Top Ten List: David Michôd (Animal Kingdom)

Have you ever wondered what are the films that inspire the next generation of visionary filmmakers? As part of our monthly IONCINEPHILE profile (read here), we ask the filmmaker the incredibly arduous task of identifying their top ten list of favorite films. This August, we profile David Michôd, who when asked to be profiled was (still is) in the midst of a lengthy promotional screening/press junket tour for his directorial debut, Animal Kingdom which will receive a limited release in New York, Los Angeles on August 13th via Sony Pictures Classics. We’d like to thank David for his time, and before you get an eyeful of his favorite ten films, read David’s disclaimer right below.

Disclaimer: This list is inadequate, (a) because I don’t consider myself a cinephile – there are enormous lazy gaps in my cinema knowledge of which I am fully aware, (b) because if you were to ask me to do this list next week it would almost certainly be different, and (c) because I did it real quick.

A Woman Under the Influence – John Cassavetes (1974)
“Gena Rowlands in full flight is a magical thing to behold.”

Alien – Ridley Scott (1979)
“as the camera sweeps around the breakfast table after the Nostromo’s crew of space truckers has just woken from its deep sleep – Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Ian Holm, et al – you know you’re in for something substantial. And then it just starts getting scary.”

Apocalypse Now – Francis Ford Coppola (1979)
“This movie is not only huge and dark and chaotic and wild, it was the first film to make me want to make movies. It made me want to be a part of the whole exhilarating/terrifying adventure behind the camera.”

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford – Andrew Dominik (2007)
“A grand, majestic masterpiece. Supremely written and crafted. Casey Affleck is scarily fragile and good. It’s the best thing Brad Pitt has ever done. That it was so profoundly under-appreciated when it was released is scandalous.”

Funny Games – Michael Haneke (1997)
“Funny Games is a profoundly unsettling rumination on the nature of violence in cinema. It’s strange and chilling and cold and yet, for some reason, the virtually identical English-language remake just feels like torture porn. Not quite sure why that is….”

Gummo – Harmony Korine (1997)
“It’s not often a film makes me feel like I’m seeing something I’ve never seen before. Gummo did – about a hundred times.”

Magnolia – Paul Thomas Anderson (1999)
“Of all Paul Thomas Anderson’s very special films, this one will always be my favourite. It’s a grand American novel as cinema. It’s so big and bold and rich and good, it makes me dizzy..”

Rabbit-Proof Fence – Phillip Noyce (2002) / Whale Rider – Niki Caro (2002)
“I’ve lumped these two together not because they are both beautiful films about the Australasian indigenous experience, but because they’re the only two films to ever make me cry (which probably has something to do with them being about the Australasian indigenous experience).”

Star Wars – George Lucas (1977)
“It would be a gross act of historical revisionism for me to leave Star Wars off the list. It was only the 2nd film I ever saw, it blew my mind, I saw it 50 times and I knew every line off by heart – all by the age of six.”

Taxi Driver – Martin Scorsese (1976)
“Travis Bickle is the most heart-breaking character in the history of cinema.”