what movies make you stop

[Poetgrrl]

whatever it is you're doing and you have to finish it?

you're flipping channels while folding laundry or whatever; you had PLANS for the rest of the day, but you come across that movie and you're instantly stuck to the screen. what would it be?

I just came across Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the world pretty much stopped until just now.

you?

[David Mosley]

Wish I could say it was something incredibly high-brow and worthy, but it's Where Eagles Dare, everytime. :D

[Pietro_Mercurios]

Jet Li movies, at the moment. I watched The One (2002) and Twin Warriors (1993), just in the last fortnight, whilst flicking through different channels.

They're not brilliant movies, but there's enough traditional Kung Fu action to keep me watching. :)

[Bradi]

I have to stop for any of the Hammer horror movies with Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, et al...

[Azariel]

I have to stop for any of the Hammer horror movies with Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, et al...

Classic. Happens to me every Halloween on AMC!


For me, any episode of Dr. Who will make me drop anything I'm doing - even hugging my significant other! I hear the haunting sounds of the radiophonic theme and away I go! :D

[Pietro_Mercurios]

I saw this film last night and I wish I hadn't missed the beginning!

Atanarjuat (2001).

A traditional tale of Love Murder and Revenge amongst Inuit folk, in the ice and snow of the Arctic wastes. It pulled me up short as I channel hopped and it looked fantastic.

[Governor of Rowe Island]

I think I may have seen that film Pietro. I too was channel hopping one night and got captured by the scenes where the two men settle their argument at the winter gathering (if it is the same film that is). I don't think I'd like to settle something that way.

[redbeard]

Any good western or war movie will usually do it, but the ones that always grab my attention are Jackie Chan films.

[Sailor on the Seas of Freight]

David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia. One shot of that desert sun and the epic soundtrack and I'm hooked...again.

[greengryphon]

StopPress...

....well, Powell and Pressburger films. As real as films can be.

"Well, I've always been a very serious-minded person, but people don't know it, really, they're always puzzled by my films, that there's usually something going on in the film besides what you're looking at, which is of course, the contact with the director, an audience has a contact with the story on the screen and also with the director who is telling the story. This is why a director in making a film is such a strange thing - there are some directors who are just card indexes, machines, just put the thing very well on the screen and that's it. But there are others, who are holding an unspoken communication with the audience all the time, and I'm one of those, and the audience is saying "Well, there's something going on" - I've had this said to me - "There's things going on in your films, particularly in this sequence, which I didn't understand but it fascinated me" and I didn't say anything - what it is, is the direct contact with the audience with the director". Michael Powell

[Kipper]

Like Redbeard, any good war movie will usually stop me in front of the box - only a few westerns will 'do it for me', 'She Wore a yellow Ribbon' for one, and maybe 'High Noon'.
'12 Angry Men' is another film I'll watch whenever I can, I never get tired of it. 'Zulu' is another all-time favourite - despite its gung-ho attitude. I can't get enough of the old 'stiff upper lip' heroism.
Finally, to give someone else a chance, 2001 - A Space Odyssey has to be my favourite Sci-Fi film to date. Not that there aren't better Sci-Fi's out there, but I saw it when I was still in a formative state of mind (about age 10/11) and understood it. I thought the sequel, 2010, was good as well.

[Idiot_Savant]

The Shawshank Redemption
" NO! MOM! NO! please not again"
Abbot and Costello movies will stop me dead in my tracks too
oh and The Neverending Story, yeah I know it's lame but I like the luck dragon

[Groakes]

....'Zulu' is another all-time favourite - despite its gung-ho attitude....

Absolutely! The interlude before the final Zulu charge, with them doing their war chants and the Welshmen singing Men of Harlech is one of my favourite cinema moments.

Another "must stop and watch that" is Red Sun, with Charles Bronson and Toshiro Mifune. The mosquito scene cracks me up every time....

[Kipper]

The interlude before the final Zulu charge, with them doing their war chants and the Welshmen singing Men of Harlech is one of my favourite cinema moments.

What did you think when you heard the same chant performed by the germanics in the battle scene at the beginning of 'Gladiator'?

It's one of the few things I'd pull Ridley Scott for, if we ever met, (unlikely). That chant, for me, is pure ZULU and felt completely wrong in a north european forest! , as Commodus would say.....

...of course, if the legionaries had broken into a rousing chorus of 'Men of Harlech' in response, I'd be able to say that he pinched the soundtrack!

[Kamelion]

Jacob's Ladder. Love it to bits - can't get enough of the thing.