Cillian Murphy

“So this movie, La piscine. This movie will make you want to move to France. Certainly at the beginning. The beautiful thing about this film is it’s all about what… kind of what isn’t said, and, like, all the subtext and all the energies that are happening between the characters. By the end of the movie, you will not want to move to France. Going to pop that in there.”

“I actually watched this movie on Criterion Channel relatively recently. Rosetta by the Dardenne brothers. They’re these just tremendous Belgian brothers that make these beautiful, compassionate film about, I guess, real life. And this is a film about a young girl who’s living in, like, a… a caravan park, and her mom’s an alcoholic, and she’s just trying to hold everything together and she eventually gets a job working in a waffle stall, and it sounds so tiny, the story, but it’s actually huge in its themes. It’ll make you cry. It’s exactly my type of film. It’s very sad, actually, because Émilie Dequenne, who’s the main actress, who was really young when she was in this, she passed away this year, so, she’s magnificent in this, so much respect to her. I’m going to take that.”

“This is, again, another– These are quite formative films for me. This is a film that I watched when it came out in the cinema. A film by Michael Haneke. Not one of his probably… I guess, like, Amour or… Funny Games, they’re kind of his more well-known movies. This is called Code Unknown. I didn’t quite know what I was watching at the time. Juliette Binoche is the main character in it. But it’s kind of fragmented storytelling. The opening sequence of this movie you will never forget. I certainly have never forgotten. It’s this huge, long one take. And it’s just this sort of altercation that happens on a street. It’s, like, there’s heavy themes in there, like race and immigration. But it’s magnificent. And I remember at that time falling in love with those beautiful one-take shots. And it’s always remained with me. So, heartily recommend Code Unknown by Haneke.”

“Maybe everybody picks Cassavetes. Now, this is very special to me, because in, like, the early 2000s, I was… I was in America, and I wasn’t really happy with the sort of work I was doing and I wasn’t really happy with my approach to acting, and everyone was like, “Man, you gotta watch Cassavetes.” Like, it was kind of embarrassing that I hadn’t watched it by then. So I went out and I bought this collection and, over a weekend, myself and my wife, we watched every single film on this. I mean, the standout movie for me is A Woman Under the Influence. The other nice anecdote about this box set is that I then made a movie in… in LA that year, and the makeup artist who was doing my makeup, I was telling her about how much I love this, Woman Under the Influence, and she says, “Oh, Gena Rowlands, she’s a good friend of mine.” And I said, “Would you ever mind… Would you mind asking Gena Rowlands to sign this?” So she signed my DVD version of this. And then I went out and bought the Blu-ray. So I have two of these. So I don’t really need a third, but it had a huge influence then on me, once I discovered him, as it does on everybody who discovers Cassavetes.”

“So, look at this. This is absolutely a thing of beauty. So this is The Wes Anderson Archive. So it’s ten films over 25 years. I mean, it could not be more Wes Anderson. It’s absolutely a beautiful thing. During Covid, my kids were just getting into movies and we watched every single one of Wes Anderson’s movies. Can I have this? Yes! I don’t know if it’ll fit in the bag. Amazing.”