Great Films You'll Watch Once

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This is a thread about those films that while being well-done and well-made, you would only see them once. Oh, sure, you'll make references to them, look up trivia, and even watch the brief scenes they show when they are mentioned on TV, but watch the whole thing over again? No, thank you.

For me:

Requiem for a Dream
A Clockwork Orange
Rebel Without a Cause
West Side Story
The Graduate
Barry Lyndon
Paths of Glory
The Deer Hunter
Chinatown
The Grapes of Wrath
Jerry Maguire
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Do the Right Thing
Rosemary's Baby

I'll add:

The Great Dictator (Charlie Chaplin movie)
What Dreams May Come
The Never Ending Story
The Man from Earth
Grave of the Fireflies (you will never watch it again because its very depressing and gut-wrenching ... yet a masterpiece)
Gravity
K-Pax
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (the only Jim Carrey movie worth watching)
MirrorMask
The Dark Crystal

...and finally, I forget the name of the movie but its about a little vietnamese girl that was sold to a brothel and it follows her story ... its heart wrenching and based on true stories/common patterns of the lives of kids sold to sexual slavery in the region.

Came here to put Requiem For a Dream and it's your first choice (I suspect it's a lot of people's first choice)
I'd also go with Primer, The Machinist and Eraserhead.

You are so right on Grave of the Fireflies.

I would add the following with the condition that as an adult I would only watch them the one time I have and not knowingly watch them again although I did like them and refererence them.

Flight of the Phoenix(1965)
Flight of the Navigator
The Descendants
On The Beach(2000)
Ben Hur
The Ten Commandments
Casino Royale(1967)
Red Dawn(1984)
Earth Girls are Easy
The Last Unicorn
The Princess Bride(Unfortunately I didn't have a choice with watching this one only once. It seems my family, including extended, will watch this movie over any others given the choice. I've seen this probably over 200 times in my life, and if I had a choice, it would be once. Repeatedly seeing it ruined it for me.)

There might be films I only WRLL once in my lifetime but there are no films out there that I couldn't WRLL multiple times.

Schindler's List
American History X
Gone With the Wind
Million Dollar Baby
Crash
Rebel Without a Cause
Cassablanca

If Once Every Few Years Counts:
Hobbit (series)
Star Wars
Neverending Story
Rocky
The Godfather
ET
Gremlins
Gidget
The Trueman Show (I'm about due to see it again)
Glory
Gattaca
Jaws
Wagons East

Last edited by BetwixtBetween on 27 Feb 2014, 11:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I agree with "The Great Dictator" which is one of the most un-amusing movies I have ever seen. Which reminds me of a story: at a party in 1930's Hollywood a famous scriptwriter told Louis B. Mayer that he had heard Chaplin was making a movie about Hitler. Mayer, who was Jewish, exploded in anger. "There are some things about which you shouldn't joke!" The writer responded that it was no joke, he had heard that Chaplin was making a movie about Hitler, and it would be a comedy. This was just too much for Mayer who reportedly shouted "a comedy, a COMEDY? already I'm not laughing ! !!"

I disagree with "Clockwork Orange", I have watched it many times and found it disturbing, horrific, amusing, and mesmerizing.
It could well be THE movie future generations connect with Kubrick.

Catch-22
Miller's Crossing
Being John Malkovich

Mary and Max. I saw it last night. It's depressing material with no need to see it again. I got it the first time.
Manon of the Spring/Jean de Florette. French films with Gerald Depardieu. I loved them the first time., No need to see them again.
Star Wars: Episode 1 - There's no way I could sit through this torture again.
Guinea Pig: Flowers of Flesh & Blood. I got this the first time around and it was wrenching enough.
Slaughtered Vomit Dolls. I didn't even see this all the way through but I refuse to subject myself to it again.
Irreversible. I got this the first time. Again, too violent to sit through for a second time.

The Hurt Locker
The Departed
Chicago
Se7en
Once Upon a Time in America
The Princess Bride
Five Easy Pieces
Marathon Man
Cape Fear
Great Expectations

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

12 Years a Slave
The Birth of a Nation
Intolerance

August: Osage County

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Moulin Rouge (1952 and 2001)

Dead Poets Society. It reminds me too much of high school.