Labryinth is by far the earliest movie I can remember loving. I’ve seen it more than any other movie. It still holds up unlike Dark Crystal.
The Princess Bride and The Wizard of Oz have also all held up.
Those were my earliest childhood favourites. I wish I could say the Star Wars films but they put me to sleep as a kid. I didn’t appreciate them until I was older [I still fall asleep during the battle scenes]. My older siblings loved Star Wars more than I did.
The 'Burbs is just as funny today as it was when I was a kid. Tom Hanks really nailed that scene where he says “I’ve never seen that before. I’ve never seen someone drive their trash to the curb and beat the hell out of it with a stick. I’ve never seen that before.”
I’ve seen The 'Burbs almost as many times as Labryinth.
The two huge movies I loved in my childhood were Ghostbusters (seen on VHS, I was too young to see it in the theater) and Cinderella (I got the VHS for my birthday). I still absolutely love both movies (I hate Cinderella, she annoys me. I love the mice and the step-sisters*). Ghostbusters never stops being funny, no matter how many times I see it.
*When I went to Disney for my 30th birthday, I got completely giddy when I saw Anastasia, Drizella, and Lady Tremaine heading to their little nook for signing autographs. I was first in a line filled with little kids and getting my picture taken with them was one of the best parts of my birthday.
My first thought is Empire Strikes Back. I think was six at the time.
Now, I know that I saw A New Hope first and I’m sure I must have liked it, but I’ll go back to ESB for this thread simply because that’s the first movie I actually remember watching. We had to take a nap because it was going to run late and we saw it on HBO - I still remember the little HBO lead-in they were playing at the time. I don’t specifically remember seeing ANH in the same way.
A very close chronological runner-up would be Jason and the Argonauts.
The movie that first popped into my head was Bye-Bye Birdie!, which I watched circa 1963 with my grandmother. (It shouldn’t qualify since I’ve only watched it about once again in the recent half-century but it’s a fun movie of which I still have fond memories.) In those days, movies had only a tiny fraction of the “sex” that today’s movies have, yet there were some movies (e.g. Blue Denim), that my grandmother took me to that might not have ben appropriate for a young boy. (Checking the date in Wikipedia, it looks like she took me to that film when I was 9 or 10. :dubious: )
Maybe Bye-Bye Birdie! is a silly choice, but imagine the effect voluptuous Ann-Margret might have on a 13-year old boy! (Checking Wikipedia to see how early in her career that movie was, I see she made State Fair the year before, another movie that impressed me.)
The earliest memories I have of watching good movies are James Bond films on the telly at Christmas. The one movie that came to mind first, though, was the original Death Race 2000 - I found the video and put it on out of curiosity, probably in the late 70s. I thought it was hilarious and bone-chilling at the same time, and have enjoyed black comedies and satire ever since.
Perhaps Jaws (on TV, circa 1978, age eight) or Close Encounters of the Third Kind (in theater, same year). Watership Down is a possibility (in theater, same year, I think) – I’m not sure how well it holds up, but I plan to rent it soon to find out.
The Pink Panther Strikes Again. I was about 8 when it came out.
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and the other Harryhausen movies I saw on TV or at the theater.
Paint Your Wagon. A tragi-comedic western and musical on a grand scale. It ran a solid 3 hours, the only movie I’d seen that actually had an intermission period. An astonishingly young Clint Eastwood, who did not really shine in this movie, and a whiskey-soaked Lee Marvin who did. A fabulous ending song - Lee Marvin’s ragged basso profundo singing “Wand’rin’ Star”, AFAIK the only song he ever recorded, a short time later it shot to the top of the UK charts bumping The Beatles’ “Let it Be” to second place. Takes a pretty good one-hit wonder to do that.
Paint Your Wagon was filmed near where I grew up and I knew a couple of people who played a part in making it. One was a retired schoolteacher from my town who is clearly identifiable as an extra in the opening scenes. Another was a carpenter on the set; he explained to me how they built the boomtown mock-up and how they filmed the final scenes wherein the whole town collapses and is swallowed up by the earth. He also told me that Lee Marvin was not acting the role of a drunk. Said the man did not draw a sober breath during his time on the set.
Truely a classic movie, it remains one of my all-time favorites.
SS
Harvey (Jimmy Stewart)
Destry Rides Again (Stewart again)
Dodge City (Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland)
John Wayne’s war movies from the 1940’s.
Red River (J Wayne, Walter Brennan)
There used to be a late night movie every Sat from 10:30 to 12:30 sponsored by a used car lot. I remember vividly wtching these movies with my mamaw. I still watch these movies once in awhile.
but it’s a fun movie of which I still have fond memories.) In those days, movies had only a tiny fraction of the “sex” that today’s movies have, yet there were some movies (e.g. 
