If I recall correctly, “The Small Back Room” by Powell and Pressburger was all about reading, time, shapes, and symbols. It was also almost certainly the quintessential movie about a dream, and certainly the least corny, if nothing more.
I can direct my lucid dreams but only after it has started. It is very entertaining to know you are dreaming and being able to do anything that comes to your mind. Usually though my mind is very cloudy and I do not do everything I would do if I was more lucid.
Whats more interesting than lucid dreams in lucid sleep paralysis. I would be lying in bed with my eyes open and being able to control my eyes but nothing else. When this first started to happen to me I would be floating, or possibly some type of being would be in the room with me and it would scare the daylights out of me. After a while I was able to control what was happening. I could make things appear in my bedroom or make myself fly around my room. The best part is that someone could really be in the room walking around doing stuff and I would be able to see them and be flying around them. Later I would just wake up in my bed look at the person that was in my room and just have a private laugh. Unfortunately this only lasts a few minutes.
One of the more interesting lucid sleep paralysis states that I have had is being in the state of sleep paralysis but not realizing it. I would get up walk to the bathroom and then suddenly wake up in my bed again. That blew my mind.
Invariably if I realize I’m dreaming, I immediately wake up. So it looks like no lucid dreaming for me.
Actually, I don’t regret that. It seems to me that by going into a lucid dream state, where I become the controller of the dream, the dream becomes limited just to what I myself can consciously imagine. But what can be so cool about dreams sometimes is what happens when it throws things at you you’d never consciously imagine.
Some of my dreams are very cool. Frequently, I wake up and think I might make a dream into a short story… but as I write down the plot points, I always realize that it never made sense to begin with.
Many of my dreams are from the POV of a disembodied camera that floats around like maybe it’s mounted on a small helicopter. I can zoom in, circle around, etc. Pretty handy. In those dreams, I’m not even present as a character, except sometimes I suddenly realize that I am one of the characters.
Some of them are pretty boring and tedious, though. One of my very common recurring dreams is to spend all night working in my head. Then I wake up and get to do another 8 hours for real. Talk about exhausting!
I die all the time in my dreams, mostly by slowly bleeding to death. I have hit the ground.
Add one more to the kid with bad dreams camp. My parents ended up getting me this book.
how to get rid of bad dreams - Google Search
If I was having a bad dream I learned how to redirect the way things were going. I never change a dream if things are going well, but as soon as bad things start happening I take over. Often I will “rewind” the dream to get the ending I want.
I died in a dream by getting run through by a sword once. THAT was an interesting experience. 
I’m also a lucid dreamer, and I do so almost every night. First, at least for me, lucid ‘dreaming’ is a little bit of a misnomer. I can’t control my dreams throughout the entire night, but I experience what I personally call ‘directed dreaming’. I take a long time to actually fall asleep, almost never less than half an hour, usually around an hour, and on insomniac nights up to two or two and half hours. During these times, I’m not fully asleep, but I start thinking about a particular topic/fantasy, and my mind starts expanding on this idea until it’s a ridiculous and fantastical story around a central theme.
I’ve actually been having the same sort of lucid dream for the past 6 or 7 years; one in which involves me nearing omnipotence, and rising to power in politically weak countries via military force. You’d be the last to tell me that these fantasies are weird.