First impressions are important anywhere you go, but especially at the movies. And for as wide and varied as film can be, every single movie ever made has a beginning. So how do filmmakers go about starting a movie? Where do they begin? For this CineFix Movie List, we're looking at Cinema's 10 Best Beginnings of All Time.

Some, like The Fellowship of the Ring or There Will Be Blood, offer a prologue to give the viewer context for what's to come, while others flash forward to start with, leaving you wondering how we ended up there, like Citizen Kane and rosebud or Fight Club and the narrator with a gun in his mouth. Some movies drop you in the middle of action that's already happening, like Saving Private Ryan's Omaha Beach or even Deadpool and his hilarious bullet riddled opening. The point is, a movies beginning can do any number of things, meet people, meet places, introduce themes or motifs, and how they go about it sets the tone for the entire movie that follows.

The Picks
0:24 - Prologue - Rear Window - dir. Alfred Hitchcock
2:04 - Flash Forward - Goodfellas - dir. Martin Scorsese
3:48 - Inciting Incident - Don't Look Now - dir. Nicholas Roeg
5:30 - In Media Res (Action) - Narc - dir. Joe Carnahan
7:36 - In Media Res (Non-Action) - Flowers of Shanghai - dir. Hao Hsiao-Hsien
9:28 - Introducing People - Son of Saul - dir. László Nemes
11:31 - Introducing Place - Soy Cuba - dir. Mikhail Kalatozov
13:42 - Thematic / Tonal - Werckmeister Harmonies - dir. Bela Tarr
15:48 - Mysterious - Persona - dir. Ingmar Bergman
18:16 - Poetic - Sans Soleil - dir. Chris Maker

This Movie List was written by Billy Jackson and edited by Chris Del Padre.

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