I said off-handedly today that I thought watching The Babadook from the front row might be one of those memorable moviegoing experiences. I'm not sure whether that'll really prove the case, but it made me think about which are the ones that have really stuck with me, for whatever reason, so here's a list in the order that they occurred to me (avoiding ones from the last couple of years, since they're likely to have stuck in my head more through recency):
No doubt many others that haven't sprung straight to mind...plus numerous 'in and around' memories - too many to list, and most Nova-related.- Moulin Rouge, with a girl who I'd decided to break up with but hadn't quite managed to do so yet (2001)
- Memento, without having known anything at all about it before going in (Nova, 2000 - with Kim)
- Species, which had a remarkable amount of nudity, sex and violence for a movie that we saw for someone's (Tim Gregson's?) 13th birthday party or whatever it was (1995)
- The Last Winter, for a bunch of reasons (MIFF, 2007)
- Camino, for the sheer emotional ruin that it wreaked on all concerned (La Mirada, 2009)
- Love Exposure, all four hours of it and associated planning and snacking - turned out to be a great movie too (MIFF, 2009)
- Dancer in the Dark, mainly for the intense nausea caused by the combination of shaky camera and watching from close to the front and right at the side (2000 - with various around at uni during first year, so probably at Nova)
- Fight Club, because of the film it was and right during that period between school and university when all was possibility (1999/2000 - with Nenad and David I think)
- The Wall, for similar reasons to the above (Astor, 1999/2000 - as above)
- Marie Antoinette, following huge Coppola-related anticipation shared with Kelly (Nova, 2008)
- Brideshead Revisited, because of the massive troupe that we put together to watch it with - all 17 of us (Nova, 2008)
- Enter the Void, for the sheer endurance test that it represented (MIFF, 2010)
- Don't Come Knocking, which was the right film at the right time - true memory or not, it feels like I still have a sense-recollection of how I was feeling when I saw it, and how that meshed with the mood of the film itself (Nova, 2006)
