Now Showing: The Not Necessarily Hip Movies Hot-Wired To Your Soul

While there are some movies which burst into your life once, slam you in the subconscious and lodge 'emselves there for eternity whether you ever encounter them again or not, I guess there are others, perhaps less epochal type affairs, which influence your life on more of a rolling basis, not sacred cows or personal totems, but simply those movies which you return to, for whatever reason, again and again and again throughout your lives. Let me give you an example. I've seen The Wild Bunch, from bloody beginning to bloody end, maybe five or six times, max, in my life. The first time I saw it, lets say 8 years ago, it pretty much totally destroyed my mind. It is A Work Of Genius. Ask me what my favourite movies are, The Wild Bunch is gonna be in there, maybe Top 10, certainly Top 20. But five or six viewings in a lifetime is nothing, given that I watch Ghostbusters half a dozen times every year, or - thanks to Film4's ridiculously narrow selection of movies - that I seem to find myself sat in front of The Day After Tomorrow pretty much once a fortnight. So which has had the greater IMPACT on me? On my...subconscious? The Wild Bunch, or Ghostbusters? And the reality is, you gotta go Ghostbusters. I'm talking not about those movies which you consider to be the greatest works of art, (ie, The Wild Bunch), but simply those movies of which you have never tired, have spent the most time in the company of, and which are therefore hot-wired to your soul. The movies about which you can honestly say, without trying to be hip : "To really understand me, you've really gotta know..." I'll be updating my list on here as and when the inspiration takes me, and I'm gonna begin today by talkin' 'bout...

.1. Shaft (1971, Dir. Gordon Parks)

Yeah, odd one, right? I dunno. I dont suppose that it's a remarkable movie on any level really, except perhaps for the soundtrack, which - while it was undeniably very influential - I actually think is kinda overrated. But there's a quality to 'Shaft' I really enjoy, something I find really watchable. So what's 'watchable'? Well...I like Richard Roundtree's super-cool, but never cliched, performance, and I like the the clothes, and gang boss Bumpy Jonas' sweet office decor, and how the whole affair is sorta low-budget and...well, I guess the word would have to be funky. I like the pace of the thing, a steady pimp-rolling mid-tempo pace, punctuated by flashes of sudden violence. I like the fact that Bumpy is played by some cat called Moses Gunn, which is the coolest name I've ever heard, and have always fantasised about starting a band called The Moses Gunn. The jokes are monumentally lame, but otherwise the script is tight and punchy. I dig bad-ass- with-a-social-conscience Ben Buford, and his outlaw gang of grim, angry-young Panthers. And while I'm certainly interested in this period of the 20th Century, and undoubtedly share the regular white-liberal-long hair romantic fascination with the Black Power movement, I don't even think that's what appeals primarily here...I mean, if I really wanted to get a fix of genuine Black Power By Any Means Necessary socio-history, I could spend my days watching Bobby Seale documentaries or Sweet Sweetback's Bad Asssss Song or whatever, which I don't. It's damning the movie with faint praise to say that I just find it comfortably undemanding, but I mean that sincerely and as a compliment. It ticks a lot of boxes, and does so without shouting about it. Can you dig it? Right on.