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Sandford is funny before you know what is going on, but the second visit is almost indecently well organised. Edgar Wright turns apparently incidental remarks, background faces and bits of village business into preparation for later pay-offs. Once the mystery stops demanding your attention, watch how often the editing has already made the joke before anyone delivers the line.
The tangled investigation is almost the wrong thing to concentrate on. Return for the pauses, Walter's misplaced certainty and the way phrases migrate between characters until the Dude starts sounding like the people who have irritated him. Knowing the detours makes the bowling-alley conversations feel less like interruptions and more like the entire point.
Cher's narration is so breezily confident that the gap between what she believes and what the scene shows can slip past on a first viewing. Amy Heckerling packs the clothes, school politics and supporting reactions with comic information. Come back once the romance is familiar and enjoy how precisely the film lets its heroine misunderstand a world she thinks she has organised.
The repeated walk to the shop is the obvious invitation to look twice: familiar streets become funny because Shaun is watching them much less carefully than we are. Elsewhere, throwaway plans and everyday expressions acquire later meanings. The pleasure is seeing how tightly a scruffy pub-and-flat comedy has been assembled, without losing the warmth between its hopeless friends.
Repetition is the machinery of the story, but knowing where Phil ends up makes Bill Murray's tiny changes in emphasis more noticeable. The same greeting can register as irritation, manipulation or actual attention. Follow the townspeople too: what first looks like a parade of obstacles gradually becomes a collection of lives the film has been asking him to notice.
The dogs are rather better adjusted than the people explaining them. Christopher Guest's mockumentary rewards returning to an interview after you understand its owner's anxieties, then watching the partner who is not speaking. The dog-show commentary adds another stream of beautifully misplaced confidence. It is especially good for viewers who find a held reaction funnier than a conspicuous punchline.
The first viewing can run on the affectionate collision between washed-up television actors and genuine space peril. Later ones reveal how neatly each performer's old role has trapped them, from the resentful alien sidekick to the terrified extra. Background responses and running complaints gain weight once you know which bits of fictional television will suddenly become useful.
Familiarity makes the office rituals more absurd, not less recognisable. Watch the different ways people approach Peter's desk, repeat a request or defend a tiny patch of authority. Mike Judge allows the dead time around a conversation to become part of the gag. Returning after another week of work can also change which apparently minor annoyance feels most accurately observed.
A vampire house share is a good joke; the fussy negotiations that keep it functioning are the reason to return. Look past the speaker in the mockumentary interviews and follow the resentments over cleaning, guests and going out. The practical problems of supernatural life stay small enough to feel like genuine flatmate grievances, even when the situation becomes magnificently ridiculous.
Ryan Gosling's delayed reactions are worth a second viewing on their own, particularly when Holland March has to work out how badly a simple task has gone. With the conspiracy familiar, the mismatched rhythms of Gosling and Russell Crowe become easier to savour. Shane Black also plants visual information inside the bustle, so the comic accidents and detective work keep crossing paths.
Knowing when the evening has stopped behaving like an ordinary game lets you enjoy how stubbornly the players cling to their assumptions. Rachel McAdams makes enthusiasm itself funny, while Jesse Plemons' neighbour supplies a very different, exquisitely controlled rhythm. Return for the staging and the reactions at the edges of conversations, rather than simply waiting for the next reversal.
The famous equipment and stage disasters are only the front door. Rob Reiner's mockumentary becomes richer when you watch the band's interviews as negotiations over status: who corrects whom, who takes offence and who tries to sound philosophical. Small hesitations and the crew's weary responses make these absurd musicians feel painfully well acquainted with one another.
There is often a second gag happening while the first is still landing, which makes this a particularly good film for watching around the frame. The solemn performances hold an increasingly nonsensical world together. Some sexual and racial jokes show their age, but the visual construction remains the attraction: familiarity frees you to catch the business that previously disappeared beneath a louder laugh.
Leslie Nielsen behaves as if he is in a perfectly serious police procedural while the frame quietly contradicts him. Watch the incidental signage, physical business and delayed consequences behind Frank Drebin's investigation. Rewatching helps separate the main pratfall from the smaller visual jokes surrounding it, and reveals how much the supporting cast contributes by refusing to acknowledge the nonsense.
The quest is easy to remember; the interruptions, strange background habits and escalating arguments are where another viewing pays off. It repeatedly finds new ways to puncture the dignity of a supposedly grand adventure. Knowing the famous encounters lets you listen to the supporting voices and notice how cheaply made scenery becomes an active part of the humour.
The uneasy sightseeing is funnier once you can hear the fears underneath the bickering. Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes give apparently casual exchanges shifting emotional stakes, while earlier moral arguments echo later decisions. This is a bleak, violent comedy rather than an easy comfort watch, but its mixture of wounded affection and stubborn principle becomes sharper with familiarity.
The characters are so busy imagining themselves in a serious spy story that it is easy to miss the precision of their vanity. On a return visit, follow who knows what and how little evidence anyone requires before making a disastrous inference. Brad Pitt's bright, eager certainty and the intelligence officers' bafflement become even better when the supposed conspiracy is no longer a puzzle.
The story moves briskly enough to carry you past miniature jokes in the décor, uniforms and choreography. Returning lets you follow Gustave's elaborate manners through a world that rarely deserves them, and appreciate the supporting performers' different comic temperatures. The nested storytelling also gives familiar scenes a more wistful edge: the beautiful surface is part of what the film is remembering.
The matching clothes and meticulously labelled family history are funny immediately, but they become sadder and stranger once you know what each person is protecting. Look at the invented books, pictures and domestic arrangements, then follow the pauses around Royal's attempts at reconciliation. Another viewing makes the visual jokes feel like expressions of people who have spent years rehearsing the same family roles.
The insults are quick, but the real repeat-viewing reward is tracking how a room changes whenever power shifts. A confident speaker becomes cautious; an onlooker suddenly discovers an opinion. The ensemble makes political survival look like terrible office behaviour taken to murderous extremes. Its treatment of terror is deliberately abrasive, so this suits viewers comfortable laughing and recoiling in the same scene.
Gary King's nostalgic account of the perfect night is worth hearing again once you have seen how his friends remember it. Pub names, casual remarks and the geography of the crawl do more work than they initially appear to. Beneath the accelerating genre chaos, watch the group's small refusals and Simon Pegg's frantic attempts to keep an old version of himself alive.
The comic-book graphics and musical interruptions arrive too fast to absorb everything at once. A repeat viewing gives you room to catch the background text, visual transitions and supporting reactions around Scott's self-absorbed narration of his own life. It becomes more interesting when his blinkered perspective is part of the joke, rather than a viewpoint the audience has to endorse.
The narration keeps correcting itself, which makes another viewing an opportunity to notice what the image has been doing while Harry tries to sound in control. Robert Downey Jr.'s anxious momentum rubs beautifully against Val Kilmer's impatience. The crime story supplies neat connections, but the recurring pleasure is watching performance, explanation and physical disaster keep getting in one another's way.
The impossible office floor is amusing before the central idea has even taken over. Once the story's rules are familiar, the filing-room etiquette, puppetry and casual treatment of an extraordinary discovery become easier to appreciate. Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman keep making selfishness look administratively ordinary. The humour is uneasy and sometimes cruel, with new details feeding that discomfort on a return.
