I love movies. Good movies, garbage movies, artsy movies, stupid movies. Movies give my word-spitting mind a break and give me visuals, music, people. They move me along by inspiring me, by putting into motion things that are sometimes stagnant images in my head. They put faces to the characters I’m trying to imagine. They make me go, “Ah, yeah, that’s…just right.”
So. Here are five movies that are good for writers. And everybody else too.
1. The Royal Tenenbaums – There is something magical and amazing that moves between the characters in this movie. You’re holding a magnet that pulls you into all of them like a group hug.
2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – Intense, weird, beautiful. It takes the ‘what if’ but won’t sacrifice the movement of the plot for the science. Good music, too.
3. The Science of Sleep – I saw this movie when it came to theaters. I was in college, and it still remains one of my favorites. There It is everything you can expect and more. A magical reality, and a real magic.
4. Secretary – The characters in this movie are by far some of the most interesting I’ve ever seen in print or on screen; they connect when there is nothing between them but breathing. Also, it’s one of the few adaptations I can say I like more than its literary counterpart.
5. Stranger Than Fiction – Aside from the chuckle I get recommending watching a movie about a story about a character in that story, this film proves how much power one story can have.
bohemian.on.rye 
Some good picks here. Anderson is one of the most distinct voices of his generation, Eternal Sunshine produced one of the most emotional reactions I’ve ever had during a film, and Stranger Than Fiction is a really underrated gem.