The first film that made you think “this is a film”

Kes is a film I watched as a kid – watched it several times since and read the book. Part of our school curriculum – obvs very dated now but still great IMO.

@willard – was it because the main character was your namesake? 😉

I’m with you though. Apocalypse Now was the first film I watched that absolutely blew me away. War up to that point was meant to be black and white, goodies and baddies, then you watch something that blows that simplicity out of the water with the horrible messy reality, where it’s all grey areas.

Still one of my all time top 3 films. God knows how many times I’ve watched it. I watched it yet again a few weeks ago

The Killing Fields. It planted the seed in my head that I wanted to work in film. I work in telly now, so nearly, but not quite.

Subway – Luc Besson

Just ineffably cool – starts with one of the best car chases you’ll ever see, plunges into an underworld at once almost mythical but also believable.

You feel the style and substance oozing through it – the soundtrack is as much of the ‘movie’ as the pictures.

Christophe Lambert in a beat-up tuxedo – Isabelle Adjani almost impossibly glamorous

Cops v. Robbers Parisian style – about a million miles from, yet almost right next door to, keystone cops.

Not quite what you’d expect at the end, but what you deserve.

Perfection.

Then The Big Blue.

Which is different but the same.

I loved Whiplash’s ambiguity and the acting.

Midsommar absolutely **** with my head for a few days.

Schindler’s list is brilliant.

Dunno if it was the first, but I remember watching Batman Begins and being so engrossed for the first half that I thought the movie was finished at the halfway point, and delighted it wasn’t.

One Christmas in the early sixties we sat down to watch a film about a train which as a kid had me captivated. The images stayed with me and it was YouTube that provided the answer to which film it was. Buster Keaton’s the General.

Vazaha gets the film that’s no doubt most influenced my life. Working at Welsh Water I used to go to the Aberystwyth uni film society which showed mainly arty foreign films in VO. Subway intrigued me to the point I somehow got a copy on VHS and spent hours listening and transcribing to brush up my French – also bought a slang dictionnary that helped . A couple of years later I took the Metro with a French girlfriend through Châtelet – les Halles to see another great film: L’Insoutenable légèreté de l’être. Live your dreams.

Saving Private Ryan – The opening sequence can only be done justice in a cinema environment.

LOTR : The Fellowship of the Ring – Moria.  Utterly stunning.  From the bit where Gandalf sheds light on their surroundings, to the final battle with the Balrog even up to the exit and the emotional scenes capped by Sean Bean’s phenomenal delivery of “Give them a moment for pity’s sake” .  EPIC in sound, visuals and acting.

Got to be Superman.

An event and a film.

Then has my tastes matured – Goodfellas rebooted me again.

2001. I was nine years old. It’s still probably my favourite film, although Apocalypse Now and Bladerunner are strong competition.

I was never one for films when really young, but lucky to go to a uni where i was studying sports science, but all my housemates for 3 years were doing drama, film and TV, i think for me it is that run of De Niro and Pacino films in the 70’s and 80’s, from Raging Bull, Panic in Needle Park, Godfather, Mean Streets etc.

You just felt like you were watching actors at the top of their game, and the films were real and gritty unlike most these days.

Remember so clearly watching both Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction for the first time with them to, the days when you then rushed out and bought the film poster, the soundtrack and waited for what seemed like ages after it had been in cinema to get the VHS

Always love Pulp Fiction in the way it was different, and had a lot of thought put into it, biggest part of this was the whole Christopher Walken scene, was mental, but the entire thing was put in there for one part of the plot later in the film and worked a treat, same as a few other bits that occurred earlier that were seeds planted for the latter part of the film.

Sergio Leone films is a good shout as well, Once upon a time in the West was my favourite, the opening scene with the guys in the dusters, the massacre scene where the ‘good guy’ Henry Fonda is shown as a true villain, and then the final duel, big scenes, with so much in-between as well.

@binners Dunno what you mean.

It was a film that made me incredibly eager to visit Vietnam, something I managed to do in 2001. I made a point of visiting the post office in Saigon you can see after Capt. Willard looks through the blinds after the opening dos of The Doors.

I’d like to have visited more of the country than just the touristy bits. I was out-voted though.