A good movie list helps guide you and marks your progress. First make a list of films that you wish to view. Prefferably films you have yet to see in order to increase your movie viewing education.
With a good list before you, you can start your movie journey. You will have many options for viewing film from television, rentals, theaters, and purchases.
Having a list helps you investigate more film genres, actors, directors, etc. You start to discover films you never heard of thereby increasing your movie list.
Along the way you will find films you never expected.
Scott's Movie Marathon (http://scottsmoviemarathon.blogspot.com/)
Yeah I had a crazy long list a few years ago. I also suggest going to the library and find books on cinema. That's how I found out about Dario Argento 5 years before I saw any of his movies. And about Hammer films, and about a lot of good Sci-Fi and Fantasy.
After the movie ED WOOD I started buying Scary Monster Magazine and other similiar magazines and books about rare films. Good advice LH-C.
My major sources of info are the PSYCHOTRONIC ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM and the PSYCHOTRONIC VIDEO GUIDE. The reason I buy so many DVDs is that I read about the movies in those books and then I get the urge to see them.
Yeah, the Psychotronic Video Guide is in my college library, but I've only been able to scan over it.
And who could forget about the good old VMG (Video Movie Guide). I began reading it 19 years ago when I was 11. (At that time co-editor Mick Martin (who mainly focuses on his music career now) was still the movie reviewer for the now closed Sacramento Union newspaper here in Sacramento.) I found out about more movies at that time than from any other book. Even with the IMDb and multitudes upon multitudes of websites, it's still one of the great books to have. I even bought one for a friend of mine for Christmas 2002. (He still has it.)
Ah, a good movie list is indeed important. Since I signed up to QuickFlix I found that I've been drawn to a few movies by looking one movie up and looking at the 'if you liked this movie you'll like these' which are a gamble, but I've found out about a lot of movies I otherwise wouldn't have known about if it wasn't for them. I don't keep a list though, I just sort of mill around until something catches my eye, with a crazy title and what-not.
Though of course, this has led to a lot of crap, but that's kind of the point isn't it?
Also I tend to wander video stores for a long time, pretty much looking at every title [or close to it, it seems] so I usually come across something unusual and I'll pick it up.
But I'm still young, and there's so much to see that is relatively classic as well as crap, so I guess I've got a while to go yet before I start making a dent in that invisible list in my head!