Which films have had a profound effect on your life?

[SaraHoliday]

What films have had a profound effect on your life? Share the reason why if you like!

I have a time travel thing, it's something about accepting the inevitable and making peace. And maybe a bit about time not being linear so no one is ever truly gone.

Agree Arrival is great on this, Time Travellers Wife, and About Time. Butterfly effect and Interstellar.

Also, Where the wind blows.

An animation by the people who did The Snowman so everyone's parents assumed it was a kids thing and stuck us in front of it. About half the kids in my school watched it and were all traumatised.

I loved the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I have seen it 4 times at the theatre and much more at home. It is just fun and alive.
Ive seen it with different friends and my husband.
The night out after the first time i saw it was amazing. I was tame in outfit as a french maids uniform (and suspenders obvs.) the males wore full bask and everything. (It can't have been comfortable). Tbf it isnt comfy for us. Well me at least. Ir made an impact on me.

How could you love the film of TTTW? It wasn't anywhere near as good as the book, and missed out the crucial final scene which brought me to tears whilst reading....

TTTW?

Flash dance, I loved Alex, I was such a tomboy still am and it gave me permission to be a jeans wearing scruff ball with attitude, who also scrubs up pretty well!

She as the first women I recall seeing that had this kid of masculine job as well, I wanted to be a welder so badly.

I now even own the car that her boyfriend drove, just stopped short calling any of my dogs grunt!

I love this film!!
So moving.

Papillon with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman. So powerful and sad.

.

Cloud Atlas - our lives are not our own. I love it so much and the score.

Rain man
stoic
flowers in the attic

Ladybird, Ladybird. The horror of it. It definitely affected my life. Every time I left the kids home alone I’d say the same words to them about what to do in an emergency (even if I was only popping out for five minutes!). They’d roll their eyes at me. “We know, mum!”

I was so distraught after watching this. Like you, it made me think of my own grandparents and what they went through. I couldn’t stop crying. Such a powerful film.

Yes. I never owned a diamond because of this movie! I might ask for a lab grown one for my anniversary!

Suffragette.
I learnt about them in school but I didn’t truly understand the sacrifices made—and how shit life was for women before the vote—until I saw that film. I cried and cried, with guilt and gratitude, for what those brave women did for us all. I will never take my rights for granted again.

21 grams .. traumatic watch.. still rate difficult things in relation to that with DH he was DP at the time ... We got married not too long after think we trauma bonded

where the wind blows was one as a child can still remember it

Interstellar. Found it through hearing the soundtrack first. Hans Zimmer is a genius.

Definitely When the Wind Blows. Heartbreaking and all-too-plausible.

Alive (about the Andes Old Christians' Rugby Team plane crash).

Promising Young Woman sat with me for days. I’ve rewatched it and had the same effect every time. I’ve been through trauma and had it minimised and I thought the movie perfectly encapsulated how damaged you can be but still have the boring fight for any form of justice you can get. Also Law Abiding Citizen. For very similar reasons. I suppose you could add in The hands maids tale too.

when I was a teen I watched terminator and my bedroom had a window above the door. Had to block that with cardboard so I didn’t see any red dots coming to kill me. Haunted me for months and even now at 46 I have to sleep in total darkness and extension leads with red lights are my nemesis.

Barry Lyndon

As a child, the Railway Children really affected me.

It was the epilogue of the Barry Lyndon film :

"It was in the reign of George III that the aforesaid personages lived and quarrelled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor they are all equal now."

It put what I was going through at the time in perspective.

A Few Good Men.

It's literally the film that made me want to study law. I think it's one of the best films of all time.

Omg "21 Grams" is probably the saddest film of all time. It's brilliantly acted, but omg!

In terms of films that helped to shape my values, and had a profound effect in that sense - The Accused, with Jodie Foster.

I saw it around 1990ish when I was a young teen and it made a massive impression on me with regards to slut-shaming and how that impacts negatively on how women are treated in the justice system etc. It's one of the reasons I get furious on bloody Mumsnet when people - including people who purport to be feminists - make negative judgements about other women for sleeping with lots of men.

There are also films that had a profound effect me in the sense that they triggered lifelong interests that went on to influence my degree and my own creativity. One of them is the 1958 Hammer version of Dracula. Another is Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie (which actually has a really unpleasant undertone to it that hasn't aged well, but it fascinated me as a kid). Another is Company Of Wolves, which had a massive influence on me - again as a young teen.

Reading this back I'm amused that these are all films that I was much too young to watch legally at the time.