The way I came to it started with a basic appreciation of film course in college. But that only really gave me the vocabulary. It didn't really solidify until I

The way I came to it started with a basic appreciation of film course in college. But that only really gave me the vocabulary. It didn't really solidify until I started watching movies with the Director Commentary tracks enabled on DVDs. You don't have to guess at what the director intended. They will just tell you. Do it a few times, and you can start to pick out the patterns yourself. Pick a movie that you have seen at least once, preferably recently, get the DVD for it, and watch it with the commentary enabled. In particularly good films, it can be a whole new way to see a movie. In particularly bad films, it can make the choices make sense. Not make them better. But at least make some kind of sense. Speaking of bad movies, getting better at film analysis gave me a much better appreciation for them. To me, the rough edges and the tortured metaphors and the bad acting lay bare the bones of the movie. It makes it easier to see what people were trying to do when they made the film. They might have failed at it. But the general, ham-fisted lack of subtlety in the efforts makes it easier to pick the intentions out. Unfortunately, Director Commentaries are victim of the streamification of modern film distribution. You can get some of the same sort of thing with Behind The Scenes featurettes that the streaming services provide alongside their big releases, but they aren't as direct, candid, or frequent as the Director Commentaries were on DVDs.