Hari Nef

“The Naked Kiss, Sam Fuller. Probably one of my favorite opening sequences of anything—a bald lady beating somebody up. That's camp, but also I think that David Lynch was really inspired and influenced by Sam Fuller and you can see that, you know, if you go back using this as a lens to watch something like Twin Peaks. Small town secrets, hypocrisy, not something to be missed.”

“Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Almodóvar. Everything I want out of filmmaking is what Almodóvar does: color, melodrama, women, gender, sex, gay stuff. But this one's about the women and frequently I will just be teleported to this part where Peppa, played by Carmen Maura, is listing the ingredients to gazpacho. She's listing all the things she puts in this gazpacho, which I think she's drugged and given to these police officers and they're all passing out one by one.”

“Belle de jour, Buñuel. Timeless story of what happens in your mind and in your body when you are a woman who has money and is bored. You want to disempower yourself when you have power in spades. Buñuel was looking at this decades before the current discourse around sex scenes and post-Me Too feminism. It's hard to watch, it's challenging, it's scandalizing. I love this film and I also love watching Catherine Deneuve just go so bravely into that.”

“Grey Gardens, Maysles Brothers. One word: staunch. Happy Pride.”

“Red Shoes is one of my favorite Technicolor films. It's one of like the weirder, darker films that I've seen captured on Technicolor. When I was shooting Barbie, Greta was shooting on a custom color cast which was on the slate called 'Techno Barbie,' which I loved. She wanted to recreate the look and feel of Classic Hollywood studio Technicolor and for Technicolor, I think this is as good as it gets.”

“Black Narcissus, my favorite Technicolor film. Sexually repressed nuns in a convent in India. Bad vibes, great visuals. I feel like Deborah Kerr never really got her due. She had kind of a more subdued, straightforward approach in an era where kind of the more theatrical performances of someone like Bette Davis or Joan Crawford were kind of like more Oscar bait. Deborah was just kind of holding it down.”

“Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. We need to shout out to Eiko Ishioka who designed this film. She's completely one-of-a-kind visionary. Bright colors, skewed angles. Storytelling, acting, yes, yes, but like the visuals of this film are what keep coming back.”

“Design for Living, Ernst Lubitsch. Pre-code romantic comedy farce, basically about a throuple. I don't know, this film just feels like home to me. This film just feels like Thursday. I saw somebody on Twitter recently talking about how the Hays Code and the censorship that emerged after this film in Hollywood in the '30s going to the '40s, how like that's kind of the root of culture getting messed up in America.”

“Last Days of Disco with Whit Stillman. If you're under the age of 35 and living in Manhattan and like paying too much rent and you went to college, this movie is going to snatch you bald and make you feel like a silly little person. And that's why we watch movies. Thank you, goodbye. You're never getting these back.”