This is more of a timeline than a single film, but here's my charted growth as a film viewer:

The first movie I ever loved was 1989's Batman (I was born in '88 and discovered it on tape). When Batman Returns came to the theater, my parents took me only to have to remove me during that creepy credit sequence with the carriage going down the sewer.

Luckily I grew up in a small town and my parents knew the projectionist who took me upstairs to show me the projector, how it worked, and explained that it was just a movie and nothing to be scared of.

I was amazed and became obsessed with movies, particularly big action films. Another one of my favorites from a young age was Last Action Hero and my first major blockbuster theater experience was Independence Day on opening night.

At 12, I discovered Mallrats with some friends and was introduced to the world of films centered around dialogue, particularly Clerks, which certainly pushed my taste in movies in another direction while still giving me a link to the Batman and Star Wars films I'd loved as a kid.

But it was when I was 16 that I saw Lost in Translation on a snow day. It was unlike anything I'd seen to that point. Later that month, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind opened at our local theater and it completely blew my mind.

From there, I got into Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze's collaborations, Wes Anderson and the like.

The next year I took a film class at my high school and was introduced to silent films like Nosferatu, Battleship Potemkin, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. But it turns out it was film-noir I had a real affinity for: Double Indemnity, The Maltese Falcon stand out, but also the 70's films The Long Goodbye and Chinatown.

I was also introduced to the Italian film The Seven Beauties that year and I think that's the movie that most opened my mind to the world of possibilities in cinema and have spent the last ten years trying to enjoy all kinds of film.