Jamie Demetriou

“I’m actually going to start with Secrets & Lies, Mike Leigh. Hello, England. This to me feels like… I don’t know if he’d appreciate this review, but his juiciest work. Sorry, Mike, if you don’t like that. There’s just something in him kind of utilizing naturalism for really heavy drama. He also doesn’t waste the character, which I think is, in my experience of being an acting person, quite a common pain you feel. I spent a number of years being “You need to be here by this time or this is going to happen”-guy, and I think that that guy in his films always is given a proper something to do, which I think is so generous, but also beneficial to the film. So, yeah, I love this one.”

“Celebration, Festen. Takes me back to the days where I tried to define myself as being the guy who liked Dogme 95 stuff. I’m still that guy, but I don’t define myself by it. I think that the… the amount of extra business that goes on when making stuff these days, it’s useful to remember that you don’t have to, and that the kind of obstructions that they created for themselves obviously ended up being insanely fruitful creatively, and the product is actually verging on soap-style drama. It’s really accessible and brilliant, and, actually, all that fat being trimmed out, all the kind of… Look, I love a cinematic light. Don’t get me wrong. But all that fat being trimmed out does leave you with this really horrible, amazing, cold, sinewy drama that I love.”

“These I picked because they’re three… they’re three contemporary performances that I think changed the way I want to act or inspired me to do better. Jeff Daniels in Noah Baumbach’s Squid and the Whale is taking a person in the world, via Baumbach’s incredible script, who is seemingly one-dimensional. He has no ability to introspect. I think it’s one of the funniest performances. But it requires so much introspection from the actor to get it over the line. And I think the idea of that horrendous guy being so watchable is such a testament to real skill from everyone involved.”

“Sandra Hüller in Anatomy of a Fall. Sandra Hüller, that year, with Zone of Interest as well, immediately became the person that I will see anything in. Feels like a classic from a million years ago already. I think her dedication felt like a new… It really felt like a new level of naturalism that I just… I just can’t fathom how she did what she did in that film.”

“And Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love. I think as time passes, people are becoming more and more obsessed with Adam Sandler’s performance in this, for good reason. On the surface, when I think about that film, I’m thinking that he’s playing the most anxious man in the world. But then, when you actually think about it, he’s the most confident character who’s ever existed. The things that he’s willing to do demonstrate that there’s no… there’s no simplicity, you can’t reduce it down to that. Anyway, love these three performances and films on the whole.”

“The Worst Person in the World, a recent classic. Kind of demonstrates that cinema does have a future, despite my gut feeling that it might not. It’s really rewarding to see. I put a lot of new stuff in here because I do think that it’s… I’m excited to see where all these directors go and what they do with their stuff, and how their work holds cinema up.”

“Okay, and to finish, I am going to blindly choose a film. Lovely stuff, of course. I’ve seen a million times. Loved a million times. I’m not sad that this, Being John Malkovich by Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman, is going in my bag.”