When did you start going beyond casual movie watching?

Because I'm so mature.

I'm 35 actually. So maybe even 17 years ago.

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"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

Well, I always had high sensibility to movies and always had high expectations regarding movies though I can claim to have been a film buff in 2011-2012 period when I watched about 500 movies. After I joined this forum a began to watch less movies and watch more anime series in fact.

Well I guess you learn something new every day. I always pictured you as being in your 40s.

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I always watched a lot of movies, in fact, 2014 has been the year I have been watching the least movies since 2005-2006 or something (when I was a videogame buff and I did not have time for film). In 2014 I watched only about 120 movies, 100 for the Asian film challenge and 20 normal movies.

I remember the period I became a film buff, it was a very stressful time in my life (2011), I was working after finishing college in a weird place full of math geniuses which were arrogant and with huge egos and I felt oppressed by this super-competitive research environment, was when I was working on my thesis and I got some free time in the weekend and I decided to kill some of the remaining films of the IMDB top 250 which I haven't watched (I know the IMDB top 250 since I was about 13-14). I noticed I never watched the anime films on that top 250 so I decided to watch Miyazaki's Spirited Away and a mediocre thriller film, Unstoppable because I read Roger Ebert's review of it on (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477080/). After I felt the timeless eternal sublime greatness of Spirited Away for the first time on that Saturday, I decided to watch Princess Mononoke on Sunday, I also watched that melodrama masterpiece Elephant Man by David Lynch on the same day, in fact I found Princess Mononoke a bit forced on a first watch and Elephant Man felt more natural and so I had a greater emotional response to it than PM on that fateful day. However, a couple of weeks later I watched PM again and I fully grasped it's eternal timeless greatness and couldn't sleep or work for 36 hours afterwards (which actually f*ed me up at work), becoming my most powerful cinematic experience in my life (in fact, surpassing my experience with 2001 which I had watched 4 years earlier when I was at college). After the life changing experience of entering in contact with the timeless eternal greatness of Princess Mononoke I became a hard core Miyazaki fanboy. I put myself a challenge of finding a movie that was as powerful as Princess Mononoke and I watched about 100 movies in the 50 days afterwards (which f*ed up my research at the time but that effect was only temporary anyway).

In fact, I still remember one of the finest movie watching days in my life at that great cinematic period on the months following my first watch of Spirited Away: I watched on the same day and by the first time: Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, Werner Herzog's Aguirre the Wrath of God, Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell (was re-watch after about 8 years since I first watched it, nice to watch it from a mature perspective) and Malick's The Tree of Life (which I still regard as one of the worst movies I ever watched). I still remember that day as clearly as it was yesterday. Of course, I worked only 2 hours on my research that day but I watched 3 eternal masterpieces and 1 piece of turd. Still perhaps one of the most "productive" days of my life.

Interestingly, I never found a movie that could top Princess Mononoke's emotional power (animated or not) over a period of two years, when in 2013 (after a couple of months after I joined this forum), I watched a cartoon TV series from 2011, which surpassed every single work of cinema I ever watched and to a greater degree that Princess Mononoke did. That was the period when I decided: f*ck Bergman and Ozu, what I really like are cartoons! I never watched a Bergman or Ozu film since early 2013, (though to be fair I watched a couple of Kurosawa, Tarkovsky (re-watches) and others but with lower expectations). Still live action movies now don't affect me as strongly as they did in 2011 and 2012. I guess they are like a drug: if you use it too much it loses it's effect and anime is like a strong drug like cocaine while normal movies are a weaker drug that do less damage but that loses it's effect after one consumes too much of the stronger drug. Let's see how long my anime drug lasts. When it ceases to yield high levels of pleasure I will move to another hobby as I have always been doing. I was even into blacksmithing at a time. It was a very expensive hobby and I stopped "playing" with it because of risk of lung damage.

I guessed you would be around 40. So 35 is not that far from the mark. The guy whose age I could never guess was Hitchfan I though he was like 55 but he was 15.

I'm older than most of you here. I'm in my early 50s so I've had a chance to see some of the great films, first run at the theater. But mostly I was just watching films for the fun of it.

I didn't get into movies until about 8 years ago, when at Christmas time my wife wanted to watch, It's a Wonderful Life. First I complained, as I thought B & W movies were old krusty and boring. BUT then something clicked in my mind...I stopped seeing old films as 'old technology' but as hidden treasures to discover. I've been discovering movie treasures every since.

I noticed that on the internet the median age is around 21-22. Hence, I am already several years older than the average citizen of the internet. I feel like an old man sometimes when I see people born in 1997 and 1998 posting on these forums.

2009 was the year I got hooked onto film. I have in fact been studying literature before my passion for cinema became more dominant and I decided to become an avid cinema lover instead. The ground that I have covered over the last 5 years was nothing but extraordinary, beginning with the classics like Vertigo and The 400 Blows. Hitchcock was one of the reasons why I started to take cinema seriously.

hmmm I'd say most of the people on this site make me look like I've never watched a movie before in my life. But in my group of friends I'd like to think of myself as a movie guru. Most ask me for recommendations. But most of them have no taste. It's hard, most people just want to forget about whatever is going on in their lives, so they watch the brainless action movies or rom coms. Which is good for them, I just can't do it. I enjoy movies with substance and something to say as well as great acting. Now with that being said I don't watch as many movies as I'd like I just don't have time, I am going back to school and trying to get a new career, I really don't have time to watch older movies.

But I'd say my criteria in movies changed sometime in college about 6 or 7 years ago and solidified probably about 5 years ago. Probably when I was 22 or 23ish. I am 27 now. I hope when I can settled down into a career and gain more free time to really sink my teeth into some older movies. One day, maybe I can become a movie guru too!

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101 Favorite Movies (2019)

After a friend recommended Mulholland Drive.

My social life has been dogs**t ever since.

Well, until I was 17 I liked movies but just for entertainment. I didn't care about who the director was and I never memorized the actors names. But then, I watched Pulp Fiction for the first time. It made a huge impact on me and I remember looking at the cover of the DVD, reading the name of Quentin Tarantino and asking myself: who is this guy? I started looking for everything he directed, written or produced and it opened my eyes to a new way of watching movies! He is still my favourite director of all time...

When I was 21 I discovered Kubrick (the first movie I watched was the Clockwork Orange) that completely blew my mind and I watched my first Hitchcock (Vertigo) some weeks later. I stoped being afraid of old classics (until then I would reject anything made before the 90's).

However, it only became an obsession this year and I've been devouring films for the last couple of months. I still feel an amateur everytime I read this forum and I know there's so many movies I should watch as soon as I can!

When I was a kid I just watched films when they were on TV and didn't take them seriously, but I'd say I really got into the whole thing when I turned 19; and at the same time my passion for science fiction started after reading Arthur C Clarke, Phil Dick, Robert Heinlein and Asimov at college. I first saw Blade Runner in my early 20's and it blew me away, it's been my favorite film since.

When I was in college, thanks to a intro film class and a little known director named Stanley Kubrick, who made look at films differently after Dr Strangelove. Also to a lesser degree Double Indemnity, but Dr Strangelove more so then anything else. Did not fall in love with it instantly, but for some reason I kept returning to the film, until it is now my second favorite movie of all time.

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When my mom started beaming movies into the womb.

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I knew a few people who were of the same idea but sadly I could never change their minds. I also really would like to convince people Subtitles are not a bad thing.

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I guess I love old B & W movies because I'm interested in American history and watching an old 1930s,40s,50s movie is like a window into the past. Somehow black and white, makes these films seem all the more nostalgic.

Started off with my Dad. He loved films. He was a youngster in the 40s and 50s when there was loads of cinemas and the bill would change a few times a week. No one had tv so going to the flicks was the done thing and it wasn't expensive either.
Then when we were kids he'd watch films on tv with us mostly on a Sunday afternoon when there was always a film on. He was really ace at knowing who people were. We used to ask him the name of any minor character and he'd know who it was.

Us kids went to Saturday morning pictures too at the cinema a few mins walk away from us. That was really my cinema education . Every Saturday for sixpence (old money) you'd get 3 or 4 cartoons, a serial, and a main film - hours of entertainment. Some of the serials would be really old - this would be around 1964-68 and they'd be showing us stuff from the 30s and 40s sometimes. Things like the Superman from the 1940s, The Lost Planet and various Westerns.
The main film could be anything from Ben Turpin silent films, Tarzan, Mighty Joe Young, films starring Gene Autry , Rin Tin Tin or Lassie - anything the cinema could get cheap I suppose. Or we'd have one of the Childrens Film Foundation films.

I look back on those days with great fondness, and feel sad that those times where you could get hundreds of kids into a cinema with no parents watching over you have gone forever . Those Saturday mornings with their enormously eclectic mix of films really did make its mark on me. Yes sometimes there was mayhem and the Manager would come and give a lecture, but more often than not there was entrancement, and loads of cheering and booing at the goodies and baddies. Sweet times

In the 70s we used to have foreign language films on BBC2 and me and my mum used to watch the late night ones. I vividly remember seeing Belle de Jour with her. As I mentioned in the 70s film thread, Bruce Lee started my fascination with Asian films, but it wasn't till the mid 90s that I really got into them. I still think of going to the cinema as something special, but don't do it nearly as much as I should!

There were 2 movies that a huge impact on my movie watching... one is the original "The Wicker Man" with Christopher Lee and Edward Woodward.. the second was "A Clockwork Orange". They are my favorite 2 English speaking films.