Movie Marathons

So a few weeks ago we did a Lord of the Rings marathon.  Not just the cinema versions either, as intended, as I forgot my DVD copies were the extended editions only.  We started at 1:30pm Saturday and finished at 2am Sunday.  How dedicated is that? But we didn't actually do this purely for the fun of it or to punish ourselves, the purpose was to catch up on the films before 3 of us went to see One Man Lord of the Rings.  OMLOTR is a stage show where one guy acts out the whole trilogy in one hour, with no props or sound other than sound effects he can make with his own voice.  As we had previous form with One Man Star Wars, we knew it would be very quick and to keep up you would need to be really familiar with the movies.  So we watched them all with a couple of breaks.  And I have to say, these movies are still really really good.  If you haven't seen them before, or not for ages, they are worth revisiting.  Some special effects look a little outdated, but this can be easily overlooked due to the great story, acting and epic-ness of it all.  However, I'd probably recommend against a marathon of these films (extended editions in particular) unless you are truly totally nerdy and have a good ability to stay awake during long movies.  Reflecting on this though raises the question - what would be a good movie marathon?

As we are too old to go out drinking and partying these days except on special occasions, movie marathons are a good way to fill in long weekends. So now I'm considering what the next movie marathon should be.  Do you stick to trilogies because they tend to have a good story arc?  Star Wars (original), The Matrix, Back to the Future? Do you do two movies - great movies with good sequels - because you don't want to watch three whole movies in a row? Umm I can't really think of any examples of this - help me out. The horror genre throws up all kinds of options - Evil Dead, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th etc.  But a lot of those movies don't hold up being more comedic than scary these days. What about a certain director e.g. Hitchcock, Tarantino.  Or do you just do a theme e.g. chick flicks, superheros.   Our girls' nights in the past have yielded some good double bills - Heathers & Empire Records, Corey Haim double.

I'm looking for some inspiration for future movie marathons - tell me which movies you have enjoyed  as a movie marathon before, or what you think would make a good day of extended laziness supplemented with lollies and softdrink to stay awake!  By the way the One Man Lord of the Rings was awesome, so funny and witty, it really paid off to have watched the films recently.