What are the 4 movies that define you? #FilmStruck4

Recently a classic movie streaming service FilmStruck has been having a pretty successful Twitter promotion where you pick the 4 movies that define you followed by the hashtag #FilmStruck4.

Some of the staff have participated with some surprising and not so surprising choices.

I guess this post wouldn't be complete if I didn't do mine so boom goes the dynamite:

Boy, it's hard to choose just 4 but there you go. So, what are the 4 movies that define you?

If I understand the format right it should look something like what I have above but feel free to display them any way you choose.

Probably dozens more that could go on the list (Halloween really belongs on there somewhere) but these are the four that I think come closest to "defining me":

• Star Wars
• Jurassic Park
• Goodfellas
• Napoleon Dynamite

Hardly anything revolutionary here but these are all movies I've seen dozens of times and can quote almost all the way through. To make up for the blandness of my list; Oliver Stone's Alexander played a huge role in developing my love of history and the movie still holds a special place in my heart.

So basically your 4 all time favorite movies?

ลุงบุญมีระลึกชาติ
Wet Hot American Summer
The Evil Dead
This Is Spinal Tap

I kind of look at this as movies that had a profound effect on me:

Raiders of the Lost Ark (saw it three times in the theatres when I was 4, watching Nazis melt definitely had an effect)

Empire Strikes Back (kind of informs my world view that good doesn't always triumph)

Aliens (probably why I joined the army after university, though I ended up as their officer Gorman)

Prince of Darkness (John Carpenter, love it even though its not that great a movie)

I tried to take it more literally than "favorite movies", and listed the movies that had the strongest influence on my personality and tastes.

• A Nightmare On Elm St. 4 (defined my taste in horror and dark comedy)
• Airplane! (defined my over-the-top silly side)
• The Crow (defined my teen goth phase, as well as some further-lasting tastes in music and such)
• Killer Klowns From Outer Space (defined my love for cult classic 80s weirdness)

(the last one could also go to Eraserhead, which really informed my taste in surrealism)

• Predator
• Big Trouble in Little China
• The Empire Strikes Back
• Akira

Grosse Pointe Blank
Fist of Legend
Scott Pilgrim vs The World
Drive (1997)

This is impossible! So much is about what context we are talking about.... But.... Damn.... Yes, these I can be alright with.

As a Dane I thought it could be interesting to highlight four films from my home country, that I absolutely adore. Also newsflash if you don't enjoy socialrealistic films or Lars von Trier (which I don't), Danish filmmaking is sort of depressing. We have a bunch of folkcomedies and then Carl T. Dreyer. That's about it.

I struggled long and hard deciding if I should cut any of these for Ocean's 11 or Kill Bill, but in the end I just couldn't justify it to myself.

I don’t have time to edit beautiful picture and I’m on my phone but here:

Last Year at Marienbad, it’s actually the best movie ever made and the critics are wrong, Vertigo and Citizen Kane don’t even come close!

Jeanne Dielmann, might also be the actual best movie ever made. It’s a radically feminist movie, also what I see as the best depiction internal suffering on screen. You gotta be patient though.

Young Girls of Rochefort, preppy, funny and cute without being dumb, it’s my feel good movie.

The Rock, The Rock is so fucking good!!!

Filmstruck is a streaming service that streams the criterion collection and TCM so I'll limit my selections to that.

Before Sunrise

Falling Down

Glengarry Glen Ross

Ikiru

Just 4 movies is really hard, but is a fun exercise:

In no particular order:

* The Godfather

* Star Wars: A New Hope

* L.A. Confidential

* Seven Samurai

Man, y'all really like action movies.

If the idea is films that helped shaped, or best reflect, our personalities, then mine would probably be:

Once Upon a Time in the West (historical, sprawling epic, understated, expertly crafted. As far as I'm concerned, the greatest film ever made).

Monty Python's The Life of Brian (sense of humour. The three things that most informed my sense of humour are Monty Python, The Simpsons, and The Goon Show. I never saw The Simpsons film and the only Goons film is pretty bad. All three Python films are amazing but Brian is my favourite).

Princess Mononoke (fantasy, also historical, magic, mystery, my love of Studio Ghibli runs deep but this was the first one I ever saw and is still my favourite).

The Social Network (probably a landmark film in terms of defining my taste in cinema. Also a very powerful character study for me as someone with Asperger's syndrome who had to learn that it's not cool to be a Mark Zuckerburg).

Ask me on a different day, and Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings (Two Towers, I guess) may well be on this list, and Mononoke or Social Network would be off. Or maybe Life of Brian would be replaced by Holy Grail, or maybe even Airplane!. The only one that is truly unimpeachable is Once Upon a Time.

In no particular order

Children of Men

Batman Begins

Unforgiven

Casino

4 is not enough.

4 is certainly not enough, but this would be me:

Inner space

The Fountain

Naked Lunch

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Zootopia

Wolf Children

Isle of Dogs

Argo

Eraserhead

The Crow

Alien

Requiem for a Dream

Back to the Future 2? Bakalar, you've been hit in the head with a hockey puck one too many times.

The last dragon

Teenage mutant ninja turtles(1989-90)

Bad boys 2

Friday

American Pie

Silence of the Lambs

Austin Powers

Fight Club

Any of the Harry Potter movies. I've watched them numerous times, and absolutely loved the idea of going to school and becoming a wizard while making friends and fighting evil. If you asked me which movie world I would like to live in, it would be this one. I also grew up watching these movies, so I was really attached to all the characters and seeing it all end was quite sad to me. I felt like I knew these people and seeing their story end was hard.

Top Gun is perfect to me. I can quote so much of that movie and it also has a phenomenal soundtrack. Everything is so cheesy and the movie just makes me feel happy no matter what.

The Avengers made me realize Marvel could pull off their whole cinematic universe idea, and I've loved almost all of their movies since. This was the movie that made everybody like comic book movies. Sorry Dark Knight!

I really like almost all of the Fast and Furious movies, but Fast 5 made me realize that The Rock is my favorite person on the earth. He just makes anything he's in better. Also this movie is just a really dumb and fun heist movie. Couldn't have asked for more.

Kinda interesting that so far there has been plenty of Ghibli but no Disney.

If you asked me another day, you might get four different movies but these are the first ones that came to mind today.

That's Heat, Repo Man, Royal Tenebaums and Spirited Away, if you don't recognize the screenshots.

I'll probably regret it later but and it leans a little too popular to "define" me, but:

Blade Runner

Superman: The Movie

Dr Strangelove

Planet of the Apes

Total Recall (1990)

The Matrix

The Fast and the Furious

Ninja Scroll

I can't. There is too many. Naming 4 doesn't cover it.

Way, way too hard to just name 4. Off the top of my head:

Star Wars

Pulp Fiction

Fifth Element

Die Hard

Probably the movies I quote the most as well.

The first 3 were solid locks, but the last one was a toss-up between two wildly different Keanu Reeves movies (John Wick and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure). I went with John Wick because it felt right to round the set out with a solid action movie.

Not my four favorite movies, but four movies that define me? There’s a HUGE distinction...

Captain Fantastic

This film expresses the daily battle between my conservative brain and liberal heart. I now more understand what it means to be represented in media.

Godfather 2

This film explores many topics, but the balance of responsibility to the world, work, family, success, and doing the right thing is something all adults struggle with, I think.

One More Time with Feeling

I have cried exaclty once because of a film in 37 years. This is that once. I lost it by the time I Need You was performed. That song still makes me well up whenever I hear it.

Almost Famous

It captures my love of music like very few things can.

• Big Trouble in Little China
• The Fifth Element
• Big Fish
• Dead Poets Society

I'm going with these four:

- Blade Runner

- The Fifth Element

- Robin Hood men in tights

- Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back

Gallery

Man that's pretty hard. I think I'll just spitball a variety of ones I like with general things I like in them.

• Snatch
• The Godfather
• Pulp Fiction
• Sword of the Stranger

Snappy and brutal, unconventional storytelling. Mostly gangster stuff, but I wanted to throw some anime in there as well.

I would maybe replace one of the gangster movies with something different like Monty Python and the Holy Grail or Big Lebowski, but they feel so cliche on a list on the internet. I also have a soft spot for Forrest Gump.

EDIT: Man I read this as defining my movie taste, not defining ME. That's uh. I don't know if I can even do that? Do I just do movies that were influential in my life? Because the list is pretty solid then. Monty Python should go on there over Pulp Fiction probably.

Movies don't really define ME, but here's 4 that I like quite a bit. Not pictured: hundreds of others that could have stood in their place.

Heat, Big Lebowski, Midnight Run and The Great Escape? The first three have characters I can relate to one way or another, the great escape I find to be pretty inspirational and it's the movie that had me the closest to crying.

I'm having a really hard time coming up with four movies that define me but I would definitely have Millennium Actress and Rear Window on that list. As for the other two, maybe The Lord of the Rings and The Incredibles since I loved both of those movies and their special features on the DVDs got me into learning more about film (although those picks might change if I thought about it longer).

@eladren I just watched Dersu for the first time last week. Holy smokes what a lovely film!

- Blade Runner, Festen, Red Beard, Twin Peaks: The Return

@hippie_genocide: Those are all great. Props for Kelly’s Heroes.

@slasktotten: If Lynch says Twin Peaks: The Return is a movie, it counts...and it’s the best Twin Peaks has ever been.

@nutter: Thanks. I think it's a movie lost to time. Not unlike most movies from that era I suppose. I wish more people would see it. Probably my favorite Donald Sutherland performance. I'm a fan of Oddball, obv.

@hippie_genocide: Spot on. It’s a great ensemble cast, but Sutherland steals the show. That movie wouldn’t be half as good without him.