Ben Wheatley

“Oh, well, the first thing I see is this. Oh, it's only DVD, which is a shame. The Horse's Mouth. Now, I saw this on TV in the UK and it's an incredible movie about an artist and I think it's John Bratby does all the drawings and the artwork in it and it's Alec Guinness and for me this is like a kind of a almost like a side-by-side piece to something like The Ladykillers which I would have watched quite a lot when I was a kid, but I remember taping this probably off, it might have been off Moviedrome actually, the Alex Cox show, and I loved it a lot. And as I've walked around the Criterion offices, I saw a poster for it and I thought, "God, I love The Horse's Mouth. I hope I run into it in the cupboard," and I have. So, that's going, that's number one pick.”

“This is one of my favorite films, Grey Gardens. But I have it so I'm not going to take it. But, yeah, it's such a brilliant movie. And Laurie Rose, the DP that I've shot all my films with, and I will often watch Grey Gardens before making a movie, just to remind ourselves how to move the camera as if it's an inquiring eye.”

“Two-Lane Blacktop, Monte Hellman. This is possibly I mean, my hand is getting cold by holding this 'cause this is probably the coolest film that's ever been made anywhere.”

“Now, Things to Come was a film I saw when I was a kid and saw it on TV not knowing what it was and started watching it just thinking it was a normal war movie and then it slowly became a sci-fi film and then completely freaked me out and I was like I thought that basically I'd slipped into an alternate reality where this might have happened and I haven't seen it since I was like 12 or something. So, I'm looking forward to getting back to that, one of the most, one of the original sci-fi movies.”

“This is one that will make my wife Amy Jump happy. Fishing with John, which is a particular favorite in our house, but we've only seen it on you know, to my shame on slightly crappy YouTube rips. So, we love this. If you haven't seen it, you should see it immediately. It's one of the funniest things.”

“Seven Samurai. It's one of the greatest action films ever made. And it's also Criterion Disc 2, which is going to be quite exciting for my collection at home.”

“Seconds. This is a brilliant film. And again, I remember seeing this completely blind, not knowing what it was and being completely spun out by it. And like the kind of in just in the first 10 minutes of it that the plot is so twisty-turny and the use of wide-angle lenses is especially brilliant. Yeah, this is like meeting up with an old friend. Hello.”

“This is one of my favorite films, Sweet Smell of Success. And I love it also because it's like a this is the actual proper sister film to The Ladykillers that you know that you can go from making that Mackendrick can go from making The Ladykillers to go to making this. So the quintessential English film to the quintessential American film in one in one leap. And also Mackendrick wrote one of the greatest books on filmmaking and if you haven't read it you should read it immediately because it's the only book you need basically.”

“So, a slight change of pace, Crumb, which I remember seeing at the cinema at the time. I'm a huge fan of Crumb's work and this documentary is fantastic and kind of tragic as well and sad, but I could listen to Crumb's voice all day long and listen to, he's got a brilliant taste in music as well.”

“I saw Rumble Fish when I was a kid and I only had a black and white TV so the certain scenes of it were completely lost on me. And I remember going to school the next day and going, "Yeah, Rumble Fish was brilliant." And they go, "Yeah, that bit with the goldfish, the Rumble Fish was amazing." I'm like, "No, I don't know. Was it?" Yeah. So now finally I'll be able to see it with that tiny bit of color in it. So that's exciting.”

“When we got a video recorder in our house, the first rental I made was Watership Down and Death Race 2000. When there was no control over what you could get from video shops at that point at whatever age. Watership Down didn't work. But Death Race 2000 did work. And I think that's probably, sums up my whole career really. Thank you.”

“Now, speaking of samurais, I'll go for The Blind Swordsman here. Now, this is one of two things that cartoonist Geof Darrow told me to pick up. And I was chatting to him in Chicago the other day and he's going, "Have you seen this?" And I was like, "Damn it, Geof. I haven't seen it." Oh, it's like embarrassing. He said, "You should definitely see it." So, now I can. Wow, that's a nice one. That's big.”