Whenever people find out that I watch so many films they always seem ask me, “what should I watch?” and I hate to answer this because it’s not about what I think is awesome but what I hope you’ll really enjoy.

When I write my reviews it’s my opinion in the words. It’s how I feel about the movie. Many people will say that I’m wrong and that’s just proof that no matter how much I love a movie you aren’t necessarily going to love it. I know this going in, but that doesn’t stop people asking me to recommend movies to them.

My parents have started to depend on me for their movie recommendations and I tend to use them as guinea pigs as to what movies I love from the independent and experimental genre to see what the ‘regular’ man and woman would like. However, at the same time I know that they love the silly, what I would call, ‘run-of-the-mill’ comedies and I tend to fill their appetite on that while still making sure they get exposed to all the ‘great’ cinema that I’m discovering thanks to all the online buzz that’s generated for the independent market.

So to answer the question as to whether I recommend movies I think you should like or movies that I think you will like I’d like to say that it’s a mix of both. I like to hook them with movies I know for sure they’d love but make them keep coming back by giving them films they probably wouldn’t have gone out of their comfort zone to see if I didn’t personally point them to it. The problem is that the later tends to yield uncertain results. They could love me or hate me for making them watch certain films – my parents still haven’t forgiven me for making them watch Buried as well as Brick – but I hope that the balance of expected and out of the box picks will make them respect me as a source for films.

What do you do when recommending movies to others? Do you try to show off your knowledge of film or do you just give them what they’d already watch even if you weren’t there?