moments in film history that mean something to you

has a film ever had a moment or a character or a setting that has just completely blown you away to the point where you realise that cinema is the purest and most expressive art form there is?

Has a film ever changed your views or politics?
did you make a style or even a career choice based on a movie?

This thread is here for you to be your most passionate, to talk about those perfect moments of connection between you and a film.

mine is the first time I ever saw a xenomorph.It instantly made me a lifelong geiger fan, and as an eleven year old child remember thinking "if I could be killed by anything, I would choose that."

I also went for the Tyler Durdan look a while back, but im ugly and british. It didnt work for me

Gotta love Geiger... but I think the first time I ever saw a Xenomorph on screen, was in Aliens… and I started taking notes on how to kill the thing…

As for a setting that blew me away… it was the cliff scene in The Last of the Mohicans... it was hard to believe something so tragic could take place somewhere so beautiful…

And the movie Thunderheart helped spark my interest in Law Enforcement…

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I think the movie Philadelphia 1993) helped educate me about gays and about AIDS. After seeing the movie I became much more sympathetic to Gay rights.

I also think the movie Transamerica(2005) made me much more sympathetic to transexual issues.

I think the first movie that made me aware of the way Native Americans were treated was Little Big Man (1970) or maybe it was Fort Apache (1948)

After I saw Sicko (2007) I became a big supporter of universal health care.

Iron Jawed Angels (2004) made me much more aware of what the lady suffragettes went through.

I know Crash (2004) made me much more conscious of the problems we still have in this country with race relations.

I'm a big believer in the power of movies to help change people for the better.

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"Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others."- Groucho Marx

Not for me, but a friend of mine won't buy any diamonds after seeing Blood Diamond.

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"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews

Seeing my then 13 year old son cry while we watched Philadelphia made me realise he wasn't a child any more.

I was pretty much against buying diamonds before I saw the movie... but it definitely helped reinforce those thoughts…

I finally saw Citizen Kane when I was in college in the 1960s and realized at that time that it is so much better crafted than all other movies before or since that all the rest don't belong in the same category much less the same theater as Kane. But it didn't change my life, profession, politics, or anything else.

Now back in high school, I was waiting around campus one evening for my girlfriend (she was on the volleyball team at an out-of-town game) and I wandered into the auditorium where the drama club were rehearsing Romeo and Juliet. Now I had seen movies with Olivier and Welles doing Shakespeare, but it wasn't until I heard those kids saying those words in a familiar West Texas accent that I suddenly realized what it was all about. Made me an instant fan of the Bard.

Further back in my youth, I first got interested in journalism through two books of Ernie Pyle's stories from the front lines during World War II.

So books, definitely an art with powerful influence; live theater, a magical place where strange things come alive in the dark; movies, a form of entertainment readily available at any moment in megaplexes or through television. Movies take their stories from plays and books; how often does a story appear first on screen and then becomes a play or book?

My main complaint about movies is that they seldom let me make use of my imagination the way that plays and books do. Examples: The unseen director observing auditions from out front in the play Chorus Line has to become a person on screen (Michael Douglas, who is not a singer) and involved with a love-interest in a side-story that does not exist in the play. Another example: Early in the play of Man of La Mancha, (a colorful play based on an important book that has been a classic for centuries) two men dressed in an artist's vision of horses' head become through our imagination the steeds of the knight and Sancho in a stage setting of a Spanish dungeon. In the film, they take the characters outdoors and put them on real horses galloping behind a camera truck. What's more, the musical stars two big-name artists who can't sing, while the play has good but less known performers who can both act and sing.

The Princess Bride taught me a lot: girls don't have cooties,people aren't always what they first appear to be and you do everything and anything for love.

































and NEVER! trust a Sicilian...

i think it was blue denim for me. my mom, who was raised in the time that it came out, was forbidden to see it. by her southern baptist mother. i stayed up watching it thru her eyes and could see why it was so risque... its about teenage pregnacy and what happened back then. today we dont act all shocked if we see a girl who is 13-16 and going to have a baby, but back then it was a shameful secret. it just shows me that the world has changed so much in the last 2 decades............

i bet you all thought i would say wizard of oz since its my top choice!!! there is another movie that comes to my mind. its called spenser's mountain. its one of my fave henry fonda movies.. it just shows one man will kill his dream to let his kids have want they so desire. a chance to live and make themselves a better life than they have known. the ultimate sacrfice!!

Running With Scissors taught me how lucky I was to have a "normal" family.

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MY Work!

That movie was absolute torture.

For me, I'd have to say watching To Kill a Mockingbird as a kid. Tom Robinson's trial blew me away. I had never really thought about issues of race like that before (being white, it wasn't on my radar.)

JFK -- while I don't take Oliver Stone's take on it -- made me think about the idea that the government could -- and I mean could -- be involved in criminal and immoral events that have shaped our history. Of course, nowadays under the Bush Administration, we don't need Stone's conspiracy theories to know that the government is capable of anything.

As to film being so pure an art form, look to the end of City Lights when the blind girl realizes the tramp is the man who loved her. *sigh* The moment lasts less than what... 10 seconds... and it's simply sublime.

Most of all, I just want to point to DeSica's The Bicycle Thief as the film that made me realize how much I loved the art of film. That movie has incredible heart.

There are actually too many films that I have seen in my life that have large impacts on me, too many to mention in fact, but here are some:
At the end of It's A Wonderful Life when he's finally gotten back to his normal time and life and his family has a whole gathering at their house. They're giving away money and then they start to sing. In my mind that is one of the most heartwarming and festive scenes in all of cinema. It opens your heart and teaches you to love what you've got, an amazing film.
At the end of LOTR The Return of the King when what is left of the broken Fellowship reunite at Rivendell. They've all shared a strong bond like brothers and have all been thrown into a long harrowing journey and war that has now come to an end, and they see eachother again, together for the last time until they part for good. Those films teach us the value of brotherhood, setting aside your differences for greater good and triumphing over evil with the love of friends (and so much more).
In the Pianist where Szpilman is helped by the Nazi. It is something in that man's life that is so unforgettable and profound (and a hands down miracle that his life was spared). That film shows and tells so much and shows us that keeping faith and being persistent can help you triumph over the greatest diversity.
One more is because I could literally be typing for YEARS is at the end of Big FIsh when the son in the story takes his father in his wheelchair down to where he claims to have caught the fish. There is waiting all the beautiful and eccentric characters that his father told about in his persistent story. He goes away with them and the son finally sees the truth in his father's story. It's sad yet beautiful at the same time. That film teaches us to broaden our imaginative horizons to believe things we may have thought ridiculous and see that even the smallest bit of meaning can lie in them.
I almost feel guilty because I've mentioned so few.
Cinema IS the most touching and amazing art form I've known

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"It's not the destination, but the things you learn on the way there"

The Exorcist made me fear Satan a whole lot, not that I already didn't (fear him), but he was a helluva lot more scary after watching that film at a young age.

That - and 2001: ASO made me scared of monkeys.

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“The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” – Sir Richard Burton

One of my favorite movies that I connected to was Cinderella Man. There was one particular scene where Russle Crowe was boxing somebody and getting the crap beat out of him. He gets a hard punch in the ribs and he starts seeing empty beds where his children sleep, then the fight turns around. The music during the scene had me short of breath. Some great storytelling right there.

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Film Dayz -- all three scenes you mentioned, It's a Wonderful Life, The Pianist, LOTR:ROTK, and Big Fish, are scenes I also find very powerful.

My mother had passed away two months before I went to see Big Fish, and I gather it was too soon for me to have a lost a parent and see that film. I was nearly hysterical. It's a great scene, too.

Blade Runner. Ever since i first watched that movie last summer i've had a totally different view on a lot of things. I dont jump to conclusions anymore, and i take time to hear both sides or the arguement now. The ending of that movie had a very big emotional impact on me.

titanic is the movie for me which change my view about love.

I have to mention the first 60 seconds of Star Wars in 1977. This is when I feel in love with the world of cinema, as did many youngsters at the time. Star Wars became my whole life for a few years after I first plopped down in the seat with my big bag of popcorn and giant soda, in an old fashioned, single-screened theater on Speedway and Kolb in Tucson, Az.

When those ships entered the screen, flying over my head, and the audience went crazy, I was hooked, forever...

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