Guilty Pleasure: Peggy Sue Got Married

I went back and forth on this one. Is Peggy Sue Got Married a member of the Pantheon or a Guilty Pleasure? I mean, it stars all sorts of big names, was directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and has endured long enough in our collective pop culture memory to show up on TV from time to time. On the other hand, Nicolas Cage. I ultimately went with Guilty Pleasure, because when I was asked what so entranced me as to keep me up half the night, I was hesitant to admit it was this movie. Eh, whatever. I legitimately love it either way.

There really isn't that much to it. Kathleen Turner faints at her high school reunion, and wakes up back in the '60s. Half the movie is simply her reacting to encountering the younger versions of her friends and family, but she manages to nail every single one of those scenes, making me feel just as emotional as she does. The rest of it is her wrestling with the decision to remain with Nicolas Cage or not, since back in the present, they're in the midst of a divorce.

This movie belongs to a select group I call the Vortex, meaning that no matter what I'm doing, if I run across it, I'll sit slack-jawed and watch the whole thing. I don't even know that I'd call it particularly well-crafted, but there's no denying that it's magnetic. The score certainly helps; the background theme is heartbreaking. Aside from that, it's very difficult to describe what makes this movie so engaging to me, but damned if it doesn't warm my heart every single time.