Edgar Wright

“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.”

“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 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.”

“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 Beatle...”

“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.”

“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 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. It’s a movie about four young men trying to escape from their Network contracts, but then there are incredible musical sequences throughout it. The Performance of “Circle Sky” on stage with the double exposures is just pure cinema to me.”

“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 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.”