Edgar Wright

“Oh, Eyes Without a Face. This is an amazing film which my father used to talk about this movie. Well, he used to talk about a movie and he could never remember the title of it. So he used to say, 'cause he knew I was into horror films, and he would say, 'Oh, the scariest film I ever saw was this black and white film. It's a French film and it's about a plastic surgeon who is like taking the faces of car crash victims, and it's really gory and it's really scary, and I cannot remember the title.' So, and then cut to like five years later, I see Eyes Without a Face and I'm at art college and I call my dad and I say, 'Hey, I know the name of that film, the French film, it's called Eyes Without a Face.' And my dad says, 'No, that's not it.' I'm like, 'That's definitely it.' He goes, 'No.' So I might have to get this one for my dad just to prove that. So I'll take that one. Eyes Without a Face, amazing movie.”

“Let's see what else we got here. Oh, is that Alex Cox? Oh yeah. I've never seen this Alex Cox film. I do like Alex Cox and he was a big deal when I was a teenager 'cause he used to present this show on BBC2 called Moviedrome where he used to introduce cult movies.”

“Throne of Blood, so I finally saw it on the big screen and it was fantastic. And I think I probably would have watched it sooner if it kept its Japanese title of Spider Web Castle. Throne of Blood is a good title, Spider Web Castle is an excellent title. If Kurosawa had stuck with Spider Web Castle, it would have been the first Kurosawa film I watched. But this is fantastic, don't own it on Blu-ray, now I do.”

“Don't Look Now is genuinely in my top 10 of all time. It's just a hypnotic, incredible movie. Some of the best editing in cinema. The opening sequence alone is just I think one of the greatest kind of like put together sequences. It's a big influence on me because I like to do lots of kind of foreshadowing and omens of like doom, and the whole of the opening is incredible. It's kind of most famous probably for an extremely naturalistic, some would say almost documentary sex scene. Apparently Warren Beatty, who was going out with Julie Christie at the time, was so convinced that Donald Sutherland was actually having sex with his on-off girlfriend that he tried to get Warner Brothers to not release the movie. That's true, that's in Peter Biskind's book, which is an amazing story. So if like Don't Look Now didn't get a great release in the United States, Warren Beatty might be the person to blame. It is incredible, it has an amazing twist ending. If you don't know anything about it, don't read anything about it before you see it. But Don't Look Now by Nicolas Roeg is one of my favorite films of all time and I'll show it to anybody who's never seen it. Now I have the Blu-ray, anybody coming into my house will have to watch Don't Look Now.”

“Let’s go for Black Narcissus. This movie is, I think, one of the greatest color movies of all time. There’s one particular shot towards the end of the film with Kathleen Byron, which, in my head, that is probably minutes of film, when in reality the shot is only on screen for less than two seconds. And it’s a shot of Kathleen Byron coming through a doorway, and it’s part of an incredible climax, which I won’t spoil if you’ve never seen the film. But it’s one of those shots in cinema that is ingrained on my brain. Like a lot of Powell and Pressburger films, I think it’s just a… picturesque quality to it, which is just somehow difficult to pinpoint exactly what the magic of Powell and Pressburger together is. But, I think, the thing is sometimes these are the films that you keep returning to, is you can’t kind of define exactly what it is about the film that keeps you obsessed, you just keep coming back. And this is one of those movies. Okay. I already have it, but it’s going in the bag. I’ll give it to someone else. I’ll be like Santa, I’ll just be… I’ll just go up to somebody in the street and say, “You should watch this, Black Narcissus.””

“Let’s talk about this film, Something Wild. Jonathan Demme, in his career, excelled in many genres. I think this is a particularly striking film to me because, tonally, there’s something about this film that I think is… is really special, jarring, but also makes complete sense in terms of the story it’s telling. Also there’s just amazing things like… even just the end credits of this film, with a live performance over the end roller, is something that I find really inspirational in terms of Jonathan Demme, in the best way, seems like he’s having so much fun making a movie and, like, including everything he loves. Extremely memorable, and this is a film I return to a lot and I love it.”

“Let’s talk about A Hard Day’s Night. This is not my hot take on the Beatles being a great band. I think that what I’d like to say here is that Richard Lester is a vastly underrated director. Part of that British New Wave, post-French New Wave, people inspired by European cinema and just breaking all of the rules. And Richard Lester, in all his films, is very experimental and joyous in his use of music and comedy. And then this film is capturing lightning in a bottle, manages to get the Beatles at the height of their charm. And it’s more than just a collection of musical set pieces. I just think Richard Lester is somebody that deserves a lot more love from film fans. So if you’ve seen this and like this, you should also check out his other films.”

“Let’s talk about The Earrings of Madame de... By Max Ophuls. Ravishingly made, and so sort of delicate and detailed in every aspect. And yet, even though there’s this kind of sort of Fabergé-egg feeling to Max Ophuls’s films, they’re also really funny and really playful. And this film in particular, I think, kind of breaks the… It doesn’t quite break the fourth wall, but does a lot of interesting sort of tricks throughout, one of which is that you never find out the Madame’s actual name. So if you haven’t got on the Max Ophuls’s train yet, I highly, highly recommend it. One of the greatest filmmakers of all time for me.”

“The Three and The Four Musketeers by Richard Lester. Highly, highly entertaining, and I’m definitely going to steal this at the end of this session.”

“I’m going to bring out this, The BBS Story: America Lost and Found. On this you have The Last Picture Show, you have The King of Marvin Gardens, you have Five Easy Pieces, you have Easy Rider. But the film that I’m sort of obsessed by is Bob Rafelson’s debut, the Monkees’ film Head, cowritten by Jack Nicholson, no less. Eighty-five minutes long. And I’ve already picked Hard Day’s Night, Head is a very different proposition. It’s a fascinating film. The Monkees were coming off the back of two massive kind of seasons of their TV show and several hit albums, and then Head was a very bold and potentially kind of suicidal attempt to completely deconstruct the myth. It is a movie about four young men trying to escape from their network contracts, but then there are incredible musical sequences throughout it, one of which– The performance of “Circle Sky” on stage with the double exposures is just like… is just pure cinema to me. I really, really love this movie, and I love the Monkees, so I highly recommend this box set. I mean, an incredible box set, but I really recommend watching the Monkees’ film Head.”

“And last but by no means least, I love that the Criterion Collection included the work of Jackie Chan. This is a box set of Police Story and Police Story 2. Oh, I’m on this. I completely forgot about this, actually. Yes, I’m actually on this DVD. But Police Story 1 is one of the greatest action movies of all time. And what’s interesting about this film is that Jackie Chan had come to Hollywood twice at this point and had not had a good experience because he felt compromised and felt that his attempt to break into the Western market had not gone so great and he hadn’t been allowed to make the films in the way he usually made them. And so he goes back to Hong Kong, he makes the first Police Story, and it really feels like Jackie’s revenge. And the climax in the shopping mall is an incredible set piece. But that wasn’t the reason I picked it. The reason I picked it is because I heart Jackie.”