What is the one movie, if any in particular, that sparked your interest in film?

Mine would have to be Cinema Paradiso.

The Seven Samurai.

For me it would definitely have to be Eraser Head.

The biggest inspiration for me would have to be Salo 120 Days of Sodom.

Seven Samurai and Samurai Trilogy (Miyamoto Musashi)

Stalker

I saw Bergman’s Face to Face as soon as it was released. I’d read a bit about his films, but nevertheless I was absolutely floored by the film, especially Liv Ullmann’s performance. That’s when I first realized just how powerful and moving and mysterious a film could be.

Full Metal Jacket – Saw it when I was 6 or 7.

Woah, you guys are hardcore, mine was The Godfather, and I saw that one when I was 14.

RAN.

One night I watched it 3 times in a row. It was then that I wanted to be a filmmaker.

+3 for seven samurai

Taxi Driver

Scorsese’s Who’s That Knocking At My Door

Some of the first movies I saw that really sparked an interest for me in cinema as more than just entertainment, but actual art and intellectual medium are uh… lets see. Memento, Requiem for a Dream, Reservoir Dogs, A Clockwork Orange, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Usual Suspects, and American History X. Probably one or 2 more, but I can’t really think of them.

I pretty specifically remember watching all of these for the first time within a few weeks of each other when I was 15, maybe 16. Quite literally, life changing. A friend had recommended all of them to me, before that I really don’t remember viewing movies as anything more than just fun entertainment.

Children of Men is what made me want to be a director and not just a writer anymore.

Well,I can’t really think of only one.“Lawrence of Arabia” and “The Good,the Bad and the Ugly”,were maybe the two first movies that draw my attention to films.But Scorsese has to be the major influence for me,his movies were the reason that I started to watch movies seriously.And “Seventh Seal” was definetely the one that got me in world cinema.

Godards work.

I Love Melvin

Shadows

Ingmar Bergman’s Hour of the Wolf.

Not his best by any stretch of the imagination, but it was my introduction to ‘art cinema.’ I collected all of Bergman’s works like bubblegum cards afterward. From there it was only a hop, skip, and proverbial jump to Godard, Bunuel, and Fassbinder.

Taxi Driver
Au Revoir Les Enfants

I was 10 or 11 when I saw:

Neither are particularly great films; arguably, maybe not even good ones. But both were available in the local video shop. Nobody rented foreign film in my Florida town. I was curious about the neglected genre. The videos weren’t rated. Sometimes they had unabashed nudity, and the cultural cues were all different. Both films got me thinking about films and TV produced outside the US, because I couldn’t place any of the references. The former film was an sendup of “The Bicycle Thief” and a critique of Italian TV.

Summary: A spoof of a much better film and a naturalistic Siberian coming-of-age flick were the unintentional gateways to Almodovar, Bunuel, Jarman, Ozu, and Wenders.

Bergman’s Through a Glass Darkly. As soon as the crashing waves sounded on the menu, I knew I was lost in the deep sea of film and nothing could pull me back.

Bergman’s Through a Glass Darkly. As soon as the crashing waves sounded on the menu, I knew I was lost in the deep sea of film and nothing could pull me back.

I don’t know if I would be posting here if I had not snuck into a creening of American Beauty later Magnolia
after that Japon and Bergman and Antonioni, later Tarkovsky and Abbas Kiarostrami.

Strangers on a Train in 1951

As a child, I was fascinated by the “Star Wars” trilogy. I collected figurines, could rattle off names of the lesser know characters, et cetera. These were some of the first films I experienced.

Of course, lots of children from my generation (I was born in 1978) fancied “Star Wars” films, but I took to them a little more than most. That said, I’ve never experienced the “enhanced” versions that appeared circa 1997. I’d experienced them years before anyway. I did go and see the new trilogy episodes at the cinema, but I regard the 1970s-80s films as more entertaining, more fondly remembered.

“Star Wars” planted the seeds of my interest in science-fiction and horror films in particular. Growing up, I read about science fiction movies in books and built up a mental database of “films to see” from the genre.

One of those science fiction films I chased for years was “A Clockwork Orange.”

And after many years of waiting and wondering, I finally grabbed it.

I saw it for the first time at the age of 17, at the cinema, and returned twice the following week to re-watch the movie. It was my first Stanley Kubrick film and radically changed the way I look at cinema. It also put the idea in my mind of going to the cinema to see “old classics” rather than just the latest big blockbuster releases.

Later that decade I saw “2001: A Space Odyssey” at the Astor Theatre. I’m fortunate to live in a city (Melbourne, Australia) which has a magnificent cinema culture. I make it a point to attend the cinema to watch old classics. Otherwise, I do purchase D.V.D. films, but even if I own a film on D.V.D., I will still go and see it again at the cinema house.

I never download whole features and watch them from the Internet. I giggle at people who watch films on tiny mobile telephones and teensy tiny portable D.V.D. screens on the train. I’m a staunch defender of the “movie-going” experience. I want cinema houses that show classics from the 1980s and earlier to survive and flourish.

All told, I’ve always enjoyed films, and for whatever reason, am more avid and prolific in my film viewing than most. A lot of people here mention films as art, whereas I tend to view them more as allegories (social, political, et cetera).

2001_A Space Odissey

Getting tired of the shite in multiplexes made me start looking for something new and different,.

Ironically, I saw “A Clockwork Orange” at the multiplex! It was the old Village Cinema on Bourke Street. It’s no longer there. They had late night sessions for a brief season and it was the last film of the evening.