What's your fave movie of all time that you love to recommend to people?

John Carpenter's 1982 masterpiece The Thing. The themes of paranoia and isolation are so perfectly explored; it launched the career of Keith David, who is just a treasure; the performances are all immaculate; and those effects. My god, the effects.
- That's a great one as well. That alleyway fight scene is so fucking cool. Carpenter is easily one of the most creative, most fun artists of his generation.
  
  Do you have any bubblegum?
- Absolutely amazing movie, the effects were so ahead of their time!
  
  Right? I can't watch it with people anymore, because I keep pausing to explain how certain effects were achieved. It's a monumental achievement.
- Love that one too. What do you (or anybody with a theory or the answer) think is the meaning of the ending?
  
  I think it's intentionally ambiguous. For me, the point is the paranoia and distrust. I might be wrong, of course, but my interpretation is that we are supposed to leave the experience with questions.
- Damn, that movie really messed me up as a kid, watching it alone.
  
  I can imagine; I wouldn't recommend it for kids. Way too much gore and tension.
- I love Keith David.
  This my favourite joke involving him:
  Instant death
  
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  Instant death
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  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
- My god, the effects.
  My god, the soundtrack. He's a fantastic musician. I really liked his Lost Themes, especially Wraith:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21NIxhWQrIU
  
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  https://www.piped.video/watch?v=21NIxhWQrIU
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  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

5th Element
- This is one of my favorites. Also Shawshank Redemption and The Birdcage. Although I learned recently that a lot of humor in The Birdcage goes over the heads of younger people.
  Edit: Sharing this here in case you haven't seen it...
- My fav movie! The perfect blend of sci-fi, action, comedy, and fashion model catwalk.
- Multipass!
- Perfect.

Hot Fuzz. It's just hilarious and fairly well done and people I know generally appreciate the style.
For those that don't, maybe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hundred-Year-Old_Man_Who_Climbed_Out_of_the_Window_and_Disappeared_(film)
- Seconded. This truly is a masterpiece of a movie

The Big Lebowski
Is gonna be the best movie you've ever seen once you see it twice
- Shut the fuck up, Donny.
- Really? I tried watching it but I couldn't get through it.
  
  It has a really messy plot with fast paced dialogue and subtle details that you can miss, I also remember my first time seeing it and being like "wtf is going on?"
  As I said, the second time I saw it years later, I already knew the general direction of the movie so I could focus on the single characters and let me tell you: there's a reason why there are a bunch of people quoting it all the time, every line of the script is like a meme, everything is so iconic
- !achievers@lebowski.social beckons
- Never seen it, I actually started watching it this week, so far so good!
  The dude is like my spirit animal.
- Damn, now I have to watch it again haha
- Ya don’t mess with tha Jesus
- it took until the third viewing for me to catch how like 80% of Lebowski's lines are things someone else said in the previous scene

- Just watched both bladerunner movies (idk which versions of them) and was rather underwhelmed. The cinematic grand setpieces i can apprechiate and see how they can be captivating for some but the story (or bith of them rather) wasnt very good imo. The worldbuilding is ambitious but the logic behind everything is lacking. Its just not "realistic" enough for me. I get thats sci-fi but for me it feels more like a fantasy movie like idk avatar or harry potter, rather than sci-fi which is supposed to play in our world/universe but with advanced tech. Things like not being able to distinguish replicants (first movie I just didnt buy. And then in the second one there is a gadget that can do just that.
  And also Ryan Gosling played pretty badly (maybe it was the script), no emotions, (almost) no storytelling in his mimic, emotions, in his character at all. He is almost like a wax figure, during watching I multiple times had to pause and complain to my co-watcher about his performance, as it too was unrealistic and too stoic for my taste
  
  I feel like I'm the only person I know who really enjoyed the sheer visual masterpiece that was the second movie. Gosling is supposed to under-react here, and that he does well, right until the point that he breaks.
  
  To be fair, you have to remember that the story the that the first film was based on was published in 1968. It's basically a form of the "Seinfeld isn't funny" trope. Just about every work of sci-fi, about being able to (or not) tell human from machine has borrowed one thing or another from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep or the first Bladerunner film in one way or another. It's basically impossible not to.
  So I wonder if your opinion of it, watching it for the first time in 2024 could be colored by that. If all of those themes have been beaten to death again and again, satirized, parodied, meme-ified, then eventually cycling around to being cool again, then maybe you're noticing all of those things as the tropes/memes they became.
  I would say like half of Rick and Morty episodes are a take on a Philip K. Dick plot point. Had I not read his novels before being exposed to that stuff, I'm sure I would have probably caught more about how poorly written his female characters were, for example. But at the time I was just too blown away by the concepts this dude had come up with that it didn't matter to me.

A friend of mine mentioned 'Contact' was the perfect film. I thought about it for some time and found that I agree. The plot, casting, filmography, and score are all top notch.
Beyond favorite there are quite a few films I consider 'done' we don't need sequels or remakes. Most recently the original 'Willy Wonka' came to mind.
- Great movie. If you haven't, you should check out Arrival (2016).
  
  I like it, but it's also a movie where world leaders act in the most unrealistically stupid way possible. It's where emotions take more precedence than any actual pretense of diplomacy. Humans being gaslit into allies by future-seeing aliens is also a bit too deterministic to be seen as any kind of moral victory either. I dunno, not a movie for me
- I love the line “They should have sent a poet”
- There's a video by a designer talking about some of the symbolism of Ellie's journey (Full talk video here -- SPOILERS for the film in both).
  And also an insightful YouTube comment(!) someone made in response describing their interpretation:
  
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  symbolism of Ellie's journey
  Full talk video here
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First rule is, I can't talk about it. Second rule is, I can't talk about it.
I have lost count of how many times I watched that movie. So many great details.
And I think most people take away the wrong message. It is critic and not encouragement.
- It's a philosophical movie about breaking yourself apart and rebuilding yourself consciously.
  Not hard to understand why so many people don't get that part of it. It's a deeply introspective movie, not just about sweaty guys fighting each other.
  
  A high school friend of mine said it romanticized mental health disorders, which I can't really disagree with.
  
  There's also sweaty boobs
- Ah, the Care Bears movie. Yeah I was deeply ashamed too, but you love what you love.

Tucker and Dale vs Evil.
It's such a gem of a movie, hits all the right notes
- We’ve had a doozy of a day!

Snatch. Such an absolutely quotable movie with interesting characters, and the great mix of storylines that Guy Ritchie films are know for. The dialogue is just phenomenal!
- Y'like dags?

Aliens.
Great story. Excellent pacing. Fantastic characters. Awesome music. I'm running out of adjectives, so I'll add that I really liked: dialog, acting, special effects, lore, and setting.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly... by like a lot.
I watched the Dollars Trilogy in order and I love all those movies. A Fistful of Dollars feels very low budget at certain points, including one of the worst day for night edits I've ever seen, but overall it's a damn good 9/10 Yojimbo ripoff.
For a Few Dollars More is straigt up one of the best movies I have ever seen, an easy 10/10. It's a full blown high budget movie that just shocked me when I saw it for the first time, I was amazed how good it was, and it confused me too since EVERYONE said that The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is the best of the bunch, like how could something be better than this???
Well, how is it...? When I first saw The Good, The Bad and The Ugly I almost went catatonic. If For a Few Dollars More is 10/10 then this movie is 11/10, or 12/10 or even 13/10. EVERYTHING about this movie is amazing, if the previous one was made with an A24 budget then this one was made with the same production level as fucking Oppenheimer. Everything is bigger, the scale of the movie is breathtaking, the Morricone music is the best of all time, the characters are amazing, the action is amazing, the climax of the movie is the best ever put on screen, I just fucking love this movie so SO fucking much.
So yeah... watch The Good, The Bad and The Ugly if you haven't.
(Shout out to Duck, You Sucker. A movie that also blew my socks off, made by the same director.)
- They are all great movies! Do you also think highly about What about Once Upon a Time in the West?
  
  Absolutely! Both Once Upon a Time in the West and Once Upon a Time in America are pure masterpieces too!
- If you haven't seen it, check out Kurosawa's Yojimbo.
- The Dollars Trilogy is a great recommendation, and I think your analysis is spot on! The cinematography in the second and third installments is incredible.
  I like to follow up with Tarantino's Hateful Eight (my personal favorite film to recommend, especially as a Christmas movie in place of Die Hard) to see how hugely influential the Trilogy was.
- The Bruce Willis movie, Last Man Standing, is a good Fistful of Dollars redo set in 1920s I believe.

The Blues Brothers. For years people had been telling me how good it was but I hadn’t got around to watching it. Now I get it.
- "we're on a mission from God"
- One of my top 3 movies!

I love most of Wes Anderson's body of work, but my absolute favourite of his is The Life Aquatic
- "I wonder if he remembers me..."
  Life Aquatic is great, but I have a soft spot for Royal Tennenbaums myself
- Really? I love of Wes Anderson movies, but The Life Aquatic was the only one I couldn't finish.
  
  That's too bad. I found it to be just a really beautiful movie top to bottom with a great story and clever humour.

Has to be The Matrix. Was 13 or 14 at the time of release, marketing around it was very mysterious. Obviously my childmind was blown during opening scene!
- here here!
  didn't think much of the sequels though

I'm always telling people to REALLY watch Napoleon Dynamite. I think it got quoted and proto-memed to death when it came out, leading to most people having an unfair idea in their head of what the movie is.
The soundtrack is phenomenal. The acting is (mostly) way better than you may have thought it was. Jon Gries (Uncle Rico) was nominated for an Independent Spirit award and he absolutely deserved that nomination. The cinematography is excellent, especially knowing how much it cost to make + how much experience the crew had. Though it's not explicitly said, I think it's ultimately a story about neurodivergent people finding friendship, solidarity, and happiness in a world not made for them.
Also, the scene where Uncle Rico throws a steak at Napoleon is still funny.
- I still cry laughing when I see or think about the grapefruit peg the windshield and Uncle Rico's scream.

The Grand Budapest Hotel - visually beautiful, the story never slows, altime favorite

For action movie fans, I'll always recommend The Raid: Redemption. It's a good gateway to martial arts movies, which can lead to a whole slew of other more esoteric recommendations
- yea it's amazing. Seconding that. Curious what those other recommendations would be? because aside from some old Jackie Chan flicks and a couple others, I'm a rookie in the martial arts flicks biz
  
  I'd consider myself a rookie as well. Other than the classic Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan stuff, there's Oldboy, Ip Man, chocolate.
  Checking what else those performers have been in can be a good way to branch out to other titles.

My favorite movie of all time is Lord of the Rings, but most people have already seen that.
I find that I recommend Warrior a whole lot. It is an awesome movie and most people haven't seen it.

Ratatouille.
I don't think there's a movie that loves food more, or pays more respect to food. It's an actual masterpiece, from every strand of hair rendered on Remy's body, to each note played in the score. I will never get tired of watching this movie.
- I like it too, but goddamn do I hate movies that boil down an entire culture to a single city. There's no greater French Culture than Paris! or There's nothing more British than London! or New York is all that exists for the arts!
  I like the part about rats that cook. I find the love story somewhat creepy.

Here is my top 3 list:
Lord of the Rings
Back to the Future
Terminator 2
- T2 hits even better after watching T1

Grave of the Fireflies.
If I can't be happy, no one will.
- Seen it once, and never again. I will never recommend this movie to anyone.
  
  I've seen it once, and I seem to be practically psychologically unable to cry, so rather than crying I walked around feeling like I was carrying a hundred pound millstone around my neck for about 4 days.
  It's a beautiful movie with every last single one of the studio Ghibli traits that you have come to know and love.
  But it's not a cartoon for little kids. I highly recommend that you watch it at least once if you haven't, just don't let your kids watch it until they are adults.
  
  with all the shit I read about it I've grown wary. Not sure I could handle it. I cry just watching my kitten be cute

A Scanner Darkly
- It is y-g-gou that are fuckeduptedup!
- Oooh. I understand people liking it. I get the film, but I do not enjoy watching it. Great plot!
  
  Try the book. Though as far as movie adaptations of PKD go, it's relatively faithful.
- Murr? Derr?

Cube (1997) It's a great little film and a bit of a mindfuck.

The Matrix (1999). The one existential movie for all. Then, it's probably "Serenity" (2005). Then, probably Galaxy Quest (1999).

Adding another. Children of Men. Brilliantly made, disturbing premise, very plausible sci-fi. Quite violent, though.
- Their long-take ambush scene is genius
  https://youtu.be/RSItluZwCEs?si=V23adMSzFiwCfAwN
  
  Wow. That was intense
  
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- Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  Children of Men
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

City of God

Baby Driver was the first movie I saw 3 times at the theater. Gets me hooked beginning to end.

I don't have a single favorite, but generally it's going to go something like:
Triangle.
The Void.
The Endless.
Moon.
Upgrade.
Delicatessen
- Moon! Definitely one I recommend.
- Upgrade was fantastic! So glad I caught that under the radar. Such a great action sci-fi with a dystopian flavour. "Black Mirror" meets "John Wick". And what an ending.
  
  It it, IMO, the best cyberpunk movie that's hit theaters. So under rated.
- I just recently saw Triangle. Definitely an under-appreciated movie. That one shot after she chases the girl to the top of the ship is S tier horror. Great ending too.
  
  I watched it last night after Helix's comment piqued my curiosity. I'd previously never heard of it before, and it's one of those movies where it's even better on the second viewing. Enjoyed the mystery and the eeriness! Was not expecting that ending at all
- Have you seen Vivarium or Color Out of Space?
  
  I haven't seen Vivarium, although it looked like it would be good. My wife loved it.
  I enjoyed The Color Out of Space for what it was; Dagon was another pretty solid Lovecraft adaptation. Oh, and for older horror, there's The Re-Animator, and From Beyond. I think a lot of Lovecraft doesn't translate to film very well; cosmic horror as a fiction genre just isn't quite the same as cosmic horror in film. Adaptations of books and stories to screen always have to make compromises that can cost some of the punch, and showing something--like the screaming bear in Annihilation--can give you more punch than trying to set the same scene up in a book. Neither is 'better' than the other, they're just different art forms.
- God yes I love The Void. It really hits those Lovecraftian themes extremely well imo. The practical effects are fantastic as well.

Network (1976) is a perfect movie.
- Was just about to comment this. Paddy chafeyesky is a really unique but complicated figure, and how they let him, john sayles, and a few others get away with socialist themes in movies, I'll never know.
- That movie could’ve been released this year and still been current

Coherence, it's like 85 minutes long and came out a decade or so ago. No script, the actors ad-libed their lines with only minor directions.
It's a lot like Primer meets the Man from Earth
- Just to avoid confusion, it's called Coherence. That's why none of your friends watched it! LOL
  Edit: he said Cohesion.
  
  D'oh!
- a lot like Primer meets the Man from Earth
  You have my attention...
  
  It's on Amazon Prime if you want to check it out
- I absolutely loved watching this movie going in with no idea of the plot other than the byline. Absolute hidden gem

Storks
Inside out
Idiocracy
Popstar: Never stop never stopping.
Screamers (camp sci-fi horror)
Along with the rest mentioned here.
Recommendation depends on the audience
- Popstar is a classic and underappreciated in my circles
  
  100%
- My sister worked on Screamers! It's so much fun.
  Great list
  
  You know she did a good job if it's remembered 30 years later

Apocalypse Now. Damn, what a movie.
- What the hell is a Redux, anyway?
  Apocalypse Now is a great 2 for 1 movie deal
  
  So is Full Metal Jacket. It's a shame Vincent D'Onofrio is only in the first one.
  
  TIL what movie inspired React state management

If you're 40 to 60 years old, definitely Hot Tub Time Machine.
It'd still be a great movie if you're out of that age zone, but if you were around to remember the 80's it just hits that much better. It's a fantastic comedy from beginning to end.

Dead Man directed by Jim Jarmusch.
I am by no means a Johnny Depp fan but he provides a top tier performance alongside Gary Farmer.
An acid western buddy movie about death, dying, and belief. Beautiful film with a beautiful score.
- Just watched this for the first time a month or two ago on the Criterion Collection Blu Ray. Amazing film. Killer soundtrack by Neil Young that is clearly just him riffing while watching the movie.
  If anyone has access to them, I highly recommend the Criterion extra features. Very cool long form interview with Gary Farmer, and the audio bit where Jarmusch answers letters written in by fans (including one from Bill Hader asking him if he can be in one of his films) is just a joy to listen to. I could listen to that man speak about filmmaking for hours and not get bored.

Into the Spiderverse is a perfect movie.
Hot Fuzz is so funny every time.
The LOTR trilogy is my favorite but the two above are my recommendations.

As they pop in my head:
Everything everywhere all at once.
Her
Groundhog Day
I saw the devil
Patch Adams
Memento
Prisoners
Fight club
Good will hunting
- I remember watching Her right after going through a big break up. That one really hit hard. Great movie, though.

Repo: The Genetic Opera.
It's definitely not for everyone, but it hits all the right buttons in my moody theatre kid heart, and "I Didn't Know I'd Love You So Much" will always get the tears going for me.
And even if someone bounces off it, I've gotten a terrifying number of them hooked on Zydrate Anatomy. Might be the only song they remember from the whole thing, but it stays stuck.
- Zydrate comes in a little glass vial
- Not too be mistaken with repo, the depressing film about organ repossession with a flimsy plot.

- Yeah Omg I loved rogers waters solo album!

Django Unchained is my favourite! 🙌

Dark City
- Director's cut, theatrical cut spoils the end
  
  definitely
- The Matrix while not being quite The Matrix. Incidentally, both filmed in the same studios at similar times and allegedly shared some sets.
  
  The Matrix was flashier, but I thought Dark City asked a more interesting question which is what makes us ourselves. Is it our environment, our memories, or is it something more.

Running with Scissors. It’s a weird movie, and most people probably wouldn’t enjoy it, but I want more people to use the word “masturbatorium”.

Interstellar.
- If you like Christopher Nolan and playing with time, you must watch Memento.
  \ This awesome movie is played backwards, so like the main character who lost short-term memory we don't know what just happened.
  
  I've watched all 😏
  
  It's not really backwards, right? You have the timeline going both forwards and backwards from the middle if I remember correctly.

Probably Cloud Atlas
It was a commercial failure so it's usually one that people haven't already seen.
Talented cast and directors passionate about the project.
It's extremely divisive, most people either love it or think it was a waste of time.
¯(ツ)/¯

My favorite movie is probably Brazil (1985). It's a dystopian movie, but the population is suppressed by absurd amounts a bureaucracy (also the state surveiling and killing it's people). You need to fill out a form to fill out a form, and every screen is tiny, but magnified by a lens to be small instead.
But what I really love about it is the the "terrorist" Archibald Tuttle (who, very much, is not the protagonist); a repair man, who risks execution by the state, zip lining around the city fixing things like the protagonist's air condition.
I think we should all strive to be more like Tuttle in our daily lives.
- I love Terry Gilliam's movies. I always try to recommend Zero Theorem to people who haven't watched it
  
  Thanks for the recommendation, stranger. I'm gonna watch that!

The hateful eight. Well, cut my legs off and call me shorty if I don't laugh every time.

Tampopo, by Itami Juso. Fair warning: get ahold of a reservation to the nearest Japanese restaurant, you're going to need it afterwards.
Also, it's a western. About food. And an initiatic quest, the everlasting quest for perfection (in noodle-soup making).

I really enjoyed Tetris (2023). The story was super riveting and I also really liked the soundtrack (mostly just "modernized" Tetris music).
- isn't the modernized music just modernized Russian folk music?

Warrior - chock-full of powerful emotions at just the right points, and a really, really good "underdog rises to the top" storyline.
- I remember really not wanting to see it when it came out in theaters. I thought it looked boring and another dumb sports movie.
  My God it was so much more than that. I loved it immediately. I choked up a few times through the story, and I might have cheered a bit at the end. The trailers really did not do that movie justice.
- I commented before I saw your comment but I said the same movie. It's not my favorite movie ever, but it's up there and most people haven't seen it, so I recommend it a lot. Nick Nolte is phenomenal in it. All of the actors are actually.
  
  That moment with Nolte in the hotel room. Holy. Shit.

Synechdoche, New York
Mostly because I like to recommend things that are likely new to whoever I’m recommending to, and my experience has been that this isn’t a very widely appreciated or even known flick. And I also happen to love it personally, so it just became my go-to recommendation.
I do preface the recommendation with a “After watching it yearly for over a decade, I still don’t really really get it”. Its great.
- Fucked up movie

I don't "love" to recommend anything to anyone, but I's say, 2001 is by far my most favorite movie. It's in perfect balance between science, fiction, and philosophy and was waaay ahead of it's time. And even nowadays it looks spectacularly good and has a timeless storyline.
- I don't usually recommend movies in situations where the solution space isn't already limited significantly by the context, but 2001 is the one I thought of first upon reading the title, so I suppose there's at least two of us!

Muppet Treasure Island.

Ghostbusters. Perfect in every respect, and endlessly quotable.

I don't know about favorite of all time, but I recently watched "The Wind That Shakes the Barley" and it was incredible. An instant classic in my mind and I'd somehow never heard of it. It's about Ireland in the 1920s and stars Cillian Murphy and Liam Cunningham (most people will know him as Davos from Game of Thrones). Beautifully shot and acted.

Sneakers had got to be one of my all-time favorite movies. Definitely still relevant.

Scent of a woman.
It is Pacino at his best (arguably at least, he has done some great work)