Photo by Ahmed Ibrahim

Freshmen Nikhil Arya and Olivia Duong sit in the auditorium lobby during lunch watching the trailer to one of Duong’s favorite movies, “The Mitchells vs. The Machines.”

Picture this: it’s a Friday night. You chose not to go out for the first time in a while and want to watch a new movie. You spend endless hours scrolling through every streaming service, looking for something to watch, but you just end up watching the same movie that you’ve seen almost 20 times. Everyone has a comfort movie that is impossible to turn off: does your comfort movie reflect who you are?

English teacher Melanie Moomau’s comfort movie is late-’90s Drew Barrymore romance Ever After, a film she’d watched for the first time around 10 years old. Movies watched at a younger age can have a bigger impact on you than the ones that you watch later in life because there are tiny details that will stick with you forever. In Moomau’s case, she thought the costumes were otherworldly and found that the storytelling differed from other movies she had seen. “It is a happy ending movie. It’s not complex, not super serious, just fun. I relate to her with her love of books and reading,” Moomau said.

Sophomore Christos Pazartzis’s comfort movie is the Christmas classic Home Alone, a film he’d watch when he was younger. He thought the fact that Kevin would shoot the intruders in the head was hilarious, he couldn’t stop cracking up. “A long time ago, when my parents would leave, I used to set traps and have my Nerf gun within five feet of me at all times. All because I watched Home Alone,” Pazartzis said.

Junior Jason Buzy’s comfort movie is Ridley Scott’s 2015 science fiction flick The Martian, where Matt Damon stars as a spaceman abandoned on Mars trying to find resources to stay alive. Buzy can relate to the film more than the others he’s seen due to its reflection of who he strives to be. “I have a love for space, flight and physics, which I can see in the main character. I also love his witty humor and I’ve grown to love his taste in music,” Buzy said.

Junior Saanvi Gadila’s comfort movie is the original 2001 The Fast and the Furious, a film that defined the action genre as a whole. Gadila’s reasons for loving the film and franchise in its entirety? Her celebrity crush is the lead actor: Paul Walker – and she could recite almost the whole plot in one sitting. The film has a variety of inspirational themes laced into it, and with its runtime being just shy of an hour and 45 minutes, it’s easy to follow. “I love watching Formula 1 racing and driving myself around today, so I feel like the original Fast and Furious encapsulates how amazing both of those things are,” Gadila said.

So there you have it: four examples of comfort movies from four different people across four different genres. Everybody’s got a comfort movie, and while it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, it has meaning to them. “Comfort movies aren’t movies that everyone finds interesting or enjoyable, but movies that you have a personal connection with. I find comfort in movies that reflect who I want and strive to be, as well as fun memories: who I’ve watched it with, where and how far I’ve come since the first, second and thousandth watch,” Buzy said.