Pop Rocks: Basic Cable Blues -- The 10 Movies You Will Always Watch When They Come On

​You know the feeling: It's 11 p.m., you're lying half-conscious on your couch and thinking tonight -- tonight -- is the night you're finally going to go to bed before midnight and get a decent night's sleep. Maybe this will be the start of a new chapter in your life, one in which you no longer click channels aimlessly until the wee hours, allowing the idiot box to draw you in with its fluorescent tentacles and rendering you useless and nodding off at your desk the next day. By Jove, this could be the beginning of a whole new life!

But just in case, you scroll through the guide one more time. No, no...don't look at TBS or AMC, DON'T LOOK AT THEM.

Too late, you find yourself inexplicably watching heavily edited, commercially laden versions of one of your favorite movies. Next thing you know, it's 1:00 in the morning and you're covered in Dorito dust, brimming with just enough self-loathing to help you drift off into a fitful, wretched sleep that will come to an abrupt end when that alarm goes off in five hours.

What the hell is wrong with you?

Jaws

They show this fucker every July 4th, sometimes in a 24-hour marathon, and I still can't not watch it when it's on. I own the 30th anniversary DVD, the Blu-ray and at least one VHS copy, and yet I cannot help sitting through 45 minutes worth of Chili's commercials and "Extenz" ads whenever it pops up in basic cable. Farewell and adieu to my goddamn common sense.

The Shawshank Redemption

I'm not sure what happened between the 1950s and today that turned our prison populations from decent-hearted fellows full of sage advice and homespun wisdom into tattooed psychopaths, but I'm sure Obama had something to do with it. And was there ever a more satisfying feeling than when Hadley beat the shit out of Boggs? Take that, you ginger rapist.

The Godfather

It's a special kind of stupid that makes me watch a 3+ hour movie...with commercials. I can't set aside 30 minutes to pay my bills, but I can somehow find five hours to watch a sanitized version of Sonny getting machine-gunned at the toll booth. I'm sure the folks at American Express will understand.