As a wee little kid, our parents took us all to the drive-in, and the kids were supposed to fall asleep in the back seat so they could watch the grown-up flick; one was The Silencers (Matt Helm–awful). I remember Mary Poppins (hated it, still do). The first movie I watched on my own was The Tingler. Scared the living snot outta me. I was 4 YO and thank Frith the sun was still up. One of our local TV stations used to show monster films at 4 in the afternoon (probably to compete with Dark Shadows) and that was one of them. What were they thinking? 
The Cocoanuts is probably the one for me. From 1929. First Marx Brothers feature length film. Not their best but I like it. Can pretty list most of the Marx Brothers’ Filmography. Basically 10 films from 1929 to 1940 with Go West.
The Thin Man from **1934 **is awesome. William Powell and Myrna Loy at their best. It is based on a Dashiell Hammett story. If anyone liked Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, the main characters were named for the great pair from the Thin Man series.
Bringing Up Baby from **1938 **is one of my favorite movies of all time. Probably the second best screwball comedy after Arsenic and Old Lace from 1944.
I’m not a big fan of silent film but I do like Safety Last by Harold Lloyd. 1923
Other excellent films of the 30s that I enjoy:
*Wizard of Oz *1939, just watched it again last night.
King Kong 1933
*Dracula *1931
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) So awesome to this day.
My Man Godfrey (1936) Loved it the first time, not so much the second but still fun.
Captain Blood (1935) Still one of the best Pirate movies.
*Topper *(1937)
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town 1936
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington & It’s a Wonderful World both 1939
The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Others I am forgetting at the moment from the 30s and then from the 40s & 50s there are 100s of films I like.
Standouts are still a long list so I won’t bother.
First movie I remember that I liked a lot…
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It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World - Kinda dated now but still many good parts. Playboy and his girlfriend dancing indoors in bathing suits was always painful. Did anyone really ever do that???
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Grand Prix - REAL race cars, real grit, live action, split screens, didn’t know it wasn’t really period Formula 1 until I was in my 20’s. Had some pretty intense moments - my parents just thought it was “a racecar movie” and probably wouldn’t have let me go if they knew about the burn sequence or the ongoing affair.
later, 2001 a Space Odyssey - Still a classic. It’s a good story and there’s no dependence on crazy technology.
Yep, me too. I had the laser disc for many years. Ditched that technology in the mid 2000s.
Recently saw about 15 min of MMMMW at a traffic ticket school while we waited for stragglers. I laughed my ass off. 
It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I remember seeing it when I was a little kid, and it’s been a favorite ever since.
First movie I ever saw was “Pollyanna”. Saw it for second time a few years ago and it is alright for that kind of movie if you like that kind of movie.
Second movie holds up much better “Journey to the Center of the Earth” with James Mason, Arlene Dahl, that great rock and roll artist Pat Boone and Gertrude).
First one that came to my mind was Forbidden Planet. I’m pretty sure I saw that one in the local movie theatre. Then would be two I saw on television, The Wizard of Oz and Fantasia – although now I can’t imagine seeing them in black and white, that must have been the case since we didn’t have a color TV. Then there’s The Day the Earth Stood Still. I can’t remember when I first saw it, but it was probably on TV rather than in the theatre. I just caught Forbidden Planet on TV recently and loved it all over again. I haven’t seen the other three in quite a while but would be happy to sit through any of them.
Put me down for Forbidden Planet as well. I was 4 or 5 when it came out and I can still remember curling up in my seat and hiding my face when the Monster attacked the space ship.
And if you imagine Cmdr. J. J. Adams as the first draft of Captain James T. Kirk, the movie’s even better!
Fantasia (1956 re-release)
The Ten Commandments
The King and I
The first movie I saw of which I retained the memory later was Rear Window (original Hitchcock version, of course). I’m guessing I was maybe 7 years old, we probably saw it third-run at a neighborhood theater; I remember we saw it on a double bill with Not As A Stranger, of which I have no memory at all. Anyway, Rear Window had me mesmerized and enthralled with the tension; I date my fear of heights from the ending.
Another early film I saw and remembered later was the Alistair Sim version of A Christmas Carol. Mostly I remember it for the odd circumstances in which I saw it - my parents woke up my sister and me, brought us out to the living room, and had us watch the movie on TV, after our regular bedtime. This was unheard of. It’s still a movie I like to watch, in spite of its treacly message.
Finally, one I have mentioned before, is Invaders From Mars, which I watched on TV as a child of maybe 8 years old, alone in my grandparents’ house. It terrified me, and I think it still holds up pretty well (“Mew-tants” instead of mutants to the contrary notwithstanding) for the paranoia value of not even being able to trust your parents, and the ending that never ends.
The Trouble with Angels from 1966 with Hayley Mills and Rosalind Russell. Then as an adult, it was the first movie I ordered on Netflix and I still loved it.
so what i remember is there is a bunch of toys that climb out of a toybox and and later there is a toy or litytle person that wonders off from the toys and he walk in a door of some kind and there a darkness or figure like chernabog a send darkness and turn everything in to dark thats what i remember atleast
Watched “Old Yeller” again recently. It still holds up
The first movie I can remember being taken to see in the theatre was “Star Wars,” which is a hell of a first movie.
Mary Poppins. I saw it when I was eight, and recently. It still holds up. (And Bert’s accent didn’t bother me either time.)
I explain my reasons for not naming This Island Earth above, but I just wanted to add that I’ve watched portions of this film a LOT, from an early age. It may not be a film that I “still like”, but I have a soft spot in my heart (and my head, obviously) for this film.
I didn’t see the film in its entirety, and in color, and with SOUND , until I’d watched parts of it uncountable times.
Back in the pre-VCR days, the only way you could watch films at home was to have them on film and view them with a projector, like your Home Movies. Castle Films used to issue cut-down versions of feature films, usually in black and white (although they added color in later years). And, of course, without sound – virtually nobody had sound home movies. (Universal bought the company through a subsidiary, so they released a lot of excerpted Universal films). I had a copy of the excerpted This Island Earth (under the title War of the Planets. You can see the cover of the box if you scroll down to the bottom of this page: http://www.a-1video.com/horror,_sci-fi,etc.htm ) I had this spliced together with the Castle Films versions of It Came from Outer Space, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and others.
It wasn’t until years later that I finally saw the entire film, in color, with sound, at a local theater matinee.
From the start, I was underwhelmed. There were some gorgeous shots and re-creations of pulp SF covers, but the story was pretty ridiculous and disjointed. You wish they’d have spent more time on Metaluna. And the science was ridiculous and inconsistent. (“We’re passing through the Thermal Barrier” Whaaat? I think someone discovered that playing a blowtorch over a turned metal model looked cool. And whjat’s with the “conditioning” in the glass tubes. If you had to be prepared to deal with higher pressure, then the tubes ought to be in some sort of airlock, or something.)
Here’s the imdb page:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0459595/
And I saw Son of Kong earlier, and still like it more.
For the earliest film I liked then and would still watch now it’s Old Yeller. It’s a fairly short movie that wouldn’t be difficult to watch again. A few years later I saw Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. That’s one I’d be more eager to see now.
It would have to be Old Yeller for me too. I remember seeing it in a double feature with Savage Sam and we were so young we talked out loud throughout the movie, much to my dad’s consternation. Since it released in '57 though it had to be a rerun, I wasn’t even born then.
The earliest I remember seeing a first run at the theater was '65 with The Sound of Music and Doctor Zhivago.
Jaws is, I’m pretty sure, the earliest movie I’ve ever seen which still has a spot on my top 25 favorite movies list (yes, I keep a list. Shut up). I was six, and so traumatized by Quint’s death scene that I couldn’t watch him get eaten until I was a teenager.
The Terminator was another (also on my list) as was The Graduate (which isn’t, but I still like it). Those were the grown up movies I was allowed to watch at six and seven, because they were my mother’s favorites.
I still like a lot of the Disney films of my youth. Beauty and the Beast, for example.
Lawrence of Arabia made an indelible impression. I recently watched the re-mastered version. After seeing the movie I started reading about Lawrence. So it was the first movie that inspired me to read about it.
To Kill a Mockingbird. When Harper Lee’s new book came out this summer I both reread the book and watched the movie. It was the first movie that I saw where I had read the book beforehand.