The Movie Tom Hanks Watches Multiple Times A Year Is A Hit '60s Classic

While just about everyone has their own list of essential movies, it's especially fascinating to see what someone's picks are when they have been involved with numerous iconic flicks themselves. To that end, few can claim to have starred in more beloved pieces of cinema than Tom Hanks. From "Saving Private Ryan" and "A League of Their Own" to "Forrest Gump" and "Toy Story," even if you've never actually seen a Tom Hanks movie, you've definitely at least heard of a few. So, when Hanks says he loves a particular movie, that opinion tends to carry some weight. Well, there's one movie in particular that the actor says he simply can't get enough of.

Even fans of Hanks may not know that he's named several of his all-time favorite films over the years, with a particular emphasis on pictures from the 1960s, such as "Midnight Cowboy" and the Beatles comedy "A Hard Day's Night." However, the film Hanks has revisited the most in his life seems to be none other than Stanley Kubrick's 1968 sci-fi classic, "2001: A Space Odyssey." In fact, during an interview with Letterboxd in June 2023, Hanks shared that he still makes it a point to watch the film at least "a couple of times a year."

That being said, Hanks is such a diehard fan of the movie that he does not necessarily recommend watching it with him. "I could walk you through '2001: A Space Odyssey' and not stop talking once during the entire film. So, I don't know if you want to have that experience," he said. Considering the movie runs well north of two hours, that may honestly be more impressive than it is annoying. The real question is whether or not that includes the intermission.

If you ask just about any film buff what their favorite movie is, there's a pretty decent chance they're going to name a movie directed by Stanley Kubrick. After all, at one point in time, the filmmaker seemed to be hitting back-to-back home runs. "2001: A Space Odyssey," for instance, certainly didn't happen in a vacuum (pun intended). It was sandwiched right in between "Dr. Strangelove" and "A Clockwork Orange," both of which are both similarly considered masterpieces in their own right. Kubrick's later work included more iconic films, perhaps most notably "The Shining" and "Full Metal Jacket."

You may be wondering, then: What is it about "2001" specifically that made it stand out to Tom Hanks? Fortunately, that question isn't tough to answer, considering that Hanks has spoken about his love of the film multiple times over the years — so much so that there's an entire compilation that was posted to YouTube by a channel called The Stanley Kubrick Appreciation Society.

In one particular clip, which originates from CNN's 2019 docuseries "The Movies," Hanks recalls the first time he saw the film's opening scene. "'2001' had the greatest time cut in the history of time cuts, in which the entire history of humankind is communicated in the first weapon being thrown up into a blue sky and suddenly becomes a spacecraft orbiting the Earth. ... When that happened, I swear to God, my head exploded," said the "Polar Express" star, who would have been around 12 years old at the time of the film's original 1968 release. During an earlier appearance on BBC's "Scene by Scene" in 2001, the father of four even went so far as to say that no film he's starred in even touches "2001" in terms of greatness. High praise indeed.