Movies that "changed my life"
Submitted by jenhowel on Sat, 07/12/2003 - 03:58
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- ANNIE - This is the first movie I remember loving, and I'm not sure if it had an effect on me, but I'm including it for good measure. It's possible a lot of my love of cinema comes from this movie.
- ROMANCING THE STONE - My first awareness of sexual passion came from this film, which I saw in the third grade. There was something so thrilling to me about the love affair in this film and I believe Jack T. Colton was my first movie crush. I found out sex had something to do with being naked with someone else.
- DANCES WITH WOLVES - This is essentially the movie that made me REALLY CARE about movies. I saw it when I was in eighth grade, with my class, and I became hooked on Kevin Costner, the movie itself, and learning about Native Americans. I had always liked movies, but now I went out of my way to see them. From the Kevin Costner obsession, I saw "JFK" which also spawned interests. From the Native American interest, I learned a lot about our country's untold history, read Lame Deer Seeker of Visions (a great book), and saw "Black Robe"
- BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA - The next Major Movie Experience I remember, Dracula became my favorite movie almost instantly. It began my modified goth phase in which I read lots of Anne Rice, H.P. Lovecraft and Poe and generally read about vampires. I also was inspired to check out symbolist art, after reading that it was a major inspiration for the film's production design, and symbolism remains my favorite period in art.
- MURIEL'S WEDDING - This is the film that introduced me to ABBA. And at my wedding, I used "I Do, I Do, I Do", not for my processional but for my recessional. It worked really well!
- PULP FICTION - I saw Pulp Fiction with absolutely no idea what it was about, which made it an amazing experience. Pulp Fiction spawned an interest in John Travolta which led me to Grease and Saturday Night Fever, which led me to Olivia Newton-John and disco music, which became major forces in my life. It also led me to Quentin Tarantino and his whole body of work, which led me to Robert Rodriguez's films via "Four Rooms". Finally, it led me to an interest in making films of my own.
- SLEEPAWAY CAMP SERIES - These are the first horror movies I remember watching, and they showed me that the horror genre was, in fact, my cup of tea, after years of dismissing these films as unworthy of being watched, sight unseen. I've since caught up!
- HENRY AND JUNE - Led to my encountering Anais Nin who is still my favorite author, years after first viewing this film. Nin in turn led me to Henry Miller and the work of photographer Brassai.
- MOULIN ROUGE! - I'm not sure if this movie, in fact, changed my life, but I do think it may have helped bond me and my husband. I showed it to him pretty early in our relationship, not expecting him to like it. Instead, he loved it, cried at the end, and declared it his favorite film too! We used "Come What May" as our first dance at our wedding, and an instrumental "Your Song" for our wedding march.
- BARAKA - This film came at a pivotal point in my life where I was just getting over a depression, and I believe it set off a period of spiritual growth, or at least accentuated this growth.
- GANDHI - This film introduced me to Gandhi's life, a life which is a true inspiration to anyone who ever feels overwhelmed by the problems of the world. To watch what this (at first) relatively unremarkable man accomplished without violence is truly amazing.
I'm sure there are more of these, but these are the ones I can think of off-hand. These are not necessarily my favorite films, but rather films which led me to interests, ideas, or other films of note. These are films which caused my life to branch off in new directions, in other words.