Similar to the way the news media influences people. Hollywood has a huge ability to present new ideas to people, to change current beliefs and to generally get people to think a certain way. Movies are extremely rich in their story telling abilities and the level of influence that movies have is generally not fully realized.

There is a trend in Hollywood to promote "filth" or things that generally deemed as not healthy for society such as pornography, violence, drugs and so forth. Many people claim that these things are promoted greatly in movies and that we slowly shift towards the acceptance of them.

A lot of movies are also said to have hidden stories that are contained within that most people skim over. You have the external story that majority of people pick up, but then you also have the internal story that really goes much deeper and that few people are able to synthesize. Some great examples of this are Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Eyes Wide Shut and The Shining to name a few.