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Different people will note different movies as milestones, depending on their personal tastes and criteria, but here is my list:A Trip to the Moon (1902): This first film in the science fiction genre was influential unusual for length, lavish production values, innovative special effects, and emphasis on storytelling.The Great Train Robbery (1903): The first American action film and the first Western film with a recognizable form.The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906): The first true feature-length film, with a runtime of 70 minutes.A Fantasy (1908): The first animated cartoon.A Corner in Wheat (1909): The first use of a freeze frame and an early instance of contrasting, parallel action cross-cutting.A Visit to the Seaside at Brighton Beach, England (1910): The first successful motion picture in natural color, filmed with Kinemacolor.In Old California (1910): The first film shot in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Hollywood.What Happened to Mary (1912): The first motion picture serial made in the United States.Traffic in Souls (1913): The first major American feature-length exploitation sex film, which recognized that “sex sells” in movies.Gertie the Dinosaur (1914): The first film to use animation techniques such as keyframes, registration marks, tracing paper, the Mutoscope action viewer, and animation loopsThe Birth of a Nation (1915): While this film was widely praised for its groundbreaking techniques in cinematic realism such as the expressive close-up, POV camera, naturalistic acting, and the flashback. It was the first true Hollywood blockbuster, earning over $10 million at the box office. However, it is also widely criticized for its blatant racism.The Fall of a Nation (1916): The first film sequel.The Gulf Between (1917): The first film made in Technicolor, and and the first feature-length color movie produced in the United States.The Debut of Thomas Katt (1920): The first animated short genuinely made in color using color film.The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920): The quintessential work of German Expressionist cinema, it helped draw worldwide attention to the artistic merit of German cinema.Nanook of the North (1922): A silent predecessor to the modern documentary film.The Power of Love (1922): The first 3D feature film shown to a paying audience.The Lost World (1925): The first feature length film made in the US with the pioneering first major use (primitive) of stop-motion animation with models for its special effects.Battleship Potemkin (1925): This landmark film effectively established the dialectic film montage technique, especially in its celebrated Odessa Steps sequence .Don Juan (1926): the first feature-length film to utilize the Vitaphone sound-on-disc sound system with a synchronized musical score and sound effects, though it has no spoken dialogue. It also has the most kisses in film history: 127.The Black Pirate (1926): The first full-length blockbuster color film, designed entirely for color cinematography.The Jazz Singer (1927): The first feature-length motion picture with not only a synchronized recorded music score, but also lip-synchronous singing and speech in several isolated sequences.Metropolis (1927): An landmark film in the science fiction genre for it massive sets and lavish set design, clever special effects, stylistic shadowing, oblique camera angles and labryinths, and physical effects like realistic miniatures and hydraulically-produced flooding.Napoleon (1927): An epic silent film celebrated for such innovative techniques as fast cutting, extensive close-ups, a wide variety of hand-held camera shots, location shooting, point of view shots, multiple-camera setups, multiple exposure,superimposition, underwater camera, kaleidoscopic images, film tinting, split screen and mosaic shots, multi-screen projection, and other visual effects.Wings (1927): The first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. It was praised for its technical prowess and realistic air combat sequences.Steamboat Willie (1928): The first cartoon to feature a fully post-produced soundtrack, and the debut of the Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse characters.The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928): A landmark film with minimal sets, extremely oblique and other unusual camera angles, huge close-ups, and star Renée Jeanne Falconetti’s performance, which is often listed as one of the finest in cinema history.The Broadway Melody (1929): The first sound film to win an Academy Award, and the first musical with an original score. It is often considered the first complete example of the Hollywood musical.Little Caesar (1931): The prototype of future gangster films.Love Me Tonight (1932): Revolutionary musical for smoothly integrating the songs into the film's plotline, as well as for having the first use of a zoom shot and asynchronous sound. It also featured such special effects as slow-motion, fast-motion, and split-screens.King Kong (1933): Considered to be one of the greatest horror films of all time, it noted for its stop-motion animation by Willis O'Brien for the title character and a groundbreaking thematic score by Max Steiner.The World Moves On (1934): This first film to receive an MPPDA (now, the MPAA) certificate under the new Production Code.The Old Mill (1937): The first cartoon shot with the multi-plane camera, which gave an increased sense of movement and depth of image, and facilitated panning shots. This Disney film also incorporates realistic depictions of animal behavior, complex lighting and color effects, depictions of rain, wind, lightning, ripples, splashes and reflections, three-dimensional rotation of detailed objects, and the use of timing to produce specific dramatic and emotional effects.Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937): The first full-length cel animated feature film and the earliest Disney animated feature film.Gone with the Wind (1939): The longest and most expensive Hollywood sound film of the time. It also remains the domestic box-office champ with a gross of $1.67 billion (adjusted for inflation).Citizen Kane (1941): Considered the most influential film of all time, particularly for such its overlapping dialogue and layered sound, numerous complex flashbacks, non-linear fragmented storytelling with overlapping narrative from multiple perspectives), and innovative cinematography that includes low-angle shots revealing ceilings), montage, mise-en-scene, deep-focus compositions, tracking shots, whip pans, lengthy takes, and dramatic, contrasting or expressionistic low-key noirish lighting.The Maltese Falcon (1941): The first the first detective film to use the shadowy, nihilistic noir style in a definitive way. It is generally considered to be the first American film noir.Casablanca (1942): An unexpected classic for its lead characters, memorable lines, theme song, and perfect ending.They Live by Night (1948): The prototype of the couple-on-the-run genre, and the first film to include a helicopter shot.Bwana Devil (1952): This film is notable for sparking the first 3-D film craze in the motion picture industry, as well as for being the first feature-length 3-D film in color and the first 3-D sound feature in English.This Is Cinerama (1952): The first film use a wide-screen feature film format. Cinerama was break-through technique that required three cameras, three projectors, interlocking, semi-curved (at 146 degrees) screens, and four-track stereo sound.The Robe (1953): The first film released in the widescreen process CinemaScope.Man in the Dark (1953): The first 3-D film released by a major Hollywood studio.The Silent World (1956): This pioneering documentary by Jacques Yves-Cousteau and Louis Malle is the first film to use underwater cinematography to show the ocean depths in color.The Seventh Seal (1957): This classic film is considered one of the greatest films of all time and established Ingmar Bergman as a world-renowned director, containing scenes which have become iconic through homages, critical analysis, and parodies.Vertigo (1958): This Alfred Hitchcock film is now considered one of the greatest films of all time and introduced the 'dolly-zoom' (tracking out and zooming in, or moving towards the subject while zooming out - simultaneously).Le Beau Serge (1958): The first film of the Nouvelle Vague, or French New Wave, film movement.The Apartment (1960): The first film to be released in Panavision.Dr. No (1962): The first film in the long-running and highly profitable James Bond franchise.A Fistful of Dollars (1964): This Sergio Leone film was first “spaghetti Western”.Bonnie and Clyde (1967): This innovative, revisionist film redefined and romanticized the crime/gangster genre and the depiction of screen violence. It is regarded as one of the first films of the New Hollywood era, since it broke many cinematic taboos and was popular with the younger generation.The Graduate (1967): An influential film for satirizing the shifting, social and sexual mores of the 1960s.Greetings (1968): This Brian DePalma film which featured the debut of Robert DeNiro was the first film in the US to receive the new rating of X by the MPAA (it was later reduced to an R).Faces (1968): This highly-influential, low-budget John Cassavetes film was the first independently-made and distributed American film to reach mainstream audiences.Night of the Living Dead (1968): This ultra-low budget George A. Romero zombie film featuring an unknown cast reinvented the horror genre.The Wild Bunch (1969): While also notable for its for intricate, multi-angle, quick-cut editing, using normal and slow motion images, this film was influential for its for its non-glorification of bloodshed.Dirty Harry (1971): This film set the style for a whole genre of "loose-cannon" cop films.Deep Throat (1972): One of the most financially successful films ever made, this X-rated film helped launch a brief period of upper-middle class interest in explicit pornography described as “porno chic”.Fritz the Cat (1972): The first X-rated animated feature-length film in Hollywood history.The Godfather (1972): This classic reinvention of the gangster genre is the first US film to gross $100 million domestically at the box office in its initial release.Hunger (1974): The first film to use computer digitization to interpolate (or 'fill in') the animated action between various key cells drawn free-hand,Closed Mondays (1974): The first instance of Claymation animation, using 3-D clay figures filmed with stop-motion animation.Jaws (1975): Considered to be the first modern blockbuster film, its tremendous box office success spurred Hollywood studios to aggressively look for further modern blockbusting, 'big-event' films that could break weekend box-office records - fueled by increasingly more expensive ad campaigns.Marathon Man (1976): The first commercially-released film using the Steadicam.Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977): The tremendous financial success of this film and its sequels not only resurrected the science fiction genre but revolutionized movie merchandising and accelerated the trend towards special-effects-laden blockbuster films targeted at young people.Saturday Night Fever (1977) This John Badham film that made a star of John Travolta created a disco-dancing craze, popularized disco music, and the extremely popular songs by the BeeGees encouraged the future popularity of movie soundtracks.Looker (1981): The first film to create 3D shading with a computer that produced the first ever CGI human character.Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982): The first film to use an entirely computer-generated (CG) sequence.48 Hrs. (1982): The first “buddy-cop” film.Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983) The first film to use George Lucas' THX sound system technology.André and Wally B. (1984): The first fully-computer-generated animated 3-D short film.The Last Starfighter (1984): The first feature film to make extensive use of CGI, especially the integrated use of photo-realistic, computer-generated (CGI) models with traditional models.Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984): A torture scene from this Steven Spielberg action film lead to the creation of the PG-13 rating.The Breakfast Club (1985): The quintessential 1980s film was extremely influential in its depiction of stereotypical teen characters.The Great Mouse Detective (1986): The first major use of computer animation in an animated film.Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988): A landmark film for its blending of animated imagery and live-action human characters.Henry & June (1990): The first film given an NC-17 rating instead of an X-rating.Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991): The first instance of a computer-generated main character.Batman Returns (1992): The first film released in Dolby Digital Sound.The Lawnmower Man (1992): In introducing virtual reality to films, this is one of the first films to use body motion capture.Reservoir Dogs (1992): Quentin Tarantino’s debut feature film is a milestone in independent filmmaking.Jurassic Park (1993): This film is a milestone in special effects for its realistically-rendered CGI dinosaurs that are seamlessly integrated within live-action sequences.Philadelphia (1993): This first Hollywood big-budget, big-star film to tackle the issue of AIDS in the U.S. signaled a shift in Hollywood films toward more realistic depictions of gays and lesbians.Toy Story (1995): The first totally computer-generated feature-length animated film.Titanic (1997): The most expensive film of all time at the time of its release, and the highest grossing and most successful film of the 20th century.The Blair Witch Project (1999): The first in the sub-genre of “found footage” films.The Matrix (1999): This science fiction was influential for its cyber-punk chic, airborne kung fu fighting, and “bullet time” effect.Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000): The first major American cross-over success of an Asian action film, and the highest-grossing sub-titled film ever released in the US.Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001): The first photo-realistic, fully computer-generated feature film.Treasure Planet (2002): The first film to debut in both the conventional and IMAX formats on the same day.Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002): The first big-budget major Hollywood film shot entirely with digital video cameras.Ghosts of the Abyss (2003): The first full-length 3D IMAX feature.The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) : The final film in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy was the first fantasy film to ever win an Academy Award for Best Picture, and it tied with Ben-Hur (1959) and Titanic (1997) for the most Oscars ever won by a single film.The Polar Express (2004): The first all-digital capture film, and the first feature-length mainstream film to be released in both 35 mm and IMAX 3D.Iron Man (2008): This film’s surprise success launches the Marvel Cinematic Universe.Avatar (2009): The first 3-D film to win the Best Cinematography Oscar features ground-breaking special effects that propelled it to becoming the highest-grossing film of all time.The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012): The first major theatrical movie that was not 24 fps, but was filmed with a new technology that recorded images at 48 fps.Hardcore Henry (2015): The first action movie action movie, shot entirely using GoPro Hero3 Black Edition cameras, shot almost entirely from a first-person perspective.Pearl (2016): The first virtual reality film to be nominated for an Academy Award.Wonder Woman (2017): This superhero film was biggest blockbuster ever directed by a woman and was the first critical success for the DC Extended Universe.

There is fudamental dishonesty on the gun control side. In the name of “know your enemy,” I subscribe to news from gun control groups, so I am aware of the fact that, when speaking amongst themselves, just about all gun control advocates are actually in favor of the total confiscation of all private firearms. This is not much of a secret, but they are willing to take it one step at a time. The result is that gun rights advocates are not willing to give an inch, because they know that whatever inch they give, the gun control folks will be back for another inch.When Presiden Obama was an instructor at the University of Chicago, he had a well expressed position that private citizens should not be permitted to own firearms. He modified this only when it became a problem during his presidential run. He only modified it because he could not get away with retaining it. His administration has retained information derived from gun purchase instant background checks, which is a violation of federal law. It forms illegal de facto federal gun registration. This type of behavior by gun control avocates leaves no middle ground for discussion.

It was difficult for me to get through Moira Cue’s answer; I had to stop several times to spill a few tears, and get myself together. I'm not sure what to call the primary emotion driving the tears, but I imagine it's sort of how I would feel if I had been stranded in a boat, alone on the ocean and then one day awoke to the sound of a Coast Guard rescue helicopter hovering above me. Relief? Certainly, but more than that; the feeling of not being alone anymore.This answer started out as a comment to her beautiful answer. But having written it, I realized that it deserved, with a few edits, to itself be an answer.The Vietnam war was raging while I was a preteen, and throughout my teen years I was terrified that as an adult I would be drafted and sent off to fight and die somewhere. By the time I turned eighteen, and received my “Selective Service” registration letter, my terror had become more of a background fear that I didn't notice much, but if a draft had been instituted, and I had gotten called up, I don't doubt that the suppressed fear would have resurfaced.Women have a lot of legitimate gripes, and I fully support the acknowledgment and attempts to address them that seem to be in progress, and have progressed in many ways. One thing I have learned over the course of my life though, is that while most women appreciate my concern and support for their rights and fair treatment, it is often a very unwise idea indeed, to try to talk about the ways society treats men badly; particularly “White Males.”Almost all of the people who were killed on the beaches of Normandy—many of them blown to pieces by artillery—were white males. All of us owe those guys more than most of us realize.Then there is sex. Sexual drives and feelings vary in intensity and polarity between individuals of the same gender, and the differences between them in males generally, and females generally are--generally--different as well, at least qualitatively if not quantitatively.Hopefully I made it obvious above that I was generalizing. There are plenty of exceptions; in fact, they prove the rule.It's certainly true that society sees (generally) sexually promiscuous men as “boys being boys”, and sexually promiscuous women as “girls being sluts”; we’ve lightened up on women quite a bit, but still have a long way to go.I very rarely hear anyone, male or female, talking about how incredibly hard it can be for men, to work around their own, inborn, instinctive urges, and how society constantly assaults men with imagery that provokes them, and dialog that disparages them.An older man whose sexual urges are “stirred up” when he sees a young woman half his age, would be considered to be a “dirty old man” were he stupid enough to admit it or, God forbid, act on it, but if he were a woman she would be a “Cougar” or “MILF.”The phrase “Motherhood and Apple Pie” doesn't seem to be balanced by a similar phrase that holds up and cherishes the essential “goodness” of “Fatherhood.”In our society, a married woman who “oohs and aahs” at someone else’s cute infant is seen in a normal and positive light. That same society doesn’t see much virtue in a married man who “oohs and aahs” at someone else’s wife. Yet both of these behaviors, whether expressed or suppressed, are driven by instinct that has evolved because it enhanced the survival of our species—long in the past.When a company I worked for in the 90’s (Verizon, then known as GTE) held “take your daughter to work” day, I asked if I could bring my son as well. They refused, but I did take my daughter. Explaining to my son why his sister got to go while he was excluded, was not much fun. It was also most likely, my son's first conscious perception of being discriminated against for being a male.I read a biography of Alexander the Great a year or two ago in which one of the battles was described as being so fierce and bloody, that the dead and dying young men were left to rot (or finish dying and then rot) because the enormous heap of them was too massive to be dealt with.I spilled a few tears reading about that as well. Those guys were the brothers, sons, and fathers of women whose very genuine, heartbreaking sorrow was plain to see for years after the physical suffering of their men had become just memory, and then “glorious memory.” Those men however, did most of their emotional suffering. as boys, and as young men on the eves of battles, or as survivors of battles in which they had seen cherished friends violently killed, and had themselves violently killed other young men, and now had to live with that memory.Societies have a way of downplaying that horrific thing that men have so often experienced, by focusing on the minority of men who seem to relish thoughts of violence and “glorious” battle. Most of us really don't relish those things, but some of us—who don't—do pretend to so as to not be seen as being weak cowards.Here's the thing,. I am a nice guy who hates fighting and violence, and instead relishes goodness and beauty in many forms. But once, I saw a guy sneaking up on my wife in a crowd, and it felt like someone had flipped a switch. I pushed through the crowd toward that guy, shouting at him to stop, and when he perceived me, he fled.What I know from that incident, is that I would maim or kill to protect my wife, and would also jump in front of bullets to shield her, not because I'm some sort of“hero”, but because evolution saw fit to put that “switch” in my brain, for good reason. My mother would have done exactly the same for me, her son.Evolution also had a good reason for giving me sexual drives that I have to rein in constantly, since the “good reason” for them is not good in the context of modern society; a society that would not exist in the first place had not evolution made men, and women, to be survivors with some survival traits that are gender neutral--and some that are not.Groups that have been discriminated against, when they have finally achieved societal awareness, and begin to succeed at getting past hurtles as society works to remove those barriers, seem susceptible to going too far and in becoming perpetrators of discrimination themselves. This tendency seems, to me, to be one that any group, (i.e. human beings generally) have the potential to exhibit.For example, my wife belongs to a group of “Women Attorneys, which is helpful to her because women often can help each other cope with the specific challenges that they face as women in their field. To me, that makes a lot of sense and I'm quite supportive of it.What do you think would happen if male attorneys tried to form a group for the same purpose? Many would say that that is exactly what they have done, and still do—behind closed doors.Exactly !!Maybe groups of men and groups of women are both okay, and the “goodness” or “badness” exhibited by members of such groups should be judged by looking at the behavior of individuals. If men support each other “behind closed doors” then I suspect that more of them are likely to feel resentment for not being allowed to do it openly.I have been disgusted to see, more than once on Quora, answer threads where someone (presumably male) had asked a question about dealing with his sexual urges in a professional way while at work. The fact is, that whether it is politically correct to admit it or not, men are often very, very strongly effected by the presence of women, particularly when women dress in certain ways.I am not criticizing women for “distracting men” or “dressing inappropriately”, though many people would assume from the previous paragraph that I was. My point however is entirely different. I am saying that “yes, men notice and have strong reactions which can be very distracting.” It’s not because we’re evil, or dirty, it’s because we’re wired that way though, of course, individually there is a lot of variability in magnitude and polarity.What has disgusted me is how, when someone asks a question that simply asks “what’s the best way for me to deal with this?” They are ranted at mercilessly in answer after answer after answer, by both men and women.Shouldn’t we be encouraging men who are struggling with things like this, to ask these questions? Shouldn’t we be doing our best to validate their “maleness” and constructively, helpfully try to suggest ways for them to manage their own issues?If instead, we ridicule them for asking, then how is that going to effect their attitude towards women?My mother—a wonderful mother, and woman generally—gave me some advice when I was a young man. She explained to me that women’s menstrual cycles can be very difficult for them to manage, and that having a husband that understands and sympathizes with that is a great help and a good way for a person to treat someone he loves. I took that advice to heart, and have always tried very, very hard to understand that this thing that I don’t experience myself is, nevertheless, a very real thing for women. For some women, it is quite horrible.The thing that I wish more women understood, is that men’s hormones cause very, very strong emotional and physical challenges also. Once, when I was talking to a young woman who was explaining in loud and very specific terms how horrible it is that women must suffer this hormonal assault every month, and which men don’t have to deal with, I waited for her to finish, nodded and said “Yes, it is, and I feel for women and their struggles with this. How do you feel about men’s struggles with their hormones, which are pretty much continuous?”She just stared blinking at me for a few seconds and then—to her very great credit—said “Wow, I’ve never thought of that.” I told her then, through eyes brimming with tears, that the fact that she heard me say it, and actually thought about it, made me feel that much more like trying—even harder—to sympathize with what women go through.Acknowledging, validating and sympathizing with each other’s challenges is a win/win, not a zero sum game.There may well be flaws in my logic, or biases I'm failing to account for, though not for lack of trying. I try to be open to input from other people, the same way that the young woman I mentioned above was.None of us evolved for modern society, it’s just too new. We need to try really hard to cut each other as much slack as we can.