People often ask me what type of movies I enjoy, and I never really know what to say because I honestly enjoy almost all of them, in fact it’s usually easier to just say what kinds I don’t like

Genre – A type or style of movie. There are many genres of movies in the world ranging from comedy to horror and many others in between, and each genre has other sub-genres included in it.

Examples:
“What’s your favourite genre of film?”
or
“I don’t know why this movies genre is horror, I found it very funny!”

Action – A movie with a story that is very high energy with lots of fights, car chases and other things to get the viewer excited.

Examples:

James Bond (007) series
Real Steel 5/10
Shoot ‘Em Up

Adventure – Adventure movies often have the characters going off on amazing trips to beautiful and strange locations where they get involved in amazing stories. Often about pirates or people studying ancient ruins and discovering creatures from the past.

Examples:

Robin Hood
Pirates of the Caribbean
Indian Jones

Comedy – Movies that include jokes or humourous situations to make the audience laugh.

Examples:

The Big Lebowski 10/10
Groundhog Day 10/10
Billy Madison 8/10
List of many Comedy films I recommend

Crime/Gangster – Movies that tell stories about criminals, the crimes they commit or the life of crime they live.

Examples:

The Godfather series
Goodfellas
Infernal Affairs/The Departed

Documentary – A movie which is not acted by actors and where there is no pre-planned story, it’s filmed by someone with a camera in the real world to tell a real story.

Examples:

Bowling for Columbine
Earthlings
The Corporation

Drama – A movie which tells a very interesting story, they don’t usually use special effects or lots of action, instead they rely on realistic characters and situations to get people’s attention.

Examples:

Traffic
American Beauty
As Good as it Gets

Epic/Historical – A style that is often based on true historical events but where they don’t always stick to just the real facts of what happened. Usually they include beautiful costumes from the time period as well as amazing music to go along with it.

Examples:

Braveheart
300
The King’s Speech

Horror – A style of movie that tries to scare the audience, often using monsters, ghosts or other supernatural creatures that people fear.

Examples:

Drag Me to Hell
The Descent
Nightmare on Elm Street

Musical – A movie which uses songs generally sung by the actors and actresses in the movie to tell the story. It may only have music with no words at all or it may be a combination of the two.

Examples:

The Sound of Music
South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut
High School Musical

Science Fiction – These types of movies generally take place in a far off future setting or on another world. The involve lots of technology that is not yet invented and the problems they create.

Examples:

District 9
The Matrix
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence

War – Movies which try to show the real horror or tragedy of war in an honest, straight forward manner. Often follows a group of soldiers trying to complete a mission while losing friends and seeing the destruction caused.

Examples:

Full Metal Jacket
Apocalypse Now
Saving Private Ryan

Western – A very American style of movie which usually focuses on the period of time in early US history when Cowboys were common and the western areas of the country were uncivilised.

Examples:

True grit
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Unforgiven

Sub-Genre – While genres are the main types of movies, a single genre can be further broken up into many sub-genres which give an even clearer look at the type of movie being watched.

Examples:

“How can you hate he sub-genre of biopics if you love all documentaries?”
or
“I love the comedy genre but I hate the romantic comedy sub-genre.”

Biopic – Coming from the words “Biography” and “Picture”, a biopic is a film which tells the biography, or personal story, of one person from history.

Examples:

The Aviator
W
Man on the Moon

Bollywood – named after a combination of the Indian city of Bombay (now called Mumbai) and Hollywood, Bollywood movies are ones that come from India’s largest movie area, however the term Bollywood has now grown to mean any movie created in India. They tend to include a lot of physical humour, singing and dancing.

Examples:

3 Idiots
Chak De India
Rang De Basanti

Buddy Cop/Odd Couple – A popular style of movie which pairs two people who are very different and puts them in situations which strain their friendship but in the end force them to become close friends and respect each other.

Examples:

Rush Hour
Lethal Weapon
Hot Fuzz

Cartoon/Animation – A movie whose characters are drawn or created on a computer instead of having real actors and actresses

Examples:

Princess Mononoke
Wall-E
Iron Giant

Chick Flick – A movie whose story is mainly devoted to the female audience instead of the male, generally it will involve romance and stories about women over coming obstacles in a male dominated world.

Examples:

Dirty Dancing
Sex and the City
Twilight

Detective – A movie where a police officer or private detective must solve a seemingly unsolvable or very confusing crime. Throughout the movie the audience will usually be confused as to who the real bad person is until the end when it is all usually made clear.

Examples:

Maltese Falcon
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Mulholland Drive

Disaster – A movie where something terrible is about to happen to the Earth or to humankind and the main characters must either work to stop the event from happening or try to survive the terrible events.

Examples:

2012
Armageddon
Independence Day

Fantasy – A movie which includes lots of things that are not in reality like magic and monsters. Generally the main characters will be on some sort of quest to solve a problem and will have to fight against magicians, magical puzzles and other mystical problems.

Examples:

Lord of the Rings
Labyrinth
Harry Potter

Film Noir – Noir is French for black and it refers to a style of film whose story is often very cynical and involves deception or lies, the lying is quite often done by a beautiful woman to try and make the main character do what she wants.. Most film noir movies you’ll see are in black and white and as such they are not as popular as they once were but there are some modern examples as well.

Examples:

The Man Who Wasn’t There
Sin City
The Thirteenth Floor

Guy Film – A movie which generally has lots of action, fighting, beautiful half-naked women and technology is generally considered a guy film.

Examples:

James Bond (007)
Die Hard
Snatch

Melodrama – A movie that involves a story which plays on emotion to keep the audience watching. They tend to follow a very simple pattern of a Hero who loves a girl but there’s a bad character who also loves the girl and they fight over who should have her.

Examples:

An Officer and a Gentleman
Waiting to Exhale
How Stella Got Her Groove Back

Parody – A movie that tells a similar story as another movie except does it in a silly manner to laugh at or make fun of the original. Sometimes a movie will parody an entire genre and make fun of the typical story from that genre.

Examples:

Scary Movie
UHF
Blazing Saddles

Road Film – A movie that usually involves a group of friends getting together for a long trip, usually by car, to somewhere important and follows the many problems and issues they have on the way.

Examples:

Zombieland
Dumb and Dumber
Road Trip

Romance – A movie that tells a story of two lovers, though generally they start of strangers or maybe even enemies who slowy get to know each other though about half way through something or someone comes along to seemingly keep them apart but in the end love wins and they are together happily forever.

Examples:

Gone With the Wind
Cinderella
Moulin Rouge

Sports – A movie whose story focuses on sports or athletes.

Examples:

Any Given Sunday
Slap Shot
When We Were kings

Supernatural – A movie which focuses on magical or supernatural creatures or events in it’s story.

Examples:

Ghost Busters
The Frighteners
The Exorcist

Thriller/Suspense – A movie which has a story that is fully of action or events which keep you excited and wanting more by almost showing you or telling you everything but never completely..

Examples:

Silence of the Lambs
Cellular
Hostage

Adult/Pornography – A movie that is created solely to show people having sex in very graphic scenes. In the West no one under 18 years of age can watch these.

Examples:

you can find them yourself….

Cult – Not a genre exactly, a cult film is one which was not very popular among mainstream movie viewers but has a smaller and very dedicated group of fans which love it and watch it often.

Examples:

Rocky Horror Picture Show
Brazil
The Princess Bride

Any genres I have forgotten or terms that you are unsure of and want translated? Let me know below or in the forum!