movies that seem like they were made specifically for you.

Galaxy Quest - it is perfect from start to finish.

**Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story** felt like FINALLY a movie with my *exact* comedic sensibility had been made with John C. Reilly, after years of Will Ferrell comedies that other people seemed to love but just didn't hit for me the same way. Like, I got it from the first joke, and locked in for the rest. I couldn't even believe it existed.

Robocop. I was raised on 2000ad and Judge Dredd: violent, punk fuelled, anti-establishment (re: Thatcher) satire. Tongue in cheek Sci-Fi with a bit of a bite. Robocop ticked all the boxes imaginable. Still the best Dredd film we have and Joe isn't even in it.

Arrival. For all the problems I have, would I live the same way again given the chance? Probably. It is both soothing and painful

Primer Time travel, low budget, noir-esque tones, ambiguous ending.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. If you were to write down what I find funny, you'd just have the script to this movie.

Project Hail Mary, I love science fiction and buddy comedy. It even came out on my birthday

*Superbad* came out right at the end of high-school when everyone is worried about college and "being cool". It just hits and doesn't stop until the credits roll.

Kill Bill I grew up watching 70’s kung-fu and samurai movies, and spaghetti westerns, plus I’ve loved Tarantino movies since Reservoir Dogs, so when I heard he was doing the Kill Bill movies I kinda freaked out 🤓 Plus I’ve been a huge fan of Wu-Tang Clan ever since the first time I heard them in the early 90’s, and I found out that The RZA was doing the soundtrack it felt like winning the l******.

Wargames.

About Time. It's got time travel, a beautiful family dynamic (Bill Nighy as the father is perfection), a lovably goofy main protagonist and a message to live your life today. Perfect movie.

The Lego Movie. I’ve been in and out of the hobby for over 40 years. People told me how the third part was gonna hit me hard, but didn’t tell me what it was and when it came, they were right. P.S. The specific moment in the movie where I grinned like the Cheshire cat was when one of the vehicles exploded, and the parts were highlighted and their part number shown. I have never felt more seen as a nerd than in that moment.

Scott Pilgrim vs the World felt like it was made specifically for people who grew up on video games + alt music + that awkward early 20s phase, everything about it just hits in a weirdly personal way

Barbie. The level of specificity in those Indigo Girls and Pride & Prejudice references took me the f*** OUT. I was not interested in a Barbie movie AT ALL and was frankly confused to hear GG would direct, but when I saw that first teaser trailer with the scene from 2001 I knew it was going to be something special. My favorite criticism of it is from younger women who don’t think it’s feminist enough, because they’re not wrong, but as a 50 year old white Gen X woman i was just thrilled to have SOMETHING, and grateful it was so well executed. (See also: Wonder Woman)

*Everything Everywhere All at Once.* Kinda came out in the middle of my life falling apart and getting medicated for ADHD and having to move back home with my parents and having an existential crisis. I cried and watched it like 3 times lol.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Say what you will about the rest of the trilogy, but that movie is pure comfort for me on every level. It feels like a warm hug in movie form.

The Suicide Squad '21. I am 100% the target audience for that movie.

Everything Everywhere All At Once hooked me from the start. I love movies that deal with scientific concepts in a fun way. I love kung-fu movies. I love movies with practical effects and a sense of humor. I love movies about parent/child relationships that make me feel hopeful and affirm my belief that humans are intrinsically good and that love will beat chaos every time.

Clue. It sounds so pretentious but I LOVE “smart humor” (idk how else to refer to it). I love quippy fast lines with multiple layers to them. I love characters that know themselves but are a bit quirky and odd. I love the reality that life can go on 100 different directions when it seems to stress out most people in my life. Watching that movie as a teenager for the first time genuinely made me realize there were people “like me” out there when I was surrounded in an era of will Ferrell humor. No discredit to Will Ferrell

Tucker and Dale vs evil. I love horror comedy. Evil dead 2 shaped me, when I saw T&DvE i just knew it was for me. 

Mouse Hunt

Donnie Darko. It's rare to see neurodivergency represented from a first-person perspective.

Dark City. It's the perfect amount of weird art design, trippy themes, and a sci fi mystery that pushes all the right buttons for me. 

Lowkey Beau is Afraid, which may be why nobody liked it lol 😂. Perfect for me though! Why I love it: it’s got that horror/humor vibe I love from shows like Tim and Eric’s Bedtime Stories, Atlanta, and from Kafkas stories. You get the sprawling satire of America, the fear of judgment, apathy towards life, fear of making a decision, that kind of 70s comix style of deep psychological introspection, black humor, and one of the most beautiful animated segments that toes the line between naive, kitschy, and genuinely heartfelt, from the geniuses behind Wolf House. It features a main character who is steeped in fantasies that go nowhere and with little agency and where ultimately nothing really happens à la my fave book Madame Bovary. Absolutely spellbinding and truly cathartic tragic ending that also pokes fun at tragedy. And I thought it was paced perfectly, but that’s just my taste. Could watch it over and over. And talk about it forever. But most of all, it feels like it’s saying…it doesnt feel like it’s made to send a message per se, like it has a message but it’s not like…I don’t know. It’s extremely, extremely human, raw, vulnerable. I get burnt out on movies that are trying to affect change, or comment on current events, or make a grand point on cancel culture or the state of things. So this felt so grand and creative, like it has that David Lynch, 8 and 1/2 magic where it’s like I’m doing whatever I want to get my vision across. And I love it. The vision is so similar to what I want, but interestingly enough, nobody really shares that with me given how little attention it got. Shame! Hope it is revived later on

Dark City. Noir, 1940s, romance, sci-fi fuckery, dystopian, the German Expressionism influenced design. Inject it into my veins.

RRR could not have been made specifically for you, because it was made specifically for me.

Wet Hot American Summer. It’s just the right amount of meta humor balanced with character work and the absolute silliest dumbest sense of humor. It plays off dozens of movie tropes, and somehow dodges the comedy movie problem with asking the audience to take the plot seriously. In a way, the first time I watched it, I felt like they finally made a movie that was 100% funny. It goes on these insane tangents that make no sense and yet are fully embraced by the plot. I think They Came Together also feels this way, like it’s a movie that my friends and I would come up with in a night of drinking and laughing at movie tropes. Also, it has all my guys from The State (minus the Reno 911 guys Tom, Kerri, and Ben). I love most David Wain movies.

Mandy - psychedelic horror with awesome villains, kills, and The Cheddar Goblin. Hell yeah.

Late Night With the Devil I love horror, found footage, single location settings, late night talk shows, the occult, and everything going completely off the rails.

Pokémon: Detective Pikachu was a 2019 film about a young man who wanted to be a Pokémon trainer as a kid but grew up and works in insurance now. I was like, damn dude, I feel you.

Braveheart was that for me as a 15-year-old. It was exactly the movie I wanted, in every detail. Like, you couldn't have made a movie that was more perfectly suited for me at that time.

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

blue velvet. right at the time my life seemed to stop making sense, a director came along and showed me it was okay that things don't really make sense, no matter how dark they might get, and that there's hope for all of us.

the troubled angst of The Edge of Seventeen is close. The embarrassing mishaps that seem like life just likes always pulling the rug out from under you, while others around you, seem to be coasting thru life just fine..

Showgirls

“CQ” - it has everything I am interested in: 1960’s French & Italian cinema, music, design, and intrigue. Great plot and storytelling with a cool film within the film.

Everybody Wants some!! I can’t describe the feeling I had where I was just thinking holy shit. This is how it is

Tron Legacy

Shaun of the Dead. Except for the N word, it's perfection and everything I could have wanted in a spoofy but serious movie. So glad I saw it in the theater too. Good call, me.

The Crow The Fifth Element

Vanilla Sky

I've got a list: Backbeat - My style echoed Stu before the film was released. Still does in some version today. Say Anything... - Lloyd and I shared a few characteristics. The music, Cameron Crowe...almost tailored for my tastes. The Dreamers - Came out while I was heavily into film at college. I was fascinated with 1968 and this amplified it. Billy Elliot/Pride - Never knew there was a film genre that I found so fascinating, as if it were crafted just for me - the early 80s Miner's Strike in the UK. There's more examples, these two just stand out.

Fantastic Mr Fox is handily my favorite movie of all time but in terms of just being “made for me” I’ll have to go Blade Runner

LA Story. I randomly saw this at the dollar theater and spent the next week taking people to see it. It's number two on my list of films I have seen the most in one week.

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Free Enterprise (1998) Rented the movie, probably in 1999 or slightly after. IMMEDIATELY thought someone had been following me and my friend around when we were back in college. I sat, in awe of their conversations and activities, as they were exactly what we did on a weekly basis. William Shatner and Eric McCormack are probably the two most well known from the movie, though it does have Audie England, Rafer Weigel, Deborah Van Valkenberg (Too Close For Comfort) and Patrick Horn (Swingers) as well as Phil LaMarr in a minor role.

How I felt the first time I watched Lost in Translation.

Not made for me but Natural Born Killers is pretty universally hated and I love it, not from a critical standpoint I just love it, it works on paper, Oliver Stone directing, stacked cast and Trent Reznor soundtrack (the soundtrack is killer), the visuals are like if someone told an action film director to copy David Lynchs style The violence is gratuitous but as part of the satire of the film, it's not pointlessly gross like Human Centipede or other films like that, every character in that film is so sickening that the mass murdering protagonists come out looking clean cut

If Looks Could Kill. It was a 1980’s (90’s?) Richard Greico “James Bond Jr” type spy movie that was surprisingly good.

Lego Batman

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. It spoke to me at a time when I was ready to listen. Any time I feel like life is getting away from me I pop it in and it helps center me.

Ready Player One It has all of the music and pop culture references from my childhood. Pure nostalgia!

My Life with Morrissey

*Salo.*

*Gangster Squad* (2013). It didn't do well with critics, but as a fan of classic gangster and noir films, this stylish, violent, near-parody of the genres, with a stacked cast (Gosling, Brolin, Penn, Nolte, Ribisi, Stone) actually did seem like it was "made just for me."

Southland Tales. Absurd, zany, self indulgent, overly long, completely inaccessible, at times objectively stupid, random musical numbers, I f****** love it all.

Anora ❤️

Sinners and True Grit.

The Witch and Nosferatu by Roger Eggers. These are dream movies for me. I've always said I want my horror movies to be horrifying and these two movies crushed. Also Master and Commander and Fantastic Mr Fox, two movies I never get tired of and feel like they were made just for me to enjoy. The reason i feel this way is I never felt a reason to share or gush about them. They fulfilled me without me ever needing to express that fulfillment. Weird feeling. I wish I'd gotten at least 2-3 more Jack Aubrey movies.

Annihilation

Whip It. I played roller derby when it started becoming big again in the mid 2000s. Drew Barrymore and the whole cast perfectly captured that experience.

The Edge of Seventeen. I was eighteen at the time and I acted so much like Nadine growing up. I also had a best friend since kindergarten that I was possibly growing apart from and I handled it as well as Nadine did. Her monologue at the end effed me up. “I think some deranged part of me likes thinking I’m the only one with real problems. Like that makes me special.”

The Before trilogy and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty could have been adaptations of my life in my twenties.

Recently watched the entire series of On The Air and it was the exact kind of humor that I gravitate to (and how I run scenarios in my head) but very rarely see. Other movies that I connected to: Mean Streets, No Country Fo Old Men, Pans Labrinth, Jacob's Ladder

Nobody but me likes this movie What if? or The F Word Loved the little bits of animation sprinkled in, the awkward bantering, having a way cooler friend who calls me their sibling, dealing with a mom who is dating but unsuccessful. Lots of little moments that made me go “oh! I feel seen” It scratches a nice itch in the back of my head

A field in England (2013). Loved every second of it. I have forced several people to watch it but no one I know has enjoyed it as much as I did. It was like someone thought “this guy could do with a movie that’s right up his alley”.

Nosferatu! I was watching Sinners (which I liked) but I remember sitting there and every time I would think "I wish they did X differently" it was something Eggers had done in Nosferatu. He's just perfectly on my pulse

We Can Be Heroes. I love Sharkboy and Lavagirl and there were so many stupid jokes that felt specifically targeted at me

yeah I get that feeling sometimes, like a movie just locks into your exact taste and hits every note perfectly without trying too hard. for me it’s rare but when it happens it kinda sticks with you longer than most movies do.

Life Aquqtic with Steve Zissou.

15 years ago I said they should reboot Naked Gun and put Liam Neeson in the Frank Drebin role. This was around the time of Taken 2. I felt he was a guy who could play the role seriously while it was all silly the same way Leslie did. This was before he was in Million ways to die in the West or Ted which proved that he could.

rodrick rules

I get that. For me, *Inception* had that exact effect—mind-bending plot, style, soundtrack, and just enough action and mystery to keep me hooked. Rare to find a movie that feels like it was tailored to exactly what you enjoy.

Let the Right One In, an amoral protagonist in love? Yes, please.

The Coen Brothers' "A Serious Man." I'm not a man (nor am I Jewish), but I went through an exceedingly long series of traumas and losses and kept going from (Christian) minister to minister, asking *why* God was doing this to me. I did not find peace until I realized it was up to *me* to decide what my suffering "meant," if anything at all; that I was alone in the universe; and that this was preferable to trying to please an angry God that I couldn't understand. The film was a tremendous help to my deconstruction and trauma recovery. Plus, it's funny as hell.

Stuck between stations

Bros. Billy Eichner being interrupted by his own fear of a small bug flying by. Ahh. The speech on the beach about being told to tone it down. The whole thing. That character is the closest I'll ever come to seeing myself in a movie.

When Big Lebowski came out, me and my best buddies really did a double take. It felt as if someone had watched us. I was sporting the tacticool vest and buzzcut look, my best friend slouched around in his bathrobes since he had to babysit the dog over summer break while his family flew to spain and the third guy was as awkward but smart as Donny. That was our summer and our movie.

Interstaller and Project Hail Mary for me. I f****** loved Project Hail Mary. Great book too.

Warfare. I've been wanting a movie about a squad of dudes in a warzone that didn't follow any particular character for decades. Then one actually gets made and it's actually good. Didn't expect that. The Raid. I like fighting with almost no story.

Pacific Rim.  That movie was sent from the future with the explicit intent of jacking directly into the joy centre of my brain. 

Kung Fu Hustle. From start to finish I just loved everything about it. I'm a big fan of genre spoofs and this one had a lot of thought behind it. I love silent movie slapstick, big on Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd and this film took inspiration from that. I love the old Warner Brothers cartoons, which had slapstick inspiration too and found that here, Plus the film had heart, it wasn't just all for the yuks. There was a redemption storyline which unfolded as the film progressed.

Two come to mind. Zombieland was the first movie that broke the mold for me in my mind (saw it when I was 16). It felt like it broke a lot of rules in a way that thrilled me. Grand Budapest Hotel did the same for me a couple years later (I later fell in love with all of Wes Anderson’s work).

Transformers animated movie. Optimus Prime was my least favourite transformer and the soundtrack is awesome.

Manchester by the sea, Saw

Everything everywhere all at once. From the languages spoken, to the themes, to the music and feature of Claire de Lune, to the overall messaging …. Yeah

**Children of Men**. That may seem a bit far-fetched, but: I loved all kinds of things about the film, from the cast to the score to the story to the long takes. I was at the theater one afternoon and saw it on a poster and bought a ticket, because I hadn't decided what I was going to see that day and it just happened to be starting within the hour. I hadn't heard much at all about it before hand. Oh, and I'm infertile. (if you ever see me on here talking about kids, it's because we adopted some, after going nearly bankrupt trying fertility treatments. America, f*** yeah!)

Eight Legged freaks. It's been my favorite movie since I was a child and nobody else seems to love it like I do

Submarine (2010)

“Yeah, when a movie just hits all your tastes perfectly it feels almost personal.”

Past Lives. I felt every cell in my body while I watched it. I thought I was going to cry through the whole thing but it just felt so perfect that I never did. 

Hot Rod 2007 - Felt like my friends and I were the intended audience for it at the time.

For me, the movie that *understood* me, was "Mr. Nobody". Iirc it didn't get a good reception, but I absolutely connected with the protagonist 

Good Will Hunting. I was a janitor and always sneaking into schools to finish their nearly impossible mathematical problems on the board while also being unsure of myself in life, though fortunately had some close friends I goofed off with and got into street fights and such. I just totally related immediately.

The first one that comes to mind is the movie Wild with Reese Witherspoon. The summer she hiked the Pacific Crest trail is the same summer that I did an approximately 1,000 mile bicycle trip starting in California. I too had no idea what I was getting into, and was partying pretty hard immediately beforehand. I loved seeing the isolation that no longer exists in a world of cell phones and GPS, and the reliance on other people that was basically required to do that kind of travel back then. I even recognized a lot of her gear. It's been a long time since that summer but that movie took me right back there.

In 1984 eight year old me saw the greatest film ever, The Last Starfighter. It had everything spaceship fighting, video games, robot clones, and the double red laser tube thing. It has remained a favorite over 40 years later.

Spotlight. A Tom McCarthy film, with Michael Keaton, that exposes the Roman Catholic Church.

The Green Room. Punk rock mixed with real life (and timely) horror of neo-nutsees… I walked out thinking “I wish I had wrote that!”

Maybe it's recency bias, but I said exactly this walking out of Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie

Most recently, Train Dreams. I love how slow and pensive and beautiful the film is.

Get Out

The Hundred Foot Journey, Burnt, and Chef

Factotum with Matt Dillon. It is hilarious. No one else has seen it. M. Dillon, M. Tomei, Lilly Taylor and Fisher Stevens. It is like a more realistic Big Lebowski. I dont understand why it's not a cult classic.

Lisa Frankenstein I love 80s movies and the aesthetics. I love camp and anything just so bad it's good, a good parody too. I grew up obsessed with Lisa Frank and The Munsters equally. And then of course they made Jughead Jones the lead male.

Hook Back to the Future Bill & Ted trilogy The Matrix Star Wars Episodes I, IV, V, VI Prince of Egypt Braveheart Can't Hardly Wait

Zelig

Oh yeah. Recently “Is This Thing On?”. Love this movie. The Gift Anora These movies just hit me hard. Very character driven.

Requiem for a Dream is the most lovely comedy I can think of.

Never Let Me Go

Saved! I've shown this to so many people to explain my upbringing.

Big Fish and Dead Poets Society

After hours. I've shown it to all my friends and family but none of them are into it and I think it's almost a perfect movie 🤷🏻

Barry Lyndon, straight-faced historical comedy

It was reverse for me; real life started to imitate the movie a little too much. My mom died out of the blue. I lived 600 miles away. I didn't even know how to process it, so I went to work numb. I went back to my little town for the funeral. Stood there in my nice jacket and everything just spun by. Met a girl (again). She was the weird kid, about 4 years younger than me growing up. Well, the movie I'm talking about is Garden State. My explanation of my experience wouldn't be a good narrative to the movie, but, living it felt like I was going through each scene. It helped me to know that someone had experienced this very same thing before.

America Psycho. Friend of mine was watching it and called me “come over, I’m watching a movie about you “

The Wackness Used to sell weed to a girl and she was like how have you never seen that movie it's about you.

Grand Budapest Hotel It sort of perfectly encapsulates every part of what I’ve felt about recent european history that my grandmother told me about when I was little.

Elio. Yes, the Pixar movie that bombed horribly and most people dislike because Disney un-queered it after test screenings. So, Elio is an autistic-coded kid with no friends and a strained family life who is obsessed with space and aliens. He wants to be abducted because he feels he doesn't belong on Earth. I'm an autistic person who's never had any solid friendships, and literally no friends at all when I was a kid. My relationship with my family was fraught. I grew up obsessed with Star Wars and the original Carl Sagan version of Cosmos. I cried multiple times in a mostly deserted theater watching this movie. Especially when they bust out the Carl Sagan quotes.

Licorice Pizza. For starters, PT Anderson is one of my favorite directors... but this one is generally considered among his weakest efforts. Fair enough. But back in 1979, I was a 17-year-old wiseass who was involved with a 23-year-old woman who worked at my high school, and the dynamic between us was very much like the one depicted in that film. And a lot of the unplanned hijinks they got themselves into looked pretty damn familiar, too. It was more than nostalgic for me.

Red White and Royal Blue. Classic enemy to friends romance but with gay main characters.

Almost Famous. I grew up as a creative writer and completely in love with live music, particularly rock. It also doesn’t hurt that I’ve been told I look like Kate Hudson/Goldie Hawn my whole life. 

Tron. A classic hero's journey through the lens of computer technology not as it was or would even become, but as it was imagined by artists and dreamers.

The Backrooms, even though I haven't seen it. I've been a fan of liminal spaces ever since it had a name.

There’s some people on a site called O******* that will make movies specifically for you.

I want to soothe my ego and give an answer for one of my favorite movies that's actually good, like Crimson Peak, but I would be kidding myself if I answered anything besides Tag (2018). I've always struggled with comedy movies because I have terrible secondhand embarrassment— as a kid I used to leave the room when my parents watched sitcoms, they caused me Physical Pain. Probably a little bit to do with my autism and lack of social skills, watching people bomb in social interactions just made me feel really bad about my own life. The same went for humor that was mean spirited— when people get mocked or mean I just don't have a good time. So half the time I'm scared to even *try* comedy films, especially watching with other people, because the only thing worse than having a strong emotional reaction to a stupid movie is explaining that emotional reaction to everyone else. I just happened to work at the movie theater when Tag came out, and I went. This premise sounds stupid as shit— a bunch of adults playing tag like they're kids? Well, I love Jon hamm, and I like a lot of these actors, actually. That's like. Charlie Day and Hannibal from the Eric Andre show and Isla fisher and Jeremy renner?? Hawkeye?? Sure, f*** it, I'm not paying for a ticket. I loved it. It was perfect. Absolutely absurd premise, well acted, well executed, with genuine emotional honesty and vulnerability displayed in between absolutely insane slapstick. I grew up reading a lot of Manga and watching anime and it is on *that* level of physical comedy and slapstick. All of these characters are insane assholes but when they're assholes to each other they genuinely recognize it and you genuinely feel like they're friends. It is a deeply stupid movie, the physics and physicality of it don't make a lot of sense, and the ending is like it's out of a completely different film, but it came together perfectly for me. I love it. I recommend it to everyone and literally not one single person has ever taken my recommendation, and you know what, that's okay. This film can just be mine! I can sit happily alone and watch Jeremy Renner play a better Hawkeye than he does in the Marvel Movies. It's MY stupid f****** comfort movie.

Had this reaction with Landscape With Invisible Hand and Megalopolis. Both are duper out there and felt like they were calling my name

A Monster Calls

Young Hearts

totally get that feeling! for me, it's got to be the grand budapest hotel and mad max: fury road—just pure perfection.

Apocalypto. It's the only movie I rewatched immediately after finishing it. 

* Dead Talents Society * I Blame Society