What are your favourite films? I've been thinking about it because I want to know a bit about what I like and the kind of direction I'd like to go in with music and writing, but it's surprisingly difficult to narrow it down to a few picks.
I like Bergman's Persona because it's super fascinating and also super violent and tense in a way that's hard to pin down to any single editing/acting/photography technique in particular.
Akira and Beyond the Black Rainbow, they've come up in other threads.
Possession, the way everything goes from collapsing to seriously collapsing is incredible.
Mulholland Drive of course? I've never been to the US but this and Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon is fully what I expect Los Angeles to be like.
Suspiria and Inferno. I think Inferno is really underrated, besides the visual candy it's very interesting in how it casually shifts from one character to another. I also like the vaguely futuristic vibes in Tenebrae, there's something Ballardian about it.
I'm a big fan of David Cronenberg but I don't know which of his films I'd pick as "an influence". Videodrome and The Brood are really cool and Scanners is one of the ultimate autistic films, but I think Crimes of the Future is the one I'm the most fascinated with?
Tetsuo for sure, I also really really like that kind of low budget artsiness, it's very inventively filmed. I also like Gerorisuto because I love how it's performance-driven whilst having some sort of vaguely coherent horror concept.
Bara no Souretsu
I'm a huge fan of Takashi Ito, I think Grim and Ghost might be my favourite shorts by him? But I really really like Thunder, and Devil's Circuit, and Spacy, and Dizziness too.
Dizziness kind of reminds me of Ooshima's The Man Who Left His Will on Film (actual Japanese title is closer to "secret chronicle of the post-Tokyo War era", the Tokyo War being the 1968 communist/anarchist/student movement, which I think is a far better title for it). I'm kind of obsessed with this idea of life as a ghost after defeat, and of the ghosts of failed revolutions looming over us. I know there was a "landscape theory" in Japan at the time and that Ooshima was involved but I have to actually read about it (I'm kind of afraid to because my Japanese is not "60's political/art theory essay" good but I definitely want to look into it)
Antonioni's L'Eclisse, I just like how she shoots people wandering around modernist cities
Bertolucci The Spider's Stratagem feels surreal and I loved the plot
Alien 1!!!!!!!!!!!!! Looks great and has fascinating vibes but the psychosexual tension is crazy
Greenaway's The Falls!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Cat People, so shockingly modern
Deborah Stratman's In Order Not to Be Here
