A great title sequence can really be an asset to your movie. It helps to prep your audience to like your movie. It’s the perfect icing on the cake. Recently, I was very impressed by the amazing animated title sequence in Ernesto Foronda and Silas Howard’s Sunset Stories. On the other hand, I was also inspired by Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun. The movie just opens with one main title.

Maybe after all I’m not the opening titles kind of guy.

But I do appreciate memorable opening title sequences and here’s my favorite in recent years. It’s the ever-changing fonts of Gasper Noé’s Enter the Void. It perfectly captures the beauty of both the cultural hodgepodge of Shinjuku and the psychedelic mind of the protagonist.

Maybe it was the James Bond films that have made opening titles de rigueur of the franchise. I think they perfected their title sequences when Roger Moore came on-board. I can never understand why I loved Octopussy so much as a gay teen.

Cindy Sherman’s Office Killers has an amazing opening credits sequence that resuscitates the film from being unwatchable. That’s all I can remember from the film I saw on VHS awhile back… but it’s totally worth it just to watch the opening credits alone.

The opening credits sequence for David Fincher’s The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo is very impressive. It’s a hot and beautiful sequence and I’m sure they spent a ton of money on the CGI. Is money ever an issue on a $ 90 million film?

But really the mother of it all is Fincher’s own Seven. It was the first time in years I saw an opening credit sequence that left adrenaline pumping in the dark theater. The point is you can always rip yourself off a couple decades later—that perfect symphony of music and abstract images.