Films from all around the world. For the past couple of years, I enjoy watching 3-4 films a week in average.
Much like literature and art, quality cinema gradually makes you a better person, and has a profound effect on acquiring good taste, and having a love affair with beauty - you see something, and you immediately know if it's special.
If you don't know where to start, open Wikipedia pages for past film festivals (Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Toronto, etc.), and e.g. select randomly a decade, then a year, then a film from one of the winning positions. In time, you will develop your own taste and opinion about the filmmakers, and the actors, and the countries of origin, and the themes, and the genres, etc.
French, Italian, Swedish, Taiwanese, Japanese, American, or so many other places - there are great filmmakers nearly everywhere around the world, and you can enjoy it.
Many bad things can be said about contemporary society but one of the things I love the most about the 21st century is how we're starting to appreciate cultural things in a global sense. I also want to read more about postcolonial literature, history of all the parts of the world we didn't study in school, and so on. It's starting to get ridiculous how in school we study "history" just about Europe, and "literature" 90% of our language.
About cinema specifically, mainstream Hollywood cinema has become largely repetitive, big franchises, sequels, etc etc, feels culturally sterile to me. It's so refreshing to see that, say, Korean cinema is becoming so popular.
Much like literature and art, quality cinema gradually makes you a better person, and has a profound effect on acquiring good taste, and having a love affair with beauty - you see something, and you immediately know if it's special.
If you don't know where to start, open Wikipedia pages for past film festivals (Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Toronto, etc.), and e.g. select randomly a decade, then a year, then a film from one of the winning positions. In time, you will develop your own taste and opinion about the filmmakers, and the actors, and the countries of origin, and the themes, and the genres, etc.
French, Italian, Swedish, Taiwanese, Japanese, American, or so many other places - there are great filmmakers nearly everywhere around the world, and you can enjoy it.