s not in theaters. Collectively experiencing a movie with a group of strangers makes me squeamish. When it’s over, everybody has to shuffle out of the theater together and it feels almost post-coital; lights are dim, people are stretching and processing emotions together… disgusting.
Negatives, to show that this is a balanced review:
Steve Martin’s onscreen wife is a tad Stepford, and she has that strange vintage cadence of speech that you sometimes hear onscreen pre-1990.
I don’t like thinking about how it would feel to use shower curtain rings as earrings (a key plot point).
So yes, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles isn’t perfect—but it’s the best.
✈️ 🚞 🚗,
Molly
In January through March, when the holidays have just ended and it’s too painful to watch a Thanksgiving movie, My Cousin Vinny briefly takes the top slot.
