My dad is a huge international film guru and we were always watching Tarkovsky and Mongolian films in my house. Even though, as a kid, I was maybe more drawn to Sword in the Stone or Robin Hood, I was taking in all this other cinema.
I remember seeing Clerks when it first came out, I was maybe twelve. And I remember writing down notes and being like, “Wow, I didn't know cinema could do this.” There were some movies like that that taught us cinema could be a whole new language.
If you haven't seen it, then, oh my God. It's just so beautiful and incredible and hilarious.
I just went through a phase and watched a ton of Kim Ki-duk's movies. 3-Iron is this beautiful and totally magical film about a guy who lives in a house with this couple, but only one of them can really ever see him because he's just so quiet and can manage to hide behind the other one. It's just so amazing. He really blew my mind.
Not exactly hidden, but it's one of those films that I think total artsy folks have seen, but I don't know if everyone has seen it. It's just stunning.
This was a film I saw in the Panorama section of the Berlinale 2014. It's a Turkish-German drama and it's just gorgeous. The cinematography was so stunning and the performances were really powerful.
Not everyone saw this when they were five years old. One of the things I loved about it was that it wasn't a traditional happy kids movie. When I was a kid, I was like, "I know shit gets dark. Don't keep giving me all these happy endings." I remember when I found out that the Little Mermaid actually gets her tongue cut out and doesn't end up with the prince at all. I was like, "I see that things aren't all they seem." I was six.
One of the things that's nice about The Last Unicorn is the mood. It has such a strong tone and the characters are really complex. It's not like a handsome prince and a young maiden. It's about a lot of people who are past their prime and missed their chance of being near magical things. It's about how you've maybe done a lot of things in your life that you now regret.
There are so many beautiful aspects to it that are so human. It felt so real.
