Well, Scared Straight did jar me, as a young man, into realizing that actions have consequences, and dire ones, thata re real.

Clerks got to me examine the life I was leading as a postadolescent and what it was doing to me, plus it made me realize that even the most ordinary life can be fodder for creativity.

Seeing boobs on cable in S.O.B. around age 10, made me realize that I liked girls.

Seeing the fantasy dance number in S.O.B. made me realize that I liked acid.

I'll paste in my comment from the askme thread:

Well, vaguely, maybe. Guy Maddin's films, particularly Careful and Twilight of the Ice Nymphs have got me more interested in 19th and early 20th century art, literature, and thought. I never would have read Ruskin, Carlyle, or Melville's Pierre otherwise. That's not unique to movies though (reading this book leads to reading that book, etc.)

Watching just about any of Miyazaki's animated features makes me consciously try to be a better person ("What Would Nausicaä Do?") for awhile afterward, but it doesn't really last.

I've had music inspire me to do certain things but never a movie. Maybe because I've never really identified with a character in such a way that I could say "hey, that's me!" In the end, movies are just entertainment for me.

hm. Almost all the people I know are involved in film, and I think they would have a much easier time answering this question... But as for me, no. Not really. Some films have had a resounding impact, in some way, on my outlook on life: Heavenly Creatures, for example, made me understand the whole "teenage angst" thing as a much more serious reality than I recognized before...

But - my entire life has been tutored by books. Pretty much everything I've ever learned about anything has come from books. My entire life ethic has been formed from books, for better or worse ... but mostly "better" I think, especially since I was reading "literature" as opposed to pop titles.

I won't go into details, but let's just say that I never expected life to be simple or easy from reading books. I pretty much learned that it would be nasty, bloody and messy, and you aren't always assured a happy ending just because you are a good person. I learned that love is complicated, almost nobody is "good" or "bad", and that winning isn't what we see in the movies - It's much harder than that.

This sounds depressing, but I love books, I see myself as having a presence there; I can inhabit those scenarios. Films? Almost never. They can be fun and amusing, like fairy tales, but I almost never connect personally.

I spent about 10 years trying to move shit with my mind after Star Wars. Does that count?

I spent about 10 years trying to move shit with my mind after Star Wars. Does that count?

Yes. And by the way, put my desk back.

Not that I know of. I'm a stubborn sonufabitch. I change my life when I want to change it.

I DO easily identify/empathise/project myself into movies, but I'd still have to say no. I have my favorite movies, I can enjoy them more than once, but life changing is too strong. Vision affirming would be the closest I'd go. Like, Brannagh's "Henry V" affirmed my vision that Shakespeare is still viable, and probably influenced productions I went on to stage. It was quite a thrill to see "The Piano" and realize that somebody actually made a movie based on Feminist Performance Theory and it WORKED. Christopher Guest movies make me say, "yep, that's my kinda funny." But life changing. . .no. . .books have more influence on me.

I grew up in a small town in Alaska, and our cultural diversity rating was about a 3 on a 100-point scale. The only people in my high school with any kind of non-standard accents were foreign exchange students. When I saw Boyz n the Hood, it was something of a revelation to me. I had read in the papers about violence in the big cities, but had never considered possible causes, or what it would be like to grow up in such an environment. I vowed I'd never succumb to racism, no matter what. That vow was tested years later when a black guy threatened me with violence and took off with some of my cash, but that's a different story.

Memories of Platoon made it much easier to resist those persistent military recruiters that my insane friend let loose on me.

A Fish Called Wanda may have changed my life. I was on a second date with a lot of potential. She was saying things like "I have so much to show you, you'll have to come out to my parents' house", etc. We went to rent a movie, and I saw AFCW. I got all excited when she said she hadn't seen it, and we headed to her place. Turns it, it's not as funny as I remembered it. I don't think she liked it at all. I never heard from her again.

I lost a lot of sleep after seeing Poltergeist at a young age. Who knows what I might have accomplished if I had been better rested?

The sex scene in Hellraiser made me want to sleep with my brother's wife. But I don't have a brother.

Trying to explain Monty Python and the Holy Grail to my fellow third graders made me realize that it would be a long, long time before I truly had any "peers", at least when it came to comedy.

"And then they start yelling for him to spank them."

"Why would anyone want to be spanked?"

"I don't know, but it's funny, right? Oh, and there's this killer bunny, and no one can count to three!"

*Silence*

I saw Thelma and Louise in the midst of taking a Women in Lit class. I had thought that (self-labelled) feminists were a bunch of shrieking harpies, but that movie combined with the books we were reading and the discussions we were having made me re-evaluate. I realized that I am a feminist, that I had always been one, and that there was no shame in saying so.

Breakfast Club, among others.

(I too have read a book or two in my day, but this question is about movies.)

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Howards End turned me into a film geek, which directly resulted in how my life has turned out so far.

*echoes what ColdChef said*