AKIRA! OMGWTFBBQPENGUINS! I only recently watched this amazing film, after hearing about it for ages. If anyone hasn't seen it, see it. Now.

The first Matrix was great. Plenty of cheese, but overall a great story and brilliant eye-candy. The last two could (and should) have just been one movie, with a prequel (ie. 'The Second Renaissance on the Animatrix') rounding out the trilogy. The 2nd one felt so much like it was being drawn out for time. I still haven't seen the 3rd one in its entirety. And there was more than enough going on in The Second Renaissance to make a full movie IMO, it just wouldn't be able to use Canoe Reeves and the rest of the established cast.

Thanks Rolo for mentioning THX. I first saw that movie when I was fairly young, and while I had no clue what was going on I loved how it looked. The bleak white-on-white aesthetic just worked so well. Having seen it again as an adult, my enjoyment was not dulled one bit.

I'm probably going to get lynched for this, but I've gotta say it. I wasn't too keen on the Star Wars films. /me ducks and covers

Not that I didn't enjoy them. They were great fun. But they didn't hit that certain chord in me that says 'wow, what a brilliant film!' Nothing that I can put my finger on though. Maybe because I didn't see them until I was (nearly) an adult, and had already seen a bunch of the samurai films that Lucas used as references. Oh, there was a neat film on youtube showing how the scene where Luke blows up the death star matches [i:0f6fcb58e1]to the second[/i:0f6fcb58e1] the pace and delivery of the WW2 classic film Dambusters. I'll see if I can dig it up. EDIT: [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NMfBKrdErY]Here it is[/url]

The first Alien film was amazing. Loved it to death, and still do. Aliens was cool, but less insightful. I've never seen Alien 3, and the 4th one was little more than lifted references from the first 3. That being said, I still enjoyed the 4th one.

The Fifth Element sort of straddles the line between spoof and serious movie. It has references from over 140 sci fi films in it, and is shameless with its liberal application of cheese. Nonetheless, I love it for the world-building (if that makes sense), and because of the cheese rather than in spite of it.

If you've got a lot of time on your hands, plenty of ethanol (or 'oregano'), and a couple of like-minded movie geeks that want to 'get' Blade Runner, try this: watch the first Evil Dead movie first, and then watch Blade Runner. They are only connected in that they were made in the same year, but Blade Runner had ~100-1000 times the budget of Evil Dead. Even without prior knowledge of film language, Film Noir aesthetic or history, or Harrison Ford, you will appreciate Blade Runner all the more. And besides, IMO Evil Dead (and most other movies of that ilk) cannot be watched sober. Troymclure and I (and another non-WoW friend) tried this experiment a few years ago, and were blown away. Although, the oregano was supplemented just a little bit though, so it's not super objective ;)

I've heard great things about Spirited Away, but have yet to see it. I really enjoyed Ghost in the Shell, but I don't know if it was a movie or a series or what that I saw. I thought that it was a movie, but I was a little intoxed at the time and all I can find for reference now is stuff on the series.

It's pretty unrelated, but if you like animation, check out the short film [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qo3mnXGbJlg] MORE by Mark Osborne[/url]. Bleak, cutting, emotional, brilliant stuff.