While putting MJ to sleep tonight (the first time in a while…somehow, this task has fallen to Michael over the past couple of weeks, in the most amazing way. I guess it happened when Michael would be taking care of the baby while I exercised or tended to Joseph. At a certain point, the baby would just get tired, and, urged by Michael’s gentle jostling, would flop down on his shoulder, turn himself around a couple of times, then…just go to sleep. And now, he’s like Pavlov’s dog. Michael holds him in a certain position, starts singing "Sunshing on my Shoulder" (originally chosen to drive me insane), and within minutes…sleep.)…anyway…while putting the baby to sleep tonight I had Waiting for Guffman on and it made me think of a certain category of movies: "Movies you can’t turn off when you happen across them."

It’s not that they’re my favorite films, or I would hold them up as examples of cinematic excellence. There’s just something about them that draws me in, just enough great scenes that I say, "Oh, I have to watch it until this happens…". Here’s my quick list, that doesn’t, as it happen, include Guffman.

However, it does include..

Best in Show, another Guest mockumentary, the one about the dog show. Oh my word..if I come across it, I just have to watch it until the scene in the pet shop. Oh, and then Fred Willard is going to come on with his insane commentary. And then, the fabulous repartee between Michael McKean and John Michael Higgins..oh, but really, I have to see that next Fred Willard scene. It’s not perfect, and always walks that edge between sort of gentle satire and total contempt for the characters (a line which is crossed in WFG, I think), but I think it’s the Best of Guest, so far..although the one that’s forthcoming, satirizing the Indie film scene and featuring, among others, Ricky Gervais, sounds promising.

Coal Miner’s Daughter  – okay, this is a great film, but you know there are some great films I can come across and say, "Ah, I’m not going to watch that right now." But something about Spacek’s performance is just so mesmerizing, I can’t turn it off. Well, I probably can. But I don’t.

And then these three pop into my head:

Pollock with Ed Harris as the artist. No, not a great film at all, but if I stumble across it, I get immediately sucked into the life-destructive energy between Harris and Marcia Gay Harden’s Lee Krasner. And I have to watch it until she screams , "You are killing me! You are killing me! You are killing ME!" which, I must tell you, I can mimic rather uncannily. It’s a slow night in Fort Wayne. Speaking of slow nights in Fort Wayne, I once went to a Pampered Chef party (the only one, in my life), where a woman had her hair cut exactly like Marcia Gay Harden in that movie to the point where I thought she had to have done it on purpose. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, I thought it was so strange.

Hilary and Jackie, about the du Pre sisters, the more talented and vivacious of whom, Jacqueline, the gifted cellist, , played by Emily Watson, is felled by multiple sclerosis. Again, although the movie is formulaic in some ways and its faithfulness the the real story is disputed,  it’s the performances and the power of the tragic end that makes me sit and watch – not to speak of the really heart-wrenching, fantasy epilogue of two sisters on the beach, before everything that drove them apart had intruded..

Finally, Heartburn, the only Meryl Streep movie I think I’ve ever liked – it’s so full of great scenes I just have to sit and watch them all – framed by Streep’s wonderful performance as she slowly realizes what a creep her husband really is…and isn’t the key lime pie scene one of the greats? "I’ll need the keys to the car…"

Enough frivolity…