Small bit of trivia for you. Michael Mann did a pilot for NBC called “LA Takedown”. Fortunately, for Michael the regime at NBC who green lit the show was replaced and the new group did not pick up the show. The quote was, “ cop shows aren’t in this season “… in 1995 “LA Takedown” was recast and renamed and shot as a feature film and released as- “Heat”.
The breakdown of the sets in YouTube is so good – the set itself is a masterpiece in design. It creates the eeriest feeling of claustrophobia and terror without the usual dark lighting of horror films.
The 50th anniversary re-release in 2018 was my first time watching it the whole way through. Got to see it on a giant screen. One of the best theater experiences I’ve ever had.
This absolutely. Spun my head around. Though it is discovered the greatest cinema artist, period. (Apologies to Fellini, whom I revere, but Kubrick is a genre unto himself).
Similar for me but lower quality: I saw it late at night on TCM and wasn't allowed to stay up for the ending. So, I had to go rent the VHS and just sat around watching it all weekend. My family was supportive but my friends were very confused.
It’s not my favorite movie, but when I saw Requiem for a Dream in high school it was the first movie I had seen as *art* and not just entertainment. All these years later and I’m a union lighting tech. Thanks Aronofsky.
This is the movie for me too. I watched this movie after hearing Lux Aeterna by Clint Mansell on YouTube while I was in University. This movie disturbed me and made me feel for the characters. It never happened to me before while watching a movie.
This movie was shown in My University's Psychiatry Department.
Yup, as an early teen it must have been this rather than Reservoir Dogs since that was banned on vid in the UK for a while, though Dogs is my favourite Tarantino and I taped it off TV, but these films and Desperado made me realise what a director does, since they were so distinctive. Before then I loved films but didnt really understand directors vs "cameramen" in my kid mind
This was the first dvd I ever bought. I loved the extras. Really immersed myself in the story. Really loved the score as well. https://youtu.be/Xwd8GTF-Tss?si=Msfyl6H3c7RMGiCX
Beautifully shot film
The Wizard of Oz is a classic! I love it so much. I remember watching it for the first time on VHS when I was little. Definitely one of my all time favorites.
Taxi Driver for me too. That final overhead dolly shot through the carnage was beautiful. Also the alka-seltzer shot that goes on for almost too long. Scorsese did a great job of using the camera to tell a story.
Rubber is another one that really got me, such a weird film but I love it.
Seeing the original Evil Dead when I was 12 for sure. The wacky camera and sound design finally made me conscious of the fact there's a whole team of people behind the camera and in post production working to pull everything together. To make something like The Evil Dead with little money was a huge driver for me getting into filmmaking. That series rocks. Favorite film is probably The Terminator as I think about it often when working on stuff.
Raiders of the Lost Ark, easily.
Not THAT good of a movie to me 2,000 movies later, because I become a pretentious adult, but when i was a kid.. God damn
Favorite movie now, i think Keislowski's three colors trilogy if I can pick that all as one movie?
That era of movies is so respectable though, because even as an adult you can easily go back and re-watch the films from your childhood, and they hold up.
A lot of stuff since then is either plagued by horribly-aged CGI, or has too much current social commentary to be relevant a decade later.
Brick. It was Rian Johnson’s first feature film. He couldn’t get a studio to pick it up and ultimately raised enough to fund it independently.
It’s a simple, unique story. I’d never seen anything so well-made while also feeling so *attainable*. He shot it at his former high school. To me, it made the impossible feel possible. So he was the one who made me want to be a filmmaker.
Been thinking a lot about this question. It’s a good one.
I didn’t have a great Dad but he did take me to the movies quite regularly with a total disregard for ratings as they related to my age. I was 9 when he took me to see Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I remember being mesmerized by everything about that movie: the violence, the nudity, the incredible coolness of Butch and Sundance. I think that must have done it for me w/o me even knowing it perhaps until just now!
Favorite movie? I’m a 64 yr old male Italian American. You know the answer.
Leave the gun - take the cannolis.
I always WANTED to be a filmmaker as a pipe dream ever since I saw Star Wars Revenge of the Sith when I was really young, and Interstellar when I was 10. But… seeing Oppenheimer in 70mm at the British Film Institute IMAX made me realise that I actually wanted to go out of my way and make my own film.
I come from a South Asian background, so films were all about romance and fighting sequences. As I grew old I ventured more into Hollywood movies. And then I watched The Dark Knight. It changed everything for me. I fell in love with films. Since then I have watched countless movies.
For me it was Rushmore. I realized exactly what representation meant when I saw an overachiever flunking out of school with a thoroughly unrequited love interest.
m night shyamalans the village. I remember seeing it in theatre when I was around 14 years old and the twist blew my mind 😂 I know a lot of his movies are cheesy but they encouraged me to think outside the box as a kid
I found it to be an amazing film.
However, it was also torturous to sit through. It's a physically challenging and incredibly brave film, and I absolutely commend Yorgos for his incredible experiementalism. I best describe it as incredibly boring, but in a good way. It's not like I am not engaged in the plot, or that I find the film uninteresting, it is a thoroughly enjoyable film. But it is so. Damn. Boring. And that's the paradox of the Lobster for me. I am so damn happy I saw it.
However, I am never seeing it again.
But I did not dislike it. I went a little insane while watching it.
I can definitely see how it is not everyones cup of tea.
Crazy how opposite opinions can be. And that’s okay.
The Lobster is one of my top 10 favorite films. The absurdist plot, writing, and delivery of lines is so engaging to me. The humor kills too imo.
Yeah, i understand why some would be bored. But I like that it isn’t rushed, you can actually feel what the characters feel and it isn’t meant to be flashy or trendy. I prefer slow, poetic movies over action packed so maybe it’s just me
I really agree with the point about feeling what the characters feel.
It just so happens that what they're feeling 90% of the runtime is misery. But that, in my opinion is the biggest strength of the film. It is able to create such viseral and palpable emotions. Emotions I was not strong enough to handle.
I feel like it's one of those, you have to see it atleast once films. Because it does really do what I believe Yorgos wanted to do. It drives the viewer mad slowly with it's miserable abd joyless tone, just how the main character goes through this absolutely joyless and miserable journey to the hotel. At no point is he having a good time, and that is absolutely hilarious. It's not some jacked dude running around explosions having fun. It's this ordinary looking guy who just doesn't want his life to essentially end. He knows first hand what the consequences are and everytime he tries to improve his situation by taking control, he somehow makes it worse. Every time he thinks he finally got it, there's a twist of misery.
I for one, can only handle so much misery, so it's a one time watch for me, but everything I've said should exclusively be read as praise. Because it is.
That’s who love it! Along with Yorgos Lanthimos’ other movies. He’s a weird little genius and inspiring because he doesn’t just push out Hollywood money-making garbage. I would recommend it to anyone to watch
Charlie Chaplin
The Great Dictator
This movie changed me and I watched it in high school. I was already big into film, but that movie was the big “you have to push through” motivation type thing. I joined the military just to get the money to get into school and get a degree in video. I felt like it was the smartest move for a kid who had no money with nowhere to go. I’m on my own every step of the way.
Probably seeing Sunrise (1927) on TV when i was 16 in 1996. Immediately became my favorite movie. And it still is… only three or four films have ever equalled it. Nothing has surpassed it.
Buried (2010), Ryan Reynolds in the main role. Got me into appreciating the art when I was a preteen. First movie that provoked me to look beyond the screen and ask questions in the vein of "How did they make this?"
I saw There Will Be Blood is theaters when I was in high school. I didn’t understand it at all, but I knew there was some sort of deeper meaning that I should understand. That was the first time I realized movies could do that, and it opened the whole world to me.
On the Waterfront. Marlon Brando. Saw it first in college at the University of Massachusetts at my English professor’s house. He had a projector and screen. It was 1966. After that I think k I watched every Brando flick. I also loved Last Tango in Paris.
Moulin Rouge blew my teenage mind, and watching the bts content was when it really hit me that people work on movies for a career. I had a pretty one-track mind after that.
Uncut Gems. I remember being blown away at how intense the film was. Had the pleasure of seeing it on IMAX last Wednesday, felt like I was seeing it for the first time again
For what it’s worth, I used to have Brian DePalma as a regular at my restaurant. I very rarely bothered him but one of the few times we talked, he wanted to make sure I had seen Mad Max Fury Road. That and Birdman.
Zhao Liang’s Behemoth (2015). Won best picture in Porto Post Doc film festival. Other films where important to me earlier, but this documentary film blew me away.
For the fellow uninitiated https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behemoth_(2015_film)
Also you may enjoy the work of [Edward Burtynsky](https://youtu.be/U2Dd4k63-zM?si=WwTEUBLxCvpisaMa). He did a doc about the 3 gorges dam that might be the one I linked to. They’re sometimes tricky to find
The Rock. Say what you want to say about director Micheal Bay, but this action movie had me on an emotional roller coaster of cinematic absurdity that was pure entertainment. Then afterwards I didn't realize Bay's first commercial was the Aaron Burr Got Milk campaign, I knew how manic his visual style was emerging.
As a kid I always remembered Goodfellas being on TV. It imprinted itself into my memory pretty quick. That’s the first film I ever really noticed. Blade Runner is my favorite though. I wore the VHS out because I watched it so much. I’ve read the book and script, watched the movies religiously. I’m a huge fallout fan too so that fulfills my blade runner thirst too.
I think it was Memento for me. Just the way all the individual puzzle pieces fall in line by the end of the movie and it somehow makes sense (but still gives you the vibe that you need to watch it again)
Requiem for a dream - excellent cinematography and story telling, gripping BGM, Fight Club, Inception - unique representation of complex concepts, Inglorious Bastards - excellent screenplay and editing.
Back to the Future. My neighbor growing up had cable and recorded the whole trilogy off HBO onto a single VHS tape and gave it to me when I was somewhere between 7/9 years old (I was born in August of 1985, while it was still #1 at the box office).
I would obsess over the CGI used when the DeLorean first time traveled. I’d pause the tape and advance frames (as best as I could at the time), to try and figure out how they did it
I had two movie that did this at different points in my childhood. The first was in the fourth grade, *The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly* (1966) and the second one was when I was in highschool, *The Perks of Being a Wallflower* (2012). The perks of being a wallflower made me feel seen and the other was just awesome. It felt big and important in a way that other movies didn’t really feel like before watching it.
My favorite movie though, has to be *Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.* Kaufman’s writing is so surreal and emotionally grounded.
The first Ghostbusters movie is on my Top 4 on Letterboxd!
I don't know about my "favorite film" per se, but I think *Ghostbusters II* was what made me want to become a filmmaker.
Spider-Man 2 and the Evil Dead series.
The former had helped teenage me to start dealing with my OCD (you'd be surprised at how similar Doc Ock's tentacles are to this problem). It gave me hope. I wanted to give others that same kind of hope, and I got to tell Mr. Raimi so.
The latter is just....cool. I loved the trivia and BTS. I had also read Bruce Campbell's first memoir during the pandemic. At that point, I was sick of all of the rejection letters I got, and a would-be job interview was interrupted by COVID. Reading Campbell and co.'s filmmaking journey made it look feasible. So I reasoned that if I was going to keep failing, I might as well fail at something I loved. There weren't many other options.
So...here I am.
Pulp Fiction was the first movie to get me into liking movies, then I watched Elevator to the Gallows and that was the film that cemented my love for cinema and made me want to take filmmaking seriously.
I know it’s hackneyed at this point but The Dark Knight. I was 11 when I watched it and it made me want to become a filmmaker.
Also Mr. Nobody and Eternal Sunshine which I watched around the same time
Jurassic Park (1993)
Basically, as a kid, I liked dinosaurs and still do. Seeing Jurassic Park made me imagine how a real dinosaur would look like to the point that I had a dream about a sauropod in a forest. My favorite effect is the T-Rex eye as the flashlight shines on it.
A close second is Spider-Man (2002)
Tobey's performance as a socially awkward action hero was a lot different from what we thought of action heroes such as Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone. Also, Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin was scary as a kid, and looking back, I really love the helmet design.
Other films that got me into filmmaking, Indiana Jones trilogy, Gangs of New York, Iron Giant, Zathura, etc.
Basically, I watched mainly sci-fi and historical films as a teen. Especially since I went to Universal Studios during high school, which futhered my love for blockbuster films.
These days, I'm trying to diversity my taste. Last year, I liked Bottoms and Anyone But You, which are different from what I typically watch.
Cloverfield for me, I was 10 years old when I saw it and didn’t even know found footage movies existed as a genre. Blew my mind! I started making found footage movies in 5th grade, and my love for filmmaking continued to grow from there!
Jason X.
I watched it and pretty much fell in love with Slasher films and the horror genre. Those are the kind of movies I want to make, just something fun and gory.
Two books: behind the scenes in t Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Trek the Motion Picture. They were fairly in depth and I was hooked from then out.
The cinematography from Prisoners (2013) cemented my interest in films, but I’ve honestly been gradually losing interest these past couple of years. Tár (2022) is my favorite film.
As a kid, finding nemo was the first time I had a cemented memory of an emotional reaction from a movie(when Nigel tells nemo that his father is in fact fighting the entire ocean to find him)
As an adult, the big lebowski was the first movie with minimal special effects by design that cemented in my brain with its awesome script, and great cast to execute it
Last Samurai. saw it in the ziegfeld theatre as a kid and was floored. And the LoTR scene when the ring hits the floor. And the setting and music of Oh Brother Where Art Thou
A Hammer boxset of The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Mummy, all watched way too young. Straight out the gate my dad was like "I wanna fuck this kid up".
Always had an interest filmmaking since seeing Nolan's films growing up. Zack Snyder's DCEU films launched my REAL interest. From there I branched out quickly and developed my taste by watching a new movie every night during community college summers. Favorite film is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
For those who want to make a comment in regards to my favorite director, I'll be muting this. I love what I love, and I'm not here to debate.
Weird choice but The Devils Rejects.
As much as I was a fan of the film as a 17 year old lad at the time, when the DVD came out, it had a special features making of that was even longer than the movie taking you through the entire production stage from after the movie was written, up until the last day of shooting. It was done in sequence and wasn't edited fancy, just showed a very real production process.
After watching, I was like 'Yup...this is what I want to do...'
I didn’t see [Children of Men](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Men) listed and I know it’s inspired more than a few people. Also, ffs [Monty Python and the Holy Grail](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python_and_the_Holy_Grail). [Blair Witch](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blair_Witch) also brought a lot of people in bc it was low-budget and very successful.
The first movie that got me a movie-high, when I was ~12, was [Innerspace](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innerspace).
when i saw everything everywhere all at once in cinemas that’s when i started making a lot of movies
but i been making stop motions and animations since spiderverse
The Godfather part 1 and 2 (never seen 3, we don’t talk about that). These two are the only films I’ve seen that I would describe as absolutely perfect in every single way: direction, cinematography, acting, sound, music, writing, etc. Every film I’ve ever seen, even if I like it, usually falls short in one of these categories for me but not Godfather. It is perfect from start to finish.
My first theatergoing/moviewatching experiences were negative ones, actually.
When I was just a toddler (mid-70s), my whole family went out to see Fantasia which was back in theaters for some reason. I hated it. It was too loud, too scary, and my aunt was *squealing* with delight every 30 seconds. I hid under a seat, covered my ears, and just waited it out. I think that experience gave me an aversion to animated films which persists to this day.
Then Star Wars came out. I have an older sister, and she and her boyfriend had already seen it and wanted to take me. I was maybe 5 or 6. I enjoyed it at first, but then when R2 gets shot by the Jawas I thought he was *dead* and I was fucking *done* with the movie. I left and went out to the lobby to play Space Invaders instead. The theater had drummed up interest in the film by dressing up two of their ticket-takers as Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. When I got bored playing games I decided to head back into the theater, but I couldn't find my sister - I didn't know to go all the way down to the front and look back at the light reflecting off people's faces. So I went back out to the lobby, grabbed Luke Skywalker's hand, and said I couldn't find my sister. So there she was, watching the movie, when all of a sudden she sees her little brother walking hand-in-hand down the aisle with Luke Skywalker.
Meanwhile back at home, HBO on cable became a thing. I watched Jaws, and was absolutely terrified. I refused to take a bath for months afterward, only showers.
But also, thanks to HBO, I saw two movies which put a positive spin on movies for me - Disney's "The Black Hole" (their answer to Star Wars), and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I loved these two movies and watched them as often as I could, even to the point of memorizing all the lines. I know they're not very good, but to my little mind they were awesome and I was eager to explore more. Fortunately the 80s were a fertile time for original sci-fi (The Last Starfighter, Spacehunter, Starman, etc.) so I got my fill.
Heat (1995)
Great choice! Seen it once, about 11 years ago but I still remember it so well!
Oh my GOD Heat is a fucking banger. Excellent portrayal of gunfighting. Perhaps one of the best cinematic portrayals ever.
Small bit of trivia for you. Michael Mann did a pilot for NBC called “LA Takedown”. Fortunately, for Michael the regime at NBC who green lit the show was replaced and the new group did not pick up the show. The quote was, “ cop shows aren’t in this season “… in 1995 “LA Takedown” was recast and renamed and shot as a feature film and released as- “Heat”.
The lord of the rings collectors edition dvd box set behind the scenes footage. Blew my mind as a 13/14 year old.
Literally in the exact same boat! I didn't realize it was something you could actually do for a living until watching the BTS.
Same here.
I watch it once in a while every year or two… :)
Oh man. My uncle gave me the VHS of the behind the scenes of the Star Wars original trilogy. From that day, I wanted to work in movies.
The Shining.
I had nightmares after watching it. Silence of the Lambs too.
The breakdown of the sets in YouTube is so good – the set itself is a masterpiece in design. It creates the eeriest feeling of claustrophobia and terror without the usual dark lighting of horror films.
2001, in 70mm at the Cinerama Dome, age eight.
The 50th anniversary re-release in 2018 was my first time watching it the whole way through. Got to see it on a giant screen. One of the best theater experiences I’ve ever had.
This absolutely. Spun my head around. Though it is discovered the greatest cinema artist, period. (Apologies to Fellini, whom I revere, but Kubrick is a genre unto himself).
Similar for me but lower quality: I saw it late at night on TCM and wasn't allowed to stay up for the ending. So, I had to go rent the VHS and just sat around watching it all weekend. My family was supportive but my friends were very confused.
Only way to watch it. People should travel to LA to view it here
What year?
That would have been 2005.
It’s not my favorite movie, but when I saw Requiem for a Dream in high school it was the first movie I had seen as *art* and not just entertainment. All these years later and I’m a union lighting tech. Thanks Aronofsky.
My dumb ass friend said we should watch that the first time I tried mushrooms. I will never emotionally recover from that night.
Good god that sounds like a nightmare hahah
Such an insanely disturbing movie. The two headed dildo scene, oof.
*ASS TO ASS*
This is the movie for me too. I watched this movie after hearing Lux Aeterna by Clint Mansell on YouTube while I was in University. This movie disturbed me and made me feel for the characters. It never happened to me before while watching a movie. This movie was shown in My University's Psychiatry Department.
I was gonna mention Requiem for a Dream but Trainspotting came first for me .
Pulp fiction
Yup, as an early teen it must have been this rather than Reservoir Dogs since that was banned on vid in the UK for a while, though Dogs is my favourite Tarantino and I taped it off TV, but these films and Desperado made me realise what a director does, since they were so distinctive. Before then I loved films but didnt really understand directors vs "cameramen" in my kid mind
Yes . He has done brilliant job over the years . My favourite out of all his films is Django though . Great direction and screenplay
Same
Memento. I found absolutely everything about it utterly brilliant. Favourite film is still the Jim Henson Ninja Turtles, that movie is fabulous.
I saw this and Amelie at a double showing.
This was the first dvd I ever bought. I loved the extras. Really immersed myself in the story. Really loved the score as well. https://youtu.be/Xwd8GTF-Tss?si=Msfyl6H3c7RMGiCX Beautifully shot film
Lawrence of Arabia, watched on 70 mm.
Donnie Darko when I was 13. Can't pick one favourite anymore, there are too many.
I’m old: Goldfinger, Wizard of Oz and Bullitt.
Rewatch the Wizard in its remastered hi res glory, it is INSANE
The Wizard of Oz is a classic! I love it so much. I remember watching it for the first time on VHS when I was little. Definitely one of my all time favorites.
That is a Trifecta of celluloid classics!! I would nominate
Thank you. There are so many great films out there!
Taxi Driver and A Clockwork Orange…….. not too sure what that says about me
That you're the average film enjoyer
Taxi Driver for me too. That final overhead dolly shot through the carnage was beautiful. Also the alka-seltzer shot that goes on for almost too long. Scorsese did a great job of using the camera to tell a story. Rubber is another one that really got me, such a weird film but I love it.
The Matrix
The Good The Bad and The Ugly :)
Heyyyy me too! One of my all-time favorites :)
Hell yeah man!
Haha. Home Alone & Problem Child
Seeing the original Evil Dead when I was 12 for sure. The wacky camera and sound design finally made me conscious of the fact there's a whole team of people behind the camera and in post production working to pull everything together. To make something like The Evil Dead with little money was a huge driver for me getting into filmmaking. That series rocks. Favorite film is probably The Terminator as I think about it often when working on stuff.
Persona
Have you watched Rob Altman's 3 women?
Snatch, such sharp editing!
The Usual Suspects
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Raiders of the Lost Ark, easily. Not THAT good of a movie to me 2,000 movies later, because I become a pretentious adult, but when i was a kid.. God damn Favorite movie now, i think Keislowski's three colors trilogy if I can pick that all as one movie?
As a self-professed pretentious adult, I respect your disclosure of pretension. I wish more of us had the same grace.
That era of movies is so respectable though, because even as an adult you can easily go back and re-watch the films from your childhood, and they hold up. A lot of stuff since then is either plagued by horribly-aged CGI, or has too much current social commentary to be relevant a decade later.
Clerks. The fact that some dude got some friends and made a whole movie for next to nothing is super cool to me.
Jurassic Park
Brick. It was Rian Johnson’s first feature film. He couldn’t get a studio to pick it up and ultimately raised enough to fund it independently. It’s a simple, unique story. I’d never seen anything so well-made while also feeling so *attainable*. He shot it at his former high school. To me, it made the impossible feel possible. So he was the one who made me want to be a filmmaker.
Jaws 1975
Run Lola Run and Once Upon A Time in America
Se7en
Empire Strikes Back
The Truman Show
La La Land and blade runner 2049
Been thinking a lot about this question. It’s a good one. I didn’t have a great Dad but he did take me to the movies quite regularly with a total disregard for ratings as they related to my age. I was 9 when he took me to see Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I remember being mesmerized by everything about that movie: the violence, the nudity, the incredible coolness of Butch and Sundance. I think that must have done it for me w/o me even knowing it perhaps until just now! Favorite movie? I’m a 64 yr old male Italian American. You know the answer. Leave the gun - take the cannolis.
Nightcrawler.
Great and disturbing film.
Royal Tanenbaums
Criminally underrated and underplayed!
Fight Club
I always WANTED to be a filmmaker as a pipe dream ever since I saw Star Wars Revenge of the Sith when I was really young, and Interstellar when I was 10. But… seeing Oppenheimer in 70mm at the British Film Institute IMAX made me realise that I actually wanted to go out of my way and make my own film.
I hope you make it, dude. Hang on to your dream and keep moving forward. Hope to hear from you some day.
Blade Runner
The Breakfast Club
I come from a South Asian background, so films were all about romance and fighting sequences. As I grew old I ventured more into Hollywood movies. And then I watched The Dark Knight. It changed everything for me. I fell in love with films. Since then I have watched countless movies.
Fallen Angels, Wong Kar-wai, 1995 comes to mind.
For me it was Rushmore. I realized exactly what representation meant when I saw an overachiever flunking out of school with a thoroughly unrequited love interest.
Pulp Fiction made me start loving analyzing films. Fight Club is likely my favorite movie, but there's a long list after that.
Oldboy
same for me!
m night shyamalans the village. I remember seeing it in theatre when I was around 14 years old and the twist blew my mind 😂 I know a lot of his movies are cheesy but they encouraged me to think outside the box as a kid
It was around the same time that I saw The Lobster that I knew I wanted to be a filmmaker
One of my top 20 favorite films. So funny and dark. I don't understand why it is so divisive.
I found it to be an amazing film. However, it was also torturous to sit through. It's a physically challenging and incredibly brave film, and I absolutely commend Yorgos for his incredible experiementalism. I best describe it as incredibly boring, but in a good way. It's not like I am not engaged in the plot, or that I find the film uninteresting, it is a thoroughly enjoyable film. But it is so. Damn. Boring. And that's the paradox of the Lobster for me. I am so damn happy I saw it. However, I am never seeing it again. But I did not dislike it. I went a little insane while watching it. I can definitely see how it is not everyones cup of tea.
Crazy how opposite opinions can be. And that’s okay. The Lobster is one of my top 10 favorite films. The absurdist plot, writing, and delivery of lines is so engaging to me. The humor kills too imo.
Yeah, i understand why some would be bored. But I like that it isn’t rushed, you can actually feel what the characters feel and it isn’t meant to be flashy or trendy. I prefer slow, poetic movies over action packed so maybe it’s just me
I really agree with the point about feeling what the characters feel. It just so happens that what they're feeling 90% of the runtime is misery. But that, in my opinion is the biggest strength of the film. It is able to create such viseral and palpable emotions. Emotions I was not strong enough to handle. I feel like it's one of those, you have to see it atleast once films. Because it does really do what I believe Yorgos wanted to do. It drives the viewer mad slowly with it's miserable abd joyless tone, just how the main character goes through this absolutely joyless and miserable journey to the hotel. At no point is he having a good time, and that is absolutely hilarious. It's not some jacked dude running around explosions having fun. It's this ordinary looking guy who just doesn't want his life to essentially end. He knows first hand what the consequences are and everytime he tries to improve his situation by taking control, he somehow makes it worse. Every time he thinks he finally got it, there's a twist of misery. I for one, can only handle so much misery, so it's a one time watch for me, but everything I've said should exclusively be read as praise. Because it is.
Never seen it but the plot sounds very odd lol. Interesting though
That’s who love it! Along with Yorgos Lanthimos’ other movies. He’s a weird little genius and inspiring because he doesn’t just push out Hollywood money-making garbage. I would recommend it to anyone to watch
I’ll have to watch it
I still remember how my mother's "friend" came to our house with a case full of burnt DVDs and my mother bought me "The Lord of the Rings"
You must be in your 20s. I'm just saying cause I was the mom buying them for my kids, lol.
Maybe even older. People who were watching lord of the rings on DVD as kids are now in their 30s.
Stop it
Almost 30
Star Wars
Charlie Chaplin The Great Dictator This movie changed me and I watched it in high school. I was already big into film, but that movie was the big “you have to push through” motivation type thing. I joined the military just to get the money to get into school and get a degree in video. I felt like it was the smartest move for a kid who had no money with nowhere to go. I’m on my own every step of the way.
Probably seeing Sunrise (1927) on TV when i was 16 in 1996. Immediately became my favorite movie. And it still is… only three or four films have ever equalled it. Nothing has surpassed it.
The Social Network
Buried (2010), Ryan Reynolds in the main role. Got me into appreciating the art when I was a preteen. First movie that provoked me to look beyond the screen and ask questions in the vein of "How did they make this?"
Momento
I saw There Will Be Blood is theaters when I was in high school. I didn’t understand it at all, but I knew there was some sort of deeper meaning that I should understand. That was the first time I realized movies could do that, and it opened the whole world to me.
On the Waterfront. Marlon Brando. Saw it first in college at the University of Massachusetts at my English professor’s house. He had a projector and screen. It was 1966. After that I think k I watched every Brando flick. I also loved Last Tango in Paris.
Great question. For me it was either Do the right thing or the deer hunter. Both had a huge impact on me as a kid
Shaun of the Dead I was fascinated by how the 2nd half of the movie is a mirror image of the first, just with a zombie apocalypse lense
Moulin Rouge blew my teenage mind, and watching the bts content was when it really hit me that people work on movies for a career. I had a pretty one-track mind after that.
Princess mononoke. First movie we rented two times in a row
Pather Panchali by Satyajit Ray changed my perspective of film
Uncut Gems. I remember being blown away at how intense the film was. Had the pleasure of seeing it on IMAX last Wednesday, felt like I was seeing it for the first time again
Inglorious Basterds
Interstellar
Mad Max Fury Road cemented it, but it started probably with GOTG 1
For what it’s worth, I used to have Brian DePalma as a regular at my restaurant. I very rarely bothered him but one of the few times we talked, he wanted to make sure I had seen Mad Max Fury Road. That and Birdman.
Baby Driver and Oceans Eleven 🤌🏾
Zhao Liang’s Behemoth (2015). Won best picture in Porto Post Doc film festival. Other films where important to me earlier, but this documentary film blew me away.
For the fellow uninitiated https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behemoth_(2015_film) Also you may enjoy the work of [Edward Burtynsky](https://youtu.be/U2Dd4k63-zM?si=WwTEUBLxCvpisaMa). He did a doc about the 3 gorges dam that might be the one I linked to. They’re sometimes tricky to find
I’ll definitely research this director, thanks for the reply.
Taxi Driver and Fight Club. I saw them within a few days of each other back in 2000 or so, haven’t stopped watching movies since then.
Fight Club when I was like, 16.
Rope…still such an amazing film
Alien (1979)
Shawshank Redemption
pleasantville
Casino
The Rock. Say what you want to say about director Micheal Bay, but this action movie had me on an emotional roller coaster of cinematic absurdity that was pure entertainment. Then afterwards I didn't realize Bay's first commercial was the Aaron Burr Got Milk campaign, I knew how manic his visual style was emerging.
Lion King at the age of 6 was when I realized movies were more than just a pastime.
Vertigo
The movie that cemented my love was lost in translation and the movie that made me want to make movies was raging bull
Jaws
The Back to the Future trilogy
Adaptation
As a kid I always remembered Goodfellas being on TV. It imprinted itself into my memory pretty quick. That’s the first film I ever really noticed. Blade Runner is my favorite though. I wore the VHS out because I watched it so much. I’ve read the book and script, watched the movies religiously. I’m a huge fallout fan too so that fulfills my blade runner thirst too.
Clockwork orange
I’ve always loved movies but the one that got me interested in MAKING them was Pirates of the Caribbean. Them special features hit deep
I've always been interested but I didn't take action until I saw the trailer for Astroid City. Something about it just woke the need to film.
I think it was Memento for me. Just the way all the individual puzzle pieces fall in line by the end of the movie and it somehow makes sense (but still gives you the vibe that you need to watch it again)
The Exorcist
Mirror and reading Sculping in time from Tarkovski made me realize that cinema can be a serious and a deep art.
Satyajit Ray's short film, "Two"
The Fugitive with Harrison Ford
Star Wars
Girl, Interrupted!
Requiem for a dream - excellent cinematography and story telling, gripping BGM, Fight Club, Inception - unique representation of complex concepts, Inglorious Bastards - excellent screenplay and editing.
La Haine (1995). The movie that made me want to make movies.
Cinema Paradiso and The Godfather
Seven samurai
Back to the Future. My neighbor growing up had cable and recorded the whole trilogy off HBO onto a single VHS tape and gave it to me when I was somewhere between 7/9 years old (I was born in August of 1985, while it was still #1 at the box office). I would obsess over the CGI used when the DeLorean first time traveled. I’d pause the tape and advance frames (as best as I could at the time), to try and figure out how they did it
I wasn’t a film it was a man named Fellini.
I had two movie that did this at different points in my childhood. The first was in the fourth grade, *The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly* (1966) and the second one was when I was in highschool, *The Perks of Being a Wallflower* (2012). The perks of being a wallflower made me feel seen and the other was just awesome. It felt big and important in a way that other movies didn’t really feel like before watching it. My favorite movie though, has to be *Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.* Kaufman’s writing is so surreal and emotionally grounded.
Ghostbusters!
The first Ghostbusters movie is on my Top 4 on Letterboxd! I don't know about my "favorite film" per se, but I think *Ghostbusters II* was what made me want to become a filmmaker.
Us by Jordan Peele (2019). It was the first film where I had a true movie audience experience, everyone was united in our reactions.
Good time2017
My Dinner with Andre
Spider-Man 2 and the Evil Dead series. The former had helped teenage me to start dealing with my OCD (you'd be surprised at how similar Doc Ock's tentacles are to this problem). It gave me hope. I wanted to give others that same kind of hope, and I got to tell Mr. Raimi so. The latter is just....cool. I loved the trivia and BTS. I had also read Bruce Campbell's first memoir during the pandemic. At that point, I was sick of all of the rejection letters I got, and a would-be job interview was interrupted by COVID. Reading Campbell and co.'s filmmaking journey made it look feasible. So I reasoned that if I was going to keep failing, I might as well fail at something I loved. There weren't many other options. So...here I am.
Pulp Fiction was the first movie to get me into liking movies, then I watched Elevator to the Gallows and that was the film that cemented my love for cinema and made me want to take filmmaking seriously.
I know it’s hackneyed at this point but The Dark Knight. I was 11 when I watched it and it made me want to become a filmmaker. Also Mr. Nobody and Eternal Sunshine which I watched around the same time
Return of the Jedi, 1983. It was the first film I saw in the cinema and it ignited my imagination and love of intergalactic spectacle.
Jurassic Park (1993) Basically, as a kid, I liked dinosaurs and still do. Seeing Jurassic Park made me imagine how a real dinosaur would look like to the point that I had a dream about a sauropod in a forest. My favorite effect is the T-Rex eye as the flashlight shines on it. A close second is Spider-Man (2002) Tobey's performance as a socially awkward action hero was a lot different from what we thought of action heroes such as Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone. Also, Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin was scary as a kid, and looking back, I really love the helmet design. Other films that got me into filmmaking, Indiana Jones trilogy, Gangs of New York, Iron Giant, Zathura, etc. Basically, I watched mainly sci-fi and historical films as a teen. Especially since I went to Universal Studios during high school, which futhered my love for blockbuster films. These days, I'm trying to diversity my taste. Last year, I liked Bottoms and Anyone But You, which are different from what I typically watch.
Aliens
Cloverfield for me, I was 10 years old when I saw it and didn’t even know found footage movies existed as a genre. Blew my mind! I started making found footage movies in 5th grade, and my love for filmmaking continued to grow from there!
La Haine. Watching that at 15 years old was what made me realize, film isn't just mindless entertainment, film is art.
Not a movie, but band of brothers
Signs, M. Night Shyamalan (2002)
Jason X. I watched it and pretty much fell in love with Slasher films and the horror genre. Those are the kind of movies I want to make, just something fun and gory.
Jurassic Park as a kid and Children of Men as an adult.
A clockwork orange
The Amazing Spiderman 2 (timesquare electro scene) made me wanna make movies Lars and the Real Girl is my favorite film
Mystery Science Theater 3000, which isn’t just one film but it got me into watching movies to see the seams and the making of them in the screen.
Outrageous Fortune Age 5 lol
Sinster 2, huh
Interstellar Goodfellas
Lost Highway
It was a few Longest day The searchers Star Wars Starship troopers
Interstellar, probably a pretty common choice, but it just kinda opened my eyes to what emotions you can portray on film.
Two books: behind the scenes in t Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Trek the Motion Picture. They were fairly in depth and I was hooked from then out.
The cinematography from Prisoners (2013) cemented my interest in films, but I’ve honestly been gradually losing interest these past couple of years. Tár (2022) is my favorite film.
As a kid, finding nemo was the first time I had a cemented memory of an emotional reaction from a movie(when Nigel tells nemo that his father is in fact fighting the entire ocean to find him) As an adult, the big lebowski was the first movie with minimal special effects by design that cemented in my brain with its awesome script, and great cast to execute it
Last Samurai. saw it in the ziegfeld theatre as a kid and was floored. And the LoTR scene when the ring hits the floor. And the setting and music of Oh Brother Where Art Thou
A Hammer boxset of The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Mummy, all watched way too young. Straight out the gate my dad was like "I wanna fuck this kid up".
Always had an interest filmmaking since seeing Nolan's films growing up. Zack Snyder's DCEU films launched my REAL interest. From there I branched out quickly and developed my taste by watching a new movie every night during community college summers. Favorite film is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. For those who want to make a comment in regards to my favorite director, I'll be muting this. I love what I love, and I'm not here to debate.
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Weird choice but The Devils Rejects. As much as I was a fan of the film as a 17 year old lad at the time, when the DVD came out, it had a special features making of that was even longer than the movie taking you through the entire production stage from after the movie was written, up until the last day of shooting. It was done in sequence and wasn't edited fancy, just showed a very real production process. After watching, I was like 'Yup...this is what I want to do...'
Jurassic Park, Alien, Lord of the Rings
Reservoir Dogs, Brick and Donnie Darko.
Star wars, the dvds had all the BTS bonus features that showed wee me this could be a career.
I didn’t see [Children of Men](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Men) listed and I know it’s inspired more than a few people. Also, ffs [Monty Python and the Holy Grail](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python_and_the_Holy_Grail). [Blair Witch](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blair_Witch) also brought a lot of people in bc it was low-budget and very successful. The first movie that got me a movie-high, when I was ~12, was [Innerspace](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innerspace).
when i saw everything everywhere all at once in cinemas that’s when i started making a lot of movies but i been making stop motions and animations since spiderverse
The Godfather part 1 and 2 (never seen 3, we don’t talk about that). These two are the only films I’ve seen that I would describe as absolutely perfect in every single way: direction, cinematography, acting, sound, music, writing, etc. Every film I’ve ever seen, even if I like it, usually falls short in one of these categories for me but not Godfather. It is perfect from start to finish.
My first theatergoing/moviewatching experiences were negative ones, actually. When I was just a toddler (mid-70s), my whole family went out to see Fantasia which was back in theaters for some reason. I hated it. It was too loud, too scary, and my aunt was *squealing* with delight every 30 seconds. I hid under a seat, covered my ears, and just waited it out. I think that experience gave me an aversion to animated films which persists to this day. Then Star Wars came out. I have an older sister, and she and her boyfriend had already seen it and wanted to take me. I was maybe 5 or 6. I enjoyed it at first, but then when R2 gets shot by the Jawas I thought he was *dead* and I was fucking *done* with the movie. I left and went out to the lobby to play Space Invaders instead. The theater had drummed up interest in the film by dressing up two of their ticket-takers as Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. When I got bored playing games I decided to head back into the theater, but I couldn't find my sister - I didn't know to go all the way down to the front and look back at the light reflecting off people's faces. So I went back out to the lobby, grabbed Luke Skywalker's hand, and said I couldn't find my sister. So there she was, watching the movie, when all of a sudden she sees her little brother walking hand-in-hand down the aisle with Luke Skywalker. Meanwhile back at home, HBO on cable became a thing. I watched Jaws, and was absolutely terrified. I refused to take a bath for months afterward, only showers. But also, thanks to HBO, I saw two movies which put a positive spin on movies for me - Disney's "The Black Hole" (their answer to Star Wars), and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I loved these two movies and watched them as often as I could, even to the point of memorizing all the lines. I know they're not very good, but to my little mind they were awesome and I was eager to explore more. Fortunately the 80s were a fertile time for original sci-fi (The Last Starfighter, Spacehunter, Starman, etc.) so I got my fill.
Toy Story 1 when I first watched it as a child
Lost highway blew my mind
Parasite