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Which movies changed your life?

Scepticalscribe said:
Personally, I think that many of Hitchcock's movies are rather dated, or, have not aged all that well.

In terms of atmospherics, and tension, they were extraordinary; however, re character and narrative, sometimes, they left quite a lot to be desired.
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Certainly I think that is true of say The Birds or Psycho. If you compare them to modern genre classics like The Silence of the Lambs there is a lot more depth in the best modern films, I think. But this is a genre I am not an expert on, I mostly avoid it.
 
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Bodhitree said:
Certainly I think that is true of say The Birds or Psycho. If you compare them to modern genre classics like The Silence of the Lambs there is a lot more depth in the best modern films, I think. But this is a genre I am not an expert on, I mostly avoid it.
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Plus, writing as a woman, - especially once I reached adulthood - I find that I am uncomfortable with - and, frankly, deeply dislike - Hitchcock's portrayal of women.
 
Scepticalscribe said:
Plus, writing as a woman, - especially once I reached adulthood - I find that I am uncomfortable with - and, frankly, deeply dislike - Hitchcock's portrayal of women.
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Fair enough, I’d say. Are you encouraged by Hollywoods portrayal of women in film these days? There is a little more variety now, but if say Wonder Woman or Captain Marvel does not ring your bell then one might argue that they still haven’t figured out how to write women?
 
Of the Hitchcock movies I'm familiar with, I'd say Marnie is the worst in its treatment of women from pretty much every angle: plot, character, writing, and aesthetic.

Which brings me to a movie that over the years since its release has become unwatchable for me because of a constant stream of revelations, even up to the present, about its director: Manhattan. The plot and how every character treats the central premise as normal and unremarkable is especially heinous.

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@Bodhitree
I don't think mass media has changed much in how women are described, discussed, shown, and not shown. For example, it is so common for male actors to continue to get starring roles even when they're in their 80s, it is unremarkable. But how many female actors in their 50s and beyond get to carry a movie? Meryl Streep is the exception that proves the rule, I'd say.

If you're interested, here's a YouTube series about how women are portrayed in video games. It could easily be about the movies, too...especially comic book hero movies since those are so similar to video games and are targeted to the same audience.

and a somewhat glib response to your question:
www.britannica.com

Bechdel test | Definition, Movies, & Criticism | Britannica

The Bechdel test is a metric used to evaluate the presence and dimensionality of women in fictional media such as films and television.
www.britannica.com www.britannica.com
 
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KaliYoni said:
But how many female actors in their 50s and beyond get to carry a movie? Meryl Streep is the exception that proves the rule, I'd say.
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I won’t argue the point, but perhaps Diane Keaton (now sadly deceased but still onscreen in Book Club 2 in 2023) and Michelle Yeoh show there is a bit of hope.
 
Bodhitree said:
I won’t argue the point, but perhaps Diane Keaton (now sadly deceased but still onscreen in Book Club 2 in 2023) and Michelle Yeoh show there is a bit of hope.
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How can there be a list of leading ladies over 50 and no mention of The Queen?
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I can name a few movies in which she carried the show: Calender Girls, Woman in Gold, Eye in the Sky and The Hundred-Foot Journey.
 
Tombstone.

My wife and I were in Phoenix in 1994 and had a day to explore. The GC was too far so it was between Sedona and Tombstone. Tombstone was in the mix since the movie was fairly recent so we chose to go there.

It was fine and we enjoyed ourselves.

Fast forward to 2017 and we were in Phoenix for a wedding. We had our daughter and planned on going to the GC. On the way up, my wife asked if we could stop in Sedona for lunch since we didn't make it the last time we were in AZ.

Well, we fell in love with Sedona and on the plane ride home, pretty much decided we were going to live there. Took 5 years, but we bought a house there (technically Cottonwood, but we can see the red rocks) in 2022.

So had the movie Tombstone never been released, we may have seen Sedona back in 1994 which could have changed the trajectory of our lives.
 
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An American werewolf in London, seen as an innocent kid who grew up in the countryside, scarred me for many years after. As in, bedsheets over head at night and jumpy as a chihuahua waiting for the postman.
 
bobesch said:
Michael Cimino: "Heaven's Gate"
Sergio Leone: "Once Upon A Time In The West"

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Two excellent movies, both of which were beautifully shot and told wonderfully nuanced narratives.

Another movie that comes to mind - and one that may still have an uncomfortable resonance and relevance - is the 1981 German movie "Mephisto" (German, with sub-titles, but compelling viewing).
 
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Hands down. Star Wars. First movie I remember seeing in a theater at the ripe old of age of 7. Dad took me to a Cinerama Theater with a massive screen. Hooked on SciFi ever since. Die Hard made me an action movie nut. My wife rounded things out with Rom Coms. To many epic films to list these days like Ben-Hur etc. Big screen experience turned me into a home theater addict later in life. I won’t see a movie today at a theater unless it’s in Dolby Cinema. All the really big screen cinemas are pretty much gone, but Dolby Cinema is currently the only way to go. Our local AMC has a huge screen. It’s not Cinerama, but it’s good enough. Quality is everything. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a lot of quality content the last few years.
 
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Star Wars — I must admit I had to think a while on this one. It was an undeniably powerful experience at the cinema, I remember pestering my dad for a while until we went to see ‘Return of the Jedi’. I was a big fan, and it contributed to a lasting passion for science fiction. In the way that it shaped my later interests, it and ‘ET: The Extra-terrestrial’ and ‘Starman’ were all largely responsible as cinema going experiences for starting the ball rolling around 1982-1984, when I was 10-12.

But in terms of later interests, none of those were as influential as ‘The Lord of the Rings’ in book form, and ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ in game form, which largely monopolised me from 1985 onwards. ‘The Lord of the Rings’ films which came later were a tremendous experience but I was already a huge fan of the books.

The thing with ‘Star Wars’ was, for a long time it stood on its own as cinema, while ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ was very influential on the TV screen and in the larger canon of ‘Star Trek’ films. I find it very difficult to asses ‘Star Wars’ as an influence loose from all these other influences, and things like ‘Blade Runner’ and ‘Terminator’ and ‘2001’ which I discovered later in my teens but missed at the cinema. Those were the days I watched more video rentals, I was not wealthy and didn’t really value the uniqueness of the cinema.

That said I think I would have discovered science fiction anyway, even without ‘Star Wars’, there were enough other influences, and while I thought the original trilogy films were good, even to the extent of blowing me away, they were always more entertainment than something that set me thinking. This in contrast to ‘Blade Runner’, which was science fiction that made me think.
 
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Allyance said:
Schindler's List plus many others. Schindler's List is the only movie I have ever seen in a theater where the entire audience was completely silent and remained seated till the end of the credits, stunning.
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It occurred to me that another reason this film affected me is that my wife and I spent an entire day touring the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. Hard not forget. Also add Sophie's Choice to that list. You won't understand the title until it hits you.
 
Another two that affected me as a young man…

Das Boot. Wolfgang Peterson’s original 1981 movie I saw on Dutch tv sometime around 1986, and it really got to me. The war, the idea of being a submariner, the claustrophobia… for a long time this movie lived in my head. Brilliant acting by Jurgen Prochnow.
A Bridge too Far. This star-studded 1977 war epic about Operation Market Garden, an ambitious attempt to capture a series of bridges in the Netherlands to bypass the Rhine defenses and shorten the Second World War by a year was probably the defining war movie of my youth. It still glorified war, carrying echoes of past propaganda, where later movies such as Saving Private Ryan didn’t.
 
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