Ben Gibbards

“Okay, The Exterminating Angel. I'm a huge Buñuel fan. Recently Criterion had a 50% off sale and I took that opportunity to grab the Three Films package of his, but I don't have this one. I love his films, especially these films that are the very kind of absurdist, kind of surrealist ones, because they feel as if you're kind of like watching a Dalí painting come to life. They're just totally wild.”

“Old Joy. Kelly Reichardt is quite literally my favorite filmmaker working today. This film is such a beautiful kind of depiction of male friendship and there are just these wonderful moments of kind of watching these two men who once were very connected try to reconnect. And like I've been wanting to work with her for years, so Kelly, if you're watching, hit me up, I want to work with you.”

“Take Out. This is a film that I came to be aware of rather recently, in recent years, and this film follows a Chinese takeout bike delivery guy as he's kind of trying to kind of make up a bunch of money that that some loan sharks have lent him. And this is just a wonderful film. It's it's heartbreaking, but it's it's this kind of very kind of cinéma vérité, very kind of handheld, kind of DV-shot film that feels very feels very real and very visceral. And it's become one of my favorite films. I'm going to take this one.”

“Okay, Brute Force. I love Jules Dassin. What I love about his films, Rififi being a perfect example, is you know, taking this, using this kind of like almost Hollywood style filmmaking, but then interjecting this kind of like European, kind of almost pre-New Wave kind of element into his films. And this is an early example of that, and one I don't have, so I'm going to take it.”

“This is Le Havre, probably not how you say it, but it's a film by Aki Kaurismäki. He tells these just very kind of like interesting, economical stories. They're always very heartfelt, very funny. But this is a more recent film of his, which I do not own, so I'm going to take this one.”

“Recently Criterion had a 50% off sale and I took that opportunity to grab the three films package of his.”

“Okay, Monterey Pop, The Complete Monterey Pop. Seeing kind of the reaction of people at this show, these kind of like West Coast hippie types just losing their mind to Otis Redding, something that was really impactful to me when I first saw it, and so I got to take this.”

“Another one of my favorite series that he did is this DVD down here called the Proletariat Trilogy. This these three films have become three of my favorite movies in the last couple years. I have to give a shout out to my friend Melissa Messer for first showing me Shadows in Paradise, which is jumped into my top 10.”

“Streetwise. This, sorry, little emotional thinking about this one. This one was this one was shot in Seattle, excuse me, where I live, in the early '80s, and it follows a number of homeless youth through the city. And it's a really beautiful film, it's a really important film, I think, not only just in general as we kind of try to kind of figure out how to solve this issue of homelessness in this country, but also how it affects young people. And this is kind of a subject that's near and dear to my heart, because my sister has worked in youth homelessness for a long time, and this film, when I first saw it, was incredibly impactful to me, on me, and it's a film that she had shown me just kind of to kind of illustrate that these issues are not these are not these are not modern problems. These just didn't happen in the last 10 years or 20 years. This these issues have been affecting young people for a very long time. It's also a really interesting artifact of what my city was like in the in the early '80s, and it's very interesting to see how the city has changed, how it stayed the same, and unfortunately how some of these problems still exist. So it's going to make me cry when I watch it again, but I'm going to take it anyways.”