What are the most influential movies? -

[catpin]

For me, it's "The Producers" Aka Springtime for Hitler.

The movie got released 22 years after WW2 and got mixed reviews because joking about Hitler and WW2 was heavily controversial.
It was 2 years that it got called a cult classic and Mel brooks finally got his oscar.

What are other Influential movies you've watched?

 

[Null]

Are you talking about personally or culturally?

I think Fight Club has had a pretty profound cultural impact.

 

[catpin]

Are you talking about personally or culturally?

I think Fight Club has had a pretty profound cultural impact.

Lets go with both.

 

[millais]

Filmmakers are still aping the technical innovations pioneered by Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will to this day.

 

[CivilianOfTheFandomWars]

Well, Metropolis may be a bit of a weird movie to call influential, but I think it helped pave the way for what film could be in terms of special effects.
But Singing in The Rain is, to me, one of the best movies ever made. It came out when color was starting to be used in film, and that is paralleled in-story though the actors trying to learn how to use sound to make the 'talkies'. The choreography, the comedy, the music, the romance, all of it comes together to create a thoroughly amazing film that has changed how musicals have been made ever since. It's why Dancer in The Dark was such a diversion from form in the first place, for example.
As for movies that influenced my taste personally, I'd say Sin City, Hobo with A Shotgun, Jackie Brown, The 400 Blows, and Upgrade really made me fall in love with movies. Sin City and Hobo With A Shotgun made me fall in love with just insanely brutal movies that are still fun, Jackie Brown got me thinking about how genres can be looked at in different ways than normal, The 400 Blows is just a glorious story that hits hard and doesn't need to explain itself because it's just so raw, and Upgrade got me into how much interesting things you can do with a basic concept mixed with some badass camera work.

 

[MrTroll]

Birth of a Nation. Required reading: Roger Ebert's Great Movies essay about it. Even a big fat commie like Ebert couldn't help but gush about how important it was in perfecting film-making techniques that are still in use today.

 

[Syaoran Li]

It is weird that the three most influential movies of the early years of cinema were all propaganda pieces for some of the most horrible people in history.

Of course, I'm referring to The Birth of a Nation, Battleship Potemkin, and Triumph of the Will. The three films were more or less propaganda for the Second-era KKK, the Bolsheviks, and the Nazis.

Of course, there's also Gone With The Wind, The Godfather, Jaws, and Star Wars.

Another movie I think is worth mentioning would be Cannibal Holocaust. It's the first "found footage" movie and it more or less set the standard for "extreme cinema" along with several other 70's flicks.

Night of the Living Dead is another milestone in horror cinema and cinema in general

 

[Easterling]

The Texas Chainsaw massacare had a pretty profound impact on the horror genre.

 

[Bland Crumbs]

Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

It seems like a stupid teen comedy about ditching school but it is very much about the individual Ferris triumphing over the powers of fear(Cameron) and the status quo(Rooney).

In the end he has changed the lives of his friend Cameron who will now be able to live on his own in a world he was terrified of, his sister who was his nemesis until she began to realize that it is okay to go your own way thanks to the wise words of a pre-AIDS Charlie Sheen and the representation of the status quo ends up munching warm gummy bears with the future dregs he helped to shape.

Also, he taught Abe Froman, the Sausage King of Chicago, a valuable lesson about eating at snooty establishments.

I suspect that without that movie existing I would be working some horrible office job where my day began and ended with an unspoken wish for death.

 

[Damien Thorne]

Cannibal Holocaust invented the found footage horror genre.

 

[HeyYou]

The Thing is a famous example. It received mixed reviews on release but was pretty much instantly influential on the science fiction and horror genres.

 

[The Nothingness]

King Kong (1933) was not only the milestone in stop-motion animation but it was also one of the Founding Fathers in the giant monster genre.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

Modern Hollywood really and truly has Jurassic Park to thank for showing the true power of computer-generated imagery and animation. Yeah, there were still animatronics used to beautiful effect, but it made a permanent milestone in film history thanks to CGI, although it was using previous milestone movies as stepping stones such as Tron, The Abyss, and Terminator 2--but it's different this time around because oh my fucking God, it's a dinosaur. We're still feeling that to this day, almost thirty years later, whether we like it or not.

 

[neverendingmidi]

I'd say 1939 was THE year for films. You had both "Gone With The Wind" and the perfect adaption of "Wizard of Oz". You also had "Gunga Din" and "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington".

Another that had long lasting effects was the whole Lord of the Rings with the advances in motion capture.

 

[Idiotron]

I'm thinking of movies that inspired countless imitations, plot wise and/or style wise.
In no particular order:

The Matrix
Halloween & Friday the 13th (even though F13 was a rip off of Halloween, it became very influential and is ripped off to this day)
Paranormal Activity
MCU
Burton's Batman
Star Wars
Independence Day
Pulp Fiction
Lethal Weapon
Toy Story
Night of the Living Dead
Alien/Aliens
Blade Runner
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Universal monster movies
Psycho
Terminator
James Bond movies
Mad Max 2
Rocky
Towering Inferno
Die Hard
Evil Dead
Spider-Man
Harry Potter movies
LOTR movies
Revenge of the Nerds
American Pie
Taken
Saw
Gremlins
Jurassic Park

There are more but these are the ones I can think of right now.

Also (and this is more of a future prediction) John Wick.
Even though it's technically an R rated Taken rip off, it's going to change Hollywood for a while because of the style.
You can already see the influence but it will only grow.

 

[BooneHelm]

Paranormal Activity.

I know the Blair Witch Project and The Last Broadcast came out way before it but the genre really took off after Paranormal Activity.

 

[Merried Senior Comic]

Probably Triumph of the Will and Olympia.

Leni Riefenstahl was a genius.