So I was flipping through the TV channels late last night, too restless to sleep and too sleepy to read. I came across Sweet Home Alabama.  It was two thirds of the way through the movie, on Bravo, so no fast forwarding through commercials. But I had to stop anyway.  I love any part of that movie and I could watch the beginning, middle or ending, or the entire movie, a thousand times. And I may easily have.

There are many aspects of the movie that draw me to it.  It’s southern.  I’m southern. It’s sappy, romantic, predictable and funny. I’m sappy, romantic, most times predictable and sometimes funny. Most importantly, Reese Witherspoon is adorable and Josh Lucas is Paul Newman hot.  In the closing scene, Melanie yells across the bar, “Make it a slow one, Stella,” and Sweet Home Alabama blasts.   Be still my heart.

There are about five movies in this category for me.  The category of “once you see a nano second of it, you have to stop and watch.”

Dirty Dancing is one of those.  Even if I don’t happen upon it until Frances/Baby is flying through the air in Patrick Swayze’s hunky outstretched arms, I stop. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weOlGKtZRHY  (Oh and by the way, a friend asked me about the origin of the quote “Nobody puts Baby in a corner” that was in a few posts back. I told her it was from Dirty Dancing and forgave that blip on her screen because I like her and she is an architect, not a vapid late night TV zombie like me.) The movie is bitter sweet to watch now that Patrick Swayze is gone, but all the more reason to indulge. Ghost still does it for me, too, albeit now almost too prophetic at the end.

Pretty Woman sucks me in again and again. Even if it is the picnic on the lawn part where we have to look at Richard Gere’s pasty white feet instead of his not-one-feature-is-good-but-all-put-together-he-is-very-handsome face. Especially if I haven’t missed her infectious belly laugh when he snaps the necklace box shut or when she knocks the hell out of the awful,slimy, greedy partner.

Some Kind of Wonderful I adore.  It’s Mary Stewart Masterson young and adorable and vulnerable. She’s some kind of wonderful but not as great as she is in Fried Green Tomatoes but everyone is great in that. Another stopper.

Pretty in Pink is the kind of  Cinderella story that I can’t pass up.  Love Ducky. (John Cryer of Two and a Half Men fame). How can you resist his version of Try a Little Tenderness?

http://www.youtube.com/watchv=F3gbK8I4_dY&feature=related

Harry Dean Stanton, one of the best character actors of all time, is great as the dad.  Molly Ringwald is wonderfully quirky and honest. James Spader (Boston Legal) could not be more James Spader in his white linen pushed up sleeves to high school jackets. It all works. And works. For nearly 25 years.

I mean, I could go on with a few more and include my favorite holiday chick flicks ( The Holiday and Family Man to name two) but it is time for Masterpiece Theater. And I never miss it.

Just kidding.  Never watch but heard the new series Downton Something What’s It Called is great.