the big lebowski drew me in right away.

at first just wondering how they would make a movie out of what they were dealing with.

Great Stuff.

Down By Law.

New Orleans rooftops and Tom Waits.

Goodfellas.

stewie wrote:The opening credits of Mulholland Drive, with that crazy 60's boppy song and the jive dancing.

Beat me to it. particularly where the focus gets fucked up and everything suddenly goes all wrong and creepy - you know you're in David Lynch country.

Night of the Living Dead and Suspiria both have great opening sequences

Edward wrote:I have to go with Raising Arizona. The vignette at the beginning that leads up to the opening credits is amazing.

Yup. Exactly what I was going to say. Without a doubt, my favorite film start.

bob

The recent remake of Dawn of the Dead was pretty fucking intense

i have a soft spot for the opening of Pulp Fiction

Also Magnolia's opening I liked

the first shot of lost in translation.



right there, not one but two 'openings' i enjoy.

i second the vote for apocalypse now. first scene is stunning, perfect mix of sound and vision.

i also like beginning of die hard 3. when i saw it first, on big screen, it was really impressive, it doesn't work on tv, though. btw, it was a really great explosion scene and i'm a sucker for good explosions in the movies.


plus:
monty python and the holy grail. i fell of the chair and had to stop the video before the actual movie started. then, in the first scene king arthur is pretending to ride a horse while his servant is making sound of horseshoes hitting the ground with coconuts. - i think it was the closest i ever got to literally pissing my self, what a brilliant movie.

not the BEST by any means whatsoever but notable just for sheer undertaking:
the mag that they spent (13 minutes or so) for the opening sequence of the movie "snake eyes" (although there looks like there might be a swipe edit when they go down the stairwell).
but really, as a technical undertaking that preceeded "the russian ark", i can't think of ANY hollywood-type movie that tried anything close to that. the sad thing: nobody noticed the fact that they ran tape for as long as they did without a single cut in the final.

otherwise, i'm gonna have to say that i've always throught the beginning to "ravenous" was subtley amazing and the first minutes of aliens and memento sucked me right in.

aside: that crummy movie "contact" had no opening credits. a big-budget sorta modern first kinda move...