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I actually first became interested in Antonioni because of Zabriskie Point, to hear the rare unreleased Fahey song (which doesn't really sound like most of his songs -- except his "John Fahey Trio" live recording album, ironically perhaps his last album... so far). He met Antonioni and punched him. He had watched an early cut of Zabriskie Point and thought it was horrible. His retelling of this story forced Jim O'Rourke -- also not a fan of Zabriskie Point -- to force Fahey to write a novel.
So, naturally, I checked out Zabriskie Point a few Christmases back and was disappointed in it aside from a scene here or there. Some of the music was cool. Soon after, I saw Red Desert which honestly seemed exactly like Zabriskie Point but really really really fucking good instead of bad. The use of color, the non-actors acting and the actors non-acting, the disenchanted and somewhat cold style of directing/editing/writing/speaking, the music, etc... then I watched Red Desert again. And again. And again. I became pretty obsessed with that film before moving on to films like Blow-Up (I'll never forget the story about how there is one line that completely sums up Blow-Up, that completely fills in the blanks to make the audience go "OH!!!!!!!!!"... so, Antonioni cut it out), Identification of a Woman (my favorite film by Antonioni besides Red Desert -- why so underrated?!), The Passenger (that fucking tracking shot at the end? Best scene ever filmed? It's up there with some of the scenes in Mirror, Stalker, Satantango, and some of Kiezslowski/Godard/Fassbinder/Jost/Kitano's stuff, I think), and his trilogy (La Notte being my personal favorite; did you know there's a subtitle at the end of LIFE OF BRAIN telling you to go see LA NOTTE?!).
It's hard to describe what makes his films so fucking fascinating. They just have an atmosphere that you can't get anywhere else. I just watch his films and am instantly taken somewhere else. But, by somewher else, it's not in the Tarkovsky or Bergman or Herzog sense. This "somewhere else" is eerily familiar. He's a very cold director most of the time, kinda like Fassbinder in that sense, though way more apt to deal with alienation and isolation head-on (Fassbinder's characters seemed to keep a lot of their feelings inside so that you never knew their true motives).
ONE OF THE BEST DIRECTORS EVER.
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