I Learned It From Watching You: Lessons in Cinematic Storytelling – The Seven Samurai

A good way to add to your cinematic (visual) vocabulary is watch movies with an eye towards the ways in they tell stories with just the camera, without using any words.

The Seven Samurai by Akira Kurosawa is a great example of cinematic storytelling (and a personal favorite). It even transcends spoken language (while the spoken word in the film is Japanese, it works like a silent film in many places; every thing you need to know is available visually).

What to watch for:

Composition.

In many places a perfectly composed image pans to another perfectly composed image. While the acting seems a little exaggerated and stylized, it works because the visual language of the film is exaggerated and stylized. There is a lush, emotional world being explored here, and it is being explored visually.