Films that made me love Film:
Seven Samurai
Fantastic Planet
Aguirre: The Wrath of God
The Shining
Dr. Strangelove
Boogie Nights
Notorious
Vernon, Florida
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
Tampopo
My Dinner with Andre
Visitor Q
Letter From An Unknown Woman
The Birds
Rashomon
The witching hour (La hora bruja, 1985) Jaime de Armiñán
Solaris (Solyaris, 1972) Andrei Tarkovsky
The doom generation (1995) Gregg Araki
En la tormenta (1982) Fernando Vallejo
Sholay introduced me to the amazing world of movies, especially Indian Movies. Back then I had no means to watch other language movies. (20 years back)
Schindler’s List hooked me into English Movies. I have seen many before this but this one made me understand and love English movies . (8 years back)
Cinema Paradiso got me excited for Foreign Movies. and now every chance I get I try to explore movies from various countries, directors,and actors. (3 years back)
Today, I am a proud movie goer for I have no country/language boundary.
The fascinating characters, symbolism and the far-ranging back-story possibilities of the original Star Wars Trilogy really opened me up to a passion for movies. And also, that killer soundtrack throughout the movies.
But the one that first sold me hook, line and sinker on the dramatic and storytelling power of movies was when I watched “A Clockwork Orange” when I was 16, and watched it over and over again.
Leon (or ‘The Professional’ in the U.S.) It’s irresistible mix of high octane action of heart wrenching love story had a great effect on my 10 year old self and I have never looked back since. Followed closly by American Beauty and A Clockwork Orange
I know nobody has answer in 3 years but… anyway,I think it started out with Alfred Hitchcock’s films: Psycho, The Birds, Vertigo, Rear Window and North by Northwest.
I also credited Taxi Driver for my interest in film.
10 films that made me a cinephile:
The Godfather 1 & 2
La Grande Illusion
Dr. Strangelove
Full Metal Jacket
Howard Hawk’s “Scarface”
Le Samourai
The Searchers
Steamboat Bill, Jr.
Wild Strawberries
The Third Man
I’d have to say …. every movie I’ve ever seen. Even those I hated.
I credit Psycho as the film which single-handedly made me a movie fanatic. It all began with that one; I had some kind of a cinematic epiphany while watching that for the first time. It’s still my favorite film of all time and Hitchcock is still my favorite director.
Amarcord, first and foremost. After that it’s hard to say what followed… Fanny & Alexander perhaps or 8½. A little later came The Mirror which was my first Tarkovsky. But Amarcord opened up doors to me, definitely.
I think Henry Fool by Hal Hartley, later Bicycle Thief (I didn’t know it was really famous, a milestone in cinema history, at the time), We All Loved Each Other So Much by Scola (I have later dismissed it, maybe I should rewatch it?), Fellini’s Roma. Maybe little bit Wild at Heart.
I was more into music before that. What attracted me to cinema was that contrary to pop & rock music it wasn’t mostly Anglo-American. It was an undiscovered world out there. This was maybe then years ago. Now there’s still a lot I haven’t seen, and that’s fantastic.
Early ones:
Alien
Gladiator
The ones, that gave me new perspectives on a movie:
The Artist – made me appreciate the masterpiece an actor can create, without a single word
The Fall – visually enchanting
That’s all I can think of at the moment :)
Watching Heat in the theater at 11 yrs old.
The Abyss.
Taxi Driver
I vividly remember being totally enraptured with The Good, The Bad And The Ugly as a thirteen-year-old.
That must have been the film that started it all for me.
Christopher Lee and vampire movies and the “Italian Job” when I was nine.
I was still to young to get “I Want to Live”.
About the same time I read my first book on (fantasy) film cover to cover and learned about Roger Vadim and Louise Brooks and I was hooked. I started taking the bus three miles to the the waterfront to a converted warehouse to see fifties style matinees. Two cartoons like “Betty Boop for President” followed by “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” and “It Came from Outer Space” was one bill.
I miss that theater. I am seriously misting up.
The Great Dictator
12 Angry Men
Definitely Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot from 1993
There’s too many to choose from, but I must say:
CAT PEOPLE (Paul Schrader, 1982)
THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH (Nicolas Roeg, 1976)
SEVEN SAMURAI (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)
CACHE (Michael Haneke, 2005)
OPERA (Dario Argento, 1987)
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
FANTASIA (Walt Disney, 1940)
SALO, OR THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975)
UN CHIEN ANDALOU (Luis Buñuel & Salvador Dali, 1928)
REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (Nicholas Ray, 1955)
CITIZEN KANE (Orson Welles, 1941)
BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)
LA JETEE (Chris Marker, 1962)
PARIS, TEXAS (Wim Wenders, 1984)
SATANTANGO (Béla Tarr, 1994)
8 1/2 (Federico Fellini, 1963)
TAXI DRIVER (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
IRREVERSIBLE (Gaspar Noé, 2002)
A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE (John Cassavetes, 1974)
ERASERHEAD (David Lynch, 1977)
THE SECRET OF NIMH (Don Bluth, 1982)
THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (Carl Th. Dreyer, 1928)
VIDEODROME (David Cronenberg, 1983)
THERE WILL BE BLOOD (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)
THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE, & HER LOVER (Peter Greenaway, 1989)
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)
AU HASARD BALTHAZAR (Robert Bresson, 1966)
STALKER (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)
RAN (Akira Kurosawa, 1985)
MONDO CANE (Gualtiero Jacopetti, Franco Prosperi & Paolo Cavara, 1962)
GODZILLA (Ishiro Honda, 1954)
DAWN OF THE DEAD (George A. Romero, 1978)
BLADE RUNNER (Ridley Scott, 1982)
AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD (Werner Herzog, 1972)
COOL WORLD (Ralph Bakshi, 1992)
EL TOPO (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1970)
SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD (Edgar Wright, 2010)
IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES (Nagisa Oshima, 1976) + EMPIRE OF PASSION (Oshima, 1978)
LANDSCAPE IN THE MIST (Theodoros Angelopoulos, 1988)
PERSONA (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
WALKABOUT (Nicolas Roeg, 1971)
UGETSU (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)
… just to name a few, but still a lot :)
It only took one: Taxi Driver. Literally changed the course of my life at one in the morning. I wanted to make comic books before then.
When I was very young, I LOVED everything…from Willy Wonka to Food of the Gods…but then around 13, I started to see things I didn’t like…and realized there were some good movies, some bad, some brillant…
I first started to appreciate movies in the early ’80s….seeing things like THE GRADUATE, 2001, CABARET, THE MALTESE FALCON, TAXI DRIVER, and so on at the Harvard Square Theatre (double bill EVERY day)!
@Jaspar Lamar Crabb
I began appereciating cinema since 1996 when I saw ALIENS (1986) on TV (as a 5-year-old). My interest in cinema has a long history to it, you know.
Emily Coté
Fritz Lang’s “Dr. Mabuse der Spieler,” “Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse,” and “Die 1,000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse.” Along with “M” and some of his other earlier films like “Spies” and “Frau im Mond.” There is something about watching those particular films that sends chills down my spine they are so wonderful.