OldBoy

The Cow

Jaws
Snow White
Star Wars

OldBoy

I would also say LotR: The Two Towers with how they do motion capture going forward...

GoldenJCJ

The mid-to-late 90s was basically just filmmakers trying to reuse the formula that made Pulp Fiction a success.

Mondo Kane

tanman

...and sitcoms, and documentaries, and reality TV, and CSPAN, and those educational videos that teach kids where babies come from.

Seriously can we please stop with the shaky cam and the quick and constant zoom in and out? It works great for action sequences but if there's just dialogue between people lets use those tripods please.

tanman

Toy Story

Boom (mike drop)

Decker

Jurassic Park. That was the movie that changed modern blockbusters by showing that you could now fully integrate live-action actors with fully realized CGI characters for better (LOTR, Avatar) or worse (Casper, Scooby Doo)

Hazel Motes

Birth of a Nation
Bonnie and Clyde
Psycho
Breathless
Halloween
Basically everything done by George Melies.

TheBigDave

Animal House had a huge influence on 80's & 90's teen sex comedies.

Airplane became a blueprint for spoof movies.

Night of the Living Dead basically invented the modern zombie and the zombie apocalypse genre.

Blair Witch Project gave birth to the found-footage genre and had a huge impact on low budget filmmaking.

Shannon Nutt

Jaws is the big one. Even more than Star Wars, it created the idea of summer blockbusters/tentpoles.

d2cheer

Road Warrior-post apocalyptic world genre.

RichC2

Shrek.

It kicked off the (largely unfortunate) trend of pop culture in animated features. Including the aforementioned Matrix effect.

Groucho

Aladdin had the genie doing an Arsenio Hall impression nearly 10 years before Shrek.

Dan

I think Saw, above any previous films in the horror genre, got the "torture porn" genre to kick into high gear. So many films in that genre over the years... so many trying to push boundaries with that stuff...

How. Fucking. Dare. You. Sir. Dr.

Mabuse

The Dirty Dozen

I recently watched this for the first time. I was a little underwhelmed, but I realized it feels weak today because it inspired so many films afterward. Not just other action films like Kelly’s Heroes, Inglorious Bastards, and Suicide Squad, but even comedies like the Police Academy films.

devilshalo

I always wonder what would have happened had the shark worked and Spielberg delivered it on schedule? Without those delays, it wouldn't have changed the script and there wouldn't be the need for the type of unheard of marketing push which it received.

inri222

L’avventura
Metropolis
Shadows
Battleship Potemkin
Citizen Kane
2001

Mr. Flix

The Sixth Sense and The Blair Witch Project come to mind.

Brian T

A Better Tomorrow
Bwana Devil
Deep Throat

Paff

Sort of. Yes, it was the first "found footage" film to make a big splash, but the bulk of the films in that vein (Paranormal Activity) came out several years later. If there's one thing that can be said about rip-off horror films, it's that they come out awfully soon after the pioneering film hits big, not 6-7 years later. So yeah, BWP was the film that proved a found footage film could play on the big screen, but I think the genre was actually "born" by the release of the iPhone and YouTube.

DWilson

"The Little Mermaid" revived Disney animation by basically taking a Broadway Musical approach to the story and score and carved the path of the next fifteen years of Disney animation.

Nick Danger

I agree with you, except for switching the order of importance. Star Wars made Lucas a billionaire. Every investor wants to get that for himself, so a great many movies are made today following the Star Wars template.

Original Desmond

Enter the Dragon

stvn1974

Christopher Nolan changes cinema with each masterpiece that he releases. His use of sound is as groundbreaking as when it was first used for The Jazz Singer and don't get me started on the best camera work since Citizen Kane.