July 1, 2025 • 27 mins
Our Subculture and The Popcorn Conspiracy hosts team together to chat about their favourite directors. Sit back and enjoy Dave Griffiths, Harley Woods, Kyle McGrath and Lee Griffiths talking everything film.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
And Hello. This is part two of our Patreon features
that we're doing at the moment, where it's a little
bit of a get to know us exercise. In the
last one, we took a look at our favorite films.
Today we're going to take a look at our favorite directors.
What directors inspire each of us or get us excited
(00:27):
when we see that they've got a new film coming out,
And start with Lee this time, Lee, who are your
favorite directors and why?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
All right, Well, if you've heard any of our recordings earlier,
any of our reviews, you would have heard us review
Psycho and the Birds. So I'm going to start with
Alfred Hitchcock. And I love his camera techniques. I love
how in depth a look he provides for his viewers
(01:01):
into his films. I think that he has a very
specific style and he'll pan the camera writing and have
close ups and pan them right back as well. He'll
have aerial shot views. But he the way that he
directs brings suspense and drama, and he mixes that, of
(01:26):
course with with the film score music and gets his
actors to have, you know, specific looks on their faces
and and things like that that he just draws out
the best of his cast, I believe, but also the
set and scenery shots are really amazing and just yeah,
(01:50):
it brings you that suspenseful film that I think. You know,
he's probably one of the directors in the past that
others have really looked up to and have really probably
try to use some of those techniques themselves to try
and bring the quality of film that he does. Another
(02:13):
director that I love I've already also mentioned just in
you know, in our reviews is James Cameron. Again. I
love how much detail he puts into his filming and
the extent that he'll go to. You know, I think
(02:34):
he's a director that will wait many years to make
sure that everything is in place for him to have
the best technology to have the best filming available, whether
it's through camera shots or you know, you think of
films like Avatar with you know, the actors or being
(02:58):
completely blue and and the color that's brought to his film,
and then of course Titanic with the ship splitting in
two and the the shots of the real sunken ship
the Titanic. He just goes to extreme lengths and sets
(03:18):
the bar really high. So I really just admire his Yeah,
he's directing, and the last one I'm gonna I know
he's probably supposed to choose a favorite, but I just
can't do it. There's just too many directors that you
just love their work, and I don't know how you
(03:42):
choose one. So I am cheating and I have chosen
a third one, and that is James One. And his
work is very different to the people I've mentioned already.
Of course, you know, you see a lot of his
work in the horror field as well, which I do
(04:04):
tend to love horror films. So the Conjuring is the
Conjuring series is one of my favorites, and you know
he's been involved with that, but you know he's also
directed things like Fast and Furious and Saw and part
of the Conjuring Series, of course, is The Nun there's Insidious,
(04:28):
Like there's this big line of film that I really love.
I know what you did last summer, all these things
that he's been involved with, and you know, there's different
techniques in different films, but I think if you love
so many films of one director, they are filming it
(04:50):
in such a way that you just you love their work.
You love their film because of the way that they're
filming it, and so you know, I don't obviously know
the intricacies of every technique of this director, but what
I know is I am drawn into the film not
just because of the acting, but because of the visual shots,
(05:13):
which you really need to draw you into film. So
they are my top three.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Awesome. So Kyle, you're up, who are your favorite directors
and why?
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Hey? Well, yeah, I'm like, I'm like Lily, it's really
hard to just say I've got just one favorite director.
In the same way that's very hard for me to
say I've just got one favorite movie, but in the
same way that like, some of my favorite directors have
(05:51):
directed some of my favorite movies, but my favorite directors
aren't the directors are my favorite movies. Like Mary Aaron's
a great director, but American Psycho is really the only
the only film of hers that I'm that I'm that
fond of. And Peter Jackson. It was great to see
(06:12):
Peter Jackson go from being like a a little indie
film maker making these kind of ultra violent gore comedies
too pretty much one of the biggest names in Hollywood.
But yeah, I still wouldn't say that he's He's my
favorite director, I definitely have two, and I think a
(06:35):
large part of why I like these two guys so
much is because for almost every other filmmaker that I
can think of, there's always when they've they've worked up
a certain amount of pictures, a certain filmography, there's at
least one movie of theirs that I don't particularly enjoy, like,
(06:59):
whether that that's what do you think Tarantino or Christopher
Nolan or Spilberger, Woody Allen or Akirakus, any variety of directors,
there's always at least one or two that that I
haven't enjoyed. So I've got two of my favorites, my
favorite dead director and my favorite living director. Now, my
(07:24):
favorite director is deceased would be Sergio Leone. Now, he's
mostly known for his westerns, the Italian filmmaker who was
mostly known for spaghetti westerns, but he actually started out
working on these huge Sword and Sandal epic films in Italy.
(07:45):
I think the first movie that he's ever really credited
as as a director on, even though I think he
took over halfway through production or something like that, is
one called The Colossus of Rhodes, which is like it's
a giant epic like Battles, and it's really like what
(08:07):
you would consider to be like a giant spectacular movie.
Most people have never heard of it. But that's that's
what he that's what he's mentionally known for, that's what
that's what he kind of cut his teeth on those
kind of things. And but what he really finally got
started on as the lead director was movies like Fist
Full of Dollars. It's true that that that's a knockoff
(08:32):
remake of yu Jimbo and the Samurai film by but
I get like I give it a pass that I
don't give remakes nowadays a pass because just like Magnificent
seven and seven Samurai, I mean, back then, Westerners weren't
really able to see movies by Japanese filmmakers as much.
(08:58):
And also the movie was kind of a B movie
which was being produced as like a secondary picture by
the crew while they were making a much larger Italian film.
But nobody I can't even remember the name of the
other film that fitst Philla. Dollars is one that history remembers,
and it's also like it kind of revitalized the Western genre.
(09:22):
And the movie I think is mainly responsible for Clint
Eastwood's interesting career. I know there's a joke in Back
to the Future three that Clint Eastwood he never never
wore anything like this, So Clint who because back then
(09:43):
all the Western movies were all rhymestones and sequence shirts
and that kind of stuff. And it wasn't really until
Sergio Leone and the Italian the spaghetti western kind of
genre came along that kind of gave much more of
a gritty look at that kind of at the Western
(10:04):
types of film. But like, yeah, he made several of
the Westons Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Once More
Time in the West, all of which are very gritty
world shop movies, very different to one another, with amazing
scores by Aniomo Raconi. The way that he can the
way that Sergey learn was able to just shoot, just
(10:26):
shoot a close up of a character and that's all
that's all you need to do for you to get
exactly what the character is feeling, exactly what is happening.
My favorite film of his would actually be his final movie,
Oncepon a Time in America, which was something very different,
being a gangster film, and it's an incredibly epic production.
(10:50):
The full version of the movie is like over four
hours long, I think, and it's it's my personal favorite
gangster movie ever made, just I think it. I think
it tops Good Fellas and Godfather and those kind of
movies just flee the scope of the story lettered tales.
So that Sergio Leone would be my favorite director of
(11:13):
the past. My favorite director that is working at the
moment would have to be Where Sanderson. Now, like I said,
he's the only working director that I can think of
at the moment who I have enjoyed all of his films,
and I mean the closest that I come to not
liking one of his movies would be his recent movie
(11:34):
Asteroid City, and even then I still liked it. It's
just a movie that I didn't love as much as
the rest of his work. But all of his films
I think are incredibly interesting from every angle, like the
set design, costumes, cinematography, the music, the acting, the stories.
All of his movies are instantly recognizable as Wills Anderson
(11:58):
movies at the at their best, they can be rewatched
over and over again to you appreciate just another aspect
of the film. And I love the way that he's
able to blend silliness and drama perfectly together in a
way that you can you can show something. He can
(12:18):
show something on paper which is horrific, like a dog
being run over by a car, and yet have it
be funny because it's just how he handles it. But
then at the same immediately after that, he can turn
on a dime and have you almost like tearing up
just because of a single line of dialogue of how
one of his actors says something. Because how much he
(12:41):
has drawn you into his movies, and these these crazy
worlds that he's that he's created is as ridiculous as
they look, and how he merges stop motion animation and
then wacky comedy. But just how much he's he's able
to draw you into a film, how he's able to
(13:03):
have a distinct vision that's instantly recognizable, and yeah, just
how much, basically for just how much I've appreciated his
entire filmography and I've still and I still appreciate it
going on. I'm always looking forward to the next Wes
Anderson movie. Yeah, he'd definitely be my favorite living director.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
And Harley, who are your favorite directors? And why?
Speaker 4 (13:31):
Yeah, this is also difficult for me. There are so
many films that I find I latch onto the directors
because they do something. As Lee said, Alfred Hitchcock, I
can't go past his films. They are amazing. His way
(13:55):
of structuring shots and scenes brings it out so much
in a story. He's been a favorite of mine since
I was very young, so definitely I mentioned for him,
and a little bit for the same reason. I guess.
I don't know if there was an influence there, but
(14:16):
Ridley Scott especially, you know, everyone remembers Alien, but he
also did Filmer and Louise and things like that, and
I can't say. And this is what you guys brought
up earlier, is that you don't necessarily like every film
that a director has done, but you know, the topic
(14:36):
might not be your cup of tea, but when you
see what they do, it's like, oh, okay, I'm gonna
keep watching because you draw me in. I mean, you know,
I was never interested in seeing Gladiator. I wasn't like
a Russell Crowe fan or anything, and I was a
(14:57):
bit put off, but it was on and like, I
found myself watching it, and of course that's a really
Scott movie. So I'm like damn it, he sucks me
in it. So you get a lot of that. But
as we're spoken in elsewhere on Patreon talking about our
favorite films growing up, I started to discover foreign cinema
(15:21):
and a lot of what I was seeing was coming
from Hong Kong and China directors like Wankaw Wi Angley
and Soy Huk So One Kaw Whi is probably one
of my all time favorite directors. People might know films
such as Chunking Express, Happy Together, in the Mood for Love,
(15:47):
Fallen Angels. A couple of his earlier films were a
little bit different. I think most directors in Hong Kong
or wherever I have to kind of break their baby
teeth on doing like a gangster or a kung Fu
film before they're allowed to go and do whatever they want.
It's kind of like nowadays in Hollywood you have to
(16:10):
remake something before you can go and do your own film.
You know, we need to proof of what you can do.
And I actually think that his early films, his first
one as Tears Go By, I think it was one
I'd been looking for the years. I used to see
it on like SBS and World Movies and I'd seen
(16:35):
it a couple of times. I thought, Oh, this film
is really interesting, but I'd never associated it to Wankha.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Why and.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
Looking and I kept trying to find the film, and
I remember describing it to a friend once who was
from Thailand, and he thought, oh, I know that film,
but it's got a title like this, and their title
was very different to the title that we know it as,
which is As Tears Go By. So it's very interesting
(17:05):
the way things kind of slip through our memory and
then here you go. You come back now and it's like, oh,
there's that film I was looking for. Oh look, it
just happens to be by my favorite director. So I
haven't seen a couple of more recent things he's done,
so I'm going on a bit of a hunting spree.
But I remember when I started building my DVD library,
(17:28):
I would look out for his movies and he often
worked with Australian Christopher Doyle, who did a lot of
the lighting and kind of scene direction and stuff in
his film so they started to be the collaboration between
them started to get this real nice look on the films.
(17:48):
So there was something there that it's always drawn me
in and often he is writing his own films, but
when it comes to the filming of them, what makes
it to the final finished film can be quite different
to what he wrote in the script. He's added things,
(18:08):
he's changed things, he's cut complete sections out. I mean,
the film he did, Happy Together, you know, involved a
popular actress of the time in an important sort of
b story which completely got cut from the film because
it took away from the central relationship of the movie.
(18:28):
So all her scenes don't exist anywhere in the final
cut of the film, which is really interesting because you
see behind the scenes stuff and she's interviewed. She doesn't
appear anyway. I think she still gets a credit in
the end. But yeah, at the same time, I was
watching films by Ung Lee, which I guess some people
might know for doing the whole movie starring Eric Banner.
(18:51):
But yeah, before he ventured into America, there were a
lot of other films that I quite loved. Did The
Wedding Banquet, Heat Drink Man, Woman, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
I think everyone probably knows that one. He did Broke
Back Mountain as well, so he's got a real But
I think both of these directors actually have for a
(19:13):
real way of capturing kind of human stories. There's something
in what they present to me that keeps me hooked.
I don't think I've ever disliked any of their films
or topics. I've always been dragged in one last one.
I think I'll mention again. Asian director, so he Hark
(19:37):
I used to love growing up in some of the
Chinese kind of action, mystic ghost kind of stories. He
created the Chinese Ghost Story Trilogy, which was a series
I loved and I watched over and over and over.
(19:59):
I love those movies so much so whenever i'd sort
of see his name attached to something, I would check
it out. There's another one he did, which is, you know,
far removed from that kind of genre peaking opera blues,
and it was actually a drama, I said, in the
days of peaking opera. So that's what I recommend checking out.
(20:23):
It's it's a nice kind of character drama, lots of
subtexts and things. Yeah, I don't know how much else
other people wouldn't know of his work. Yeah, there's a
there's a couple in there they might know of. But look,
I'll just say the name say Haak, you can go
(20:45):
check it out look for a Chinese ghost story. Those
are all my my kind of favorites, you know, other
other ones like that, that kind of fantastical kung fu
action stuff like what was it called Zoo Warriors from
the Mystic Mountain or Magic Mountain maybe something like that.
That I used to find those films so much fun
(21:05):
and they would draw me in and then I'd find
myself watching all these dramas because they're from the same directors,
but I think they've been some of my most influential directors.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Yeah, yeah, I know, there's like so many out there
like I find the same thing doing mine that it's
so difficult because there's directors out there that have kind
of shaped the way that that I write. So like
growing up watching James Cameron movies like that definitely shaped
(21:45):
the films that I love today because I can still
remember seeing like the Terminator films and Titanic, and I've
still got a Titanic poster that hangs in my office.
So like, there's directors like the kind of shaped who
I am. Even Steven Spielberg, even though I wouldn't say
I'm a massive Steven Spielberg fan, his films shaped who
(22:09):
I am today kind of thing with when it comes
to films, But my favorite director is my first. One's
kind of weird because he's not always known for his directing,
but Taylor Sheridan. I started off loving his screenplays. I
loved Sacario, Hella high Water, which I still think is
(22:36):
one of the best films of the last decade. He
basically writes the kind of films that that I almost
wish that I was writing. It's probably the best way
to put it. But then he's gone into directing over
the last few years, and he's directed a couple of
films that I've really liked as well. So of course
(22:59):
for TV he's been doing Yellowstone, which a lot of
people will know, and that's like basically his style. But
he also started to direct things like Those Who Wish
Me Dead and wind River, And even though Those who
Wish Me Dead it's not a great film, I still
really enjoyed it. But I loved wind River. I thought
(23:21):
that was absolutely fantastic. But I love the directing that
he's been doing on Yellowstone in eighteen eighty three, So
that's a bit of a cheap one because he's more
of a screenwriter as a director. But he's directing now.
So my two favorites that I guess like whenever I
hear that they're making a movie, I get really really
(23:42):
excited about festival is Kelly Reichhart. She's kind of an
indie filmmaker from America who rose to prominence with a
movie Wendy and Lucy, which was basically just Michelle Williams
and a dog going on a road trip. I just
I love the way that she makes her film so
(24:02):
simple that they can be shot on such a small budget.
Like Wendy and Lucy, the most expensive part of that
film was Michelle Williams's pay. The rest of the film
was just this really really great road trip movie. She
also did this fantastic film as their follow up to that,
(24:25):
called meex Cutoff, which is about the early settlers in
America going out into the West. And again, it was
one of those movies that was shot on a really
small budget, so it felt like you were there on
the wagons with these guys and like it's a hard hitting,
harsh film, which she kind of also recreated a couple
(24:49):
of years ago with their film First Cow. She doesn't
make easy to watch films. They're kind of harsh and
and confronting when you watch them, but that's what you
come to know and love, and that's what I love
about Kelly Raichhart's films. But my all time favorite director.
You've probably guessed from the fact that when we talked
about favorite films, I mentioned two of his films, Danny Boyle.
(25:13):
He just went through this whole season in his career
where every movie he made he loved. I loved Shallow Grave,
train Spotting, a Lifeless Ordinary, The Beach, twenty eight Days Later, Sunshine,
slum Dog, Millionaire One, twenty seven Hours, Trance. It was
just like everything he made to me was almost like
(25:37):
perfect films. But I also love the fact that you
never knew what you were going to get with his movies,
Like he'll make a hard hitting drama like Trainspotting, and
then he'll go make a film noir kind of film
with a lifeless Ordinary, and then he did The Beach,
which was kind of like this surreal crime thriller, and
(25:57):
then he made a horror with twenty eight Days Later.
Then he made a kids film with Millions, and then
did Sunshine, which was like this epic sci fi film
that I still think is one of the most underrated
films of like the last twenty thirty years. So yeah,
Danny Boyle would have to be my favorite director, just
(26:18):
because nearly every movie he's ever made I've really enjoyed,
and because I love the fact that you never really
know what you're going to get when you sit down
to watch one of his films. So I guess that
wraps up our look at our favorite directors. Hopefully that
will give you a little bit of an insight into
(26:40):
what kind of movies and that that we like. So
what we're going to cover.
Speaker 4 (26:45):
I think look out for a part too. I'm pretty
sure we're all going to leave his team. I kind
of want to mention this one as well. In this one,
I can already think of it.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Bit yeah, that I didn't even touch on my favorite
Aussie directors like John Hewett and people.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
Like that, so exactly clear, and I didn't talk about
it any of my French directors because they were so
influential in what movies I started to watch you away
from the Hollywood stuff. So yeah, there's there's a lot
out there. It's just really hard topic.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
And we probably should mention al Kenos telemen Us as
well because of course, is one of my favorite Aussie directors.
So yeah, but we better finish up now. But stay
tuned on Patreon because we've got a lot of great
content coming up for you all.
And Hello. This is part two of our Patreon features
that we're doing at the moment, where it's a little
bit of a get to know us exercise. In the
last one, we took a look at our favorite films.
Today we're going to take a look at our favorite directors.
What directors inspire each of us or get us excited
(00:27):
when we see that they've got a new film coming out,
And start with Lee this time, Lee, who are your
favorite directors and why?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
All right, Well, if you've heard any of our recordings earlier,
any of our reviews, you would have heard us review
Psycho and the Birds. So I'm going to start with
Alfred Hitchcock. And I love his camera techniques. I love
how in depth a look he provides for his viewers
(01:01):
into his films. I think that he has a very
specific style and he'll pan the camera writing and have
close ups and pan them right back as well. He'll
have aerial shot views. But he the way that he
directs brings suspense and drama, and he mixes that, of
(01:26):
course with with the film score music and gets his
actors to have, you know, specific looks on their faces
and and things like that that he just draws out
the best of his cast, I believe, but also the
set and scenery shots are really amazing and just yeah,
(01:50):
it brings you that suspenseful film that I think. You know,
he's probably one of the directors in the past that
others have really looked up to and have really probably
try to use some of those techniques themselves to try
and bring the quality of film that he does. Another
(02:13):
director that I love I've already also mentioned just in
you know, in our reviews is James Cameron. Again. I
love how much detail he puts into his filming and
the extent that he'll go to. You know, I think
(02:34):
he's a director that will wait many years to make
sure that everything is in place for him to have
the best technology to have the best filming available, whether
it's through camera shots or you know, you think of
films like Avatar with you know, the actors or being
(02:58):
completely blue and and the color that's brought to his film,
and then of course Titanic with the ship splitting in
two and the the shots of the real sunken ship
the Titanic. He just goes to extreme lengths and sets
(03:18):
the bar really high. So I really just admire his Yeah,
he's directing, and the last one I'm gonna I know
he's probably supposed to choose a favorite, but I just
can't do it. There's just too many directors that you
just love their work, and I don't know how you
(03:42):
choose one. So I am cheating and I have chosen
a third one, and that is James One. And his
work is very different to the people I've mentioned already.
Of course, you know, you see a lot of his
work in the horror field as well, which I do
(04:04):
tend to love horror films. So the Conjuring is the
Conjuring series is one of my favorites, and you know
he's been involved with that, but you know he's also
directed things like Fast and Furious and Saw and part
of the Conjuring Series, of course, is The Nun there's Insidious,
(04:28):
Like there's this big line of film that I really love.
I know what you did last summer, all these things
that he's been involved with, and you know, there's different
techniques in different films, but I think if you love
so many films of one director, they are filming it
(04:50):
in such a way that you just you love their work.
You love their film because of the way that they're
filming it, and so you know, I don't obviously know
the intricacies of every technique of this director, but what
I know is I am drawn into the film not
just because of the acting, but because of the visual shots,
(05:13):
which you really need to draw you into film. So
they are my top three.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Awesome. So Kyle, you're up, who are your favorite directors
and why?
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Hey? Well, yeah, I'm like, I'm like Lily, it's really
hard to just say I've got just one favorite director.
In the same way that's very hard for me to
say I've just got one favorite movie, but in the
same way that like, some of my favorite directors have
(05:51):
directed some of my favorite movies, but my favorite directors
aren't the directors are my favorite movies. Like Mary Aaron's
a great director, but American Psycho is really the only
the only film of hers that I'm that I'm that
fond of. And Peter Jackson. It was great to see
(06:12):
Peter Jackson go from being like a a little indie
film maker making these kind of ultra violent gore comedies
too pretty much one of the biggest names in Hollywood.
But yeah, I still wouldn't say that he's He's my
favorite director, I definitely have two, and I think a
(06:35):
large part of why I like these two guys so
much is because for almost every other filmmaker that I
can think of, there's always when they've they've worked up
a certain amount of pictures, a certain filmography, there's at
least one movie of theirs that I don't particularly enjoy, like,
(06:59):
whether that that's what do you think Tarantino or Christopher
Nolan or Spilberger, Woody Allen or Akirakus, any variety of directors,
there's always at least one or two that that I
haven't enjoyed. So I've got two of my favorites, my
favorite dead director and my favorite living director. Now, my
(07:24):
favorite director is deceased would be Sergio Leone. Now, he's
mostly known for his westerns, the Italian filmmaker who was
mostly known for spaghetti westerns, but he actually started out
working on these huge Sword and Sandal epic films in Italy.
(07:45):
I think the first movie that he's ever really credited
as as a director on, even though I think he
took over halfway through production or something like that, is
one called The Colossus of Rhodes, which is like it's
a giant epic like Battles, and it's really like what
(08:07):
you would consider to be like a giant spectacular movie.
Most people have never heard of it. But that's that's
what he that's what he's mentionally known for, that's what
that's what he kind of cut his teeth on those
kind of things. And but what he really finally got
started on as the lead director was movies like Fist
Full of Dollars. It's true that that that's a knockoff
(08:32):
remake of yu Jimbo and the Samurai film by but
I get like I give it a pass that I
don't give remakes nowadays a pass because just like Magnificent
seven and seven Samurai, I mean, back then, Westerners weren't
really able to see movies by Japanese filmmakers as much.
(08:58):
And also the movie was kind of a B movie
which was being produced as like a secondary picture by
the crew while they were making a much larger Italian film.
But nobody I can't even remember the name of the
other film that fitst Philla. Dollars is one that history remembers,
and it's also like it kind of revitalized the Western genre.
(09:22):
And the movie I think is mainly responsible for Clint
Eastwood's interesting career. I know there's a joke in Back
to the Future three that Clint Eastwood he never never
wore anything like this, So Clint who because back then
(09:43):
all the Western movies were all rhymestones and sequence shirts
and that kind of stuff. And it wasn't really until
Sergio Leone and the Italian the spaghetti western kind of
genre came along that kind of gave much more of
a gritty look at that kind of at the Western
(10:04):
types of film. But like, yeah, he made several of
the Westons Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Once More
Time in the West, all of which are very gritty
world shop movies, very different to one another, with amazing
scores by Aniomo Raconi. The way that he can the
way that Sergey learn was able to just shoot, just
(10:26):
shoot a close up of a character and that's all
that's all you need to do for you to get
exactly what the character is feeling, exactly what is happening.
My favorite film of his would actually be his final movie,
Oncepon a Time in America, which was something very different,
being a gangster film, and it's an incredibly epic production.
(10:50):
The full version of the movie is like over four
hours long, I think, and it's it's my personal favorite
gangster movie ever made, just I think it. I think
it tops Good Fellas and Godfather and those kind of
movies just flee the scope of the story lettered tales.
So that Sergio Leone would be my favorite director of
(11:13):
the past. My favorite director that is working at the
moment would have to be Where Sanderson. Now, like I said,
he's the only working director that I can think of
at the moment who I have enjoyed all of his films,
and I mean the closest that I come to not
liking one of his movies would be his recent movie
(11:34):
Asteroid City, and even then I still liked it. It's
just a movie that I didn't love as much as
the rest of his work. But all of his films
I think are incredibly interesting from every angle, like the
set design, costumes, cinematography, the music, the acting, the stories.
All of his movies are instantly recognizable as Wills Anderson
(11:58):
movies at the at their best, they can be rewatched
over and over again to you appreciate just another aspect
of the film. And I love the way that he's
able to blend silliness and drama perfectly together in a
way that you can you can show something. He can
(12:18):
show something on paper which is horrific, like a dog
being run over by a car, and yet have it
be funny because it's just how he handles it. But
then at the same immediately after that, he can turn
on a dime and have you almost like tearing up
just because of a single line of dialogue of how
one of his actors says something. Because how much he
(12:41):
has drawn you into his movies, and these these crazy
worlds that he's that he's created is as ridiculous as
they look, and how he merges stop motion animation and
then wacky comedy. But just how much he's he's able
to draw you into a film, how he's able to
(13:03):
have a distinct vision that's instantly recognizable, and yeah, just
how much, basically for just how much I've appreciated his
entire filmography and I've still and I still appreciate it
going on. I'm always looking forward to the next Wes
Anderson movie. Yeah, he'd definitely be my favorite living director.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
And Harley, who are your favorite directors? And why?
Speaker 4 (13:31):
Yeah, this is also difficult for me. There are so
many films that I find I latch onto the directors
because they do something. As Lee said, Alfred Hitchcock, I
can't go past his films. They are amazing. His way
(13:55):
of structuring shots and scenes brings it out so much
in a story. He's been a favorite of mine since
I was very young, so definitely I mentioned for him,
and a little bit for the same reason. I guess.
I don't know if there was an influence there, but
(14:16):
Ridley Scott especially, you know, everyone remembers Alien, but he
also did Filmer and Louise and things like that, and
I can't say. And this is what you guys brought
up earlier, is that you don't necessarily like every film
that a director has done, but you know, the topic
(14:36):
might not be your cup of tea, but when you
see what they do, it's like, oh, okay, I'm gonna
keep watching because you draw me in. I mean, you know,
I was never interested in seeing Gladiator. I wasn't like
a Russell Crowe fan or anything, and I was a
(14:57):
bit put off, but it was on and like, I
found myself watching it, and of course that's a really
Scott movie. So I'm like damn it, he sucks me
in it. So you get a lot of that. But
as we're spoken in elsewhere on Patreon talking about our
favorite films growing up, I started to discover foreign cinema
(15:21):
and a lot of what I was seeing was coming
from Hong Kong and China directors like Wankaw Wi Angley
and Soy Huk So One Kaw Whi is probably one
of my all time favorite directors. People might know films
such as Chunking Express, Happy Together, in the Mood for Love,
(15:47):
Fallen Angels. A couple of his earlier films were a
little bit different. I think most directors in Hong Kong
or wherever I have to kind of break their baby
teeth on doing like a gangster or a kung Fu
film before they're allowed to go and do whatever they want.
It's kind of like nowadays in Hollywood you have to
(16:10):
remake something before you can go and do your own film.
You know, we need to proof of what you can do.
And I actually think that his early films, his first
one as Tears Go By, I think it was one
I'd been looking for the years. I used to see
it on like SBS and World Movies and I'd seen
(16:35):
it a couple of times. I thought, Oh, this film
is really interesting, but I'd never associated it to Wankha.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Why and.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
Looking and I kept trying to find the film, and
I remember describing it to a friend once who was
from Thailand, and he thought, oh, I know that film,
but it's got a title like this, and their title
was very different to the title that we know it as,
which is As Tears Go By. So it's very interesting
(17:05):
the way things kind of slip through our memory and
then here you go. You come back now and it's like, oh,
there's that film I was looking for. Oh look, it
just happens to be by my favorite director. So I
haven't seen a couple of more recent things he's done,
so I'm going on a bit of a hunting spree.
But I remember when I started building my DVD library,
(17:28):
I would look out for his movies and he often
worked with Australian Christopher Doyle, who did a lot of
the lighting and kind of scene direction and stuff in
his film so they started to be the collaboration between
them started to get this real nice look on the films.
(17:48):
So there was something there that it's always drawn me
in and often he is writing his own films, but
when it comes to the filming of them, what makes
it to the final finished film can be quite different
to what he wrote in the script. He's added things,
(18:08):
he's changed things, he's cut complete sections out. I mean,
the film he did, Happy Together, you know, involved a
popular actress of the time in an important sort of
b story which completely got cut from the film because
it took away from the central relationship of the movie.
(18:28):
So all her scenes don't exist anywhere in the final
cut of the film, which is really interesting because you
see behind the scenes stuff and she's interviewed. She doesn't
appear anyway. I think she still gets a credit in
the end. But yeah, at the same time, I was
watching films by Ung Lee, which I guess some people
might know for doing the whole movie starring Eric Banner.
(18:51):
But yeah, before he ventured into America, there were a
lot of other films that I quite loved. Did The
Wedding Banquet, Heat Drink Man, Woman, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
I think everyone probably knows that one. He did Broke
Back Mountain as well, so he's got a real But
I think both of these directors actually have for a
(19:13):
real way of capturing kind of human stories. There's something
in what they present to me that keeps me hooked.
I don't think I've ever disliked any of their films
or topics. I've always been dragged in one last one.
I think I'll mention again. Asian director, so he Hark
(19:37):
I used to love growing up in some of the
Chinese kind of action, mystic ghost kind of stories. He
created the Chinese Ghost Story Trilogy, which was a series
I loved and I watched over and over and over.
(19:59):
I love those movies so much so whenever i'd sort
of see his name attached to something, I would check
it out. There's another one he did, which is, you know,
far removed from that kind of genre peaking opera blues,
and it was actually a drama, I said, in the
days of peaking opera. So that's what I recommend checking out.
(20:23):
It's it's a nice kind of character drama, lots of
subtexts and things. Yeah, I don't know how much else
other people wouldn't know of his work. Yeah, there's a
there's a couple in there they might know of. But look,
I'll just say the name say Haak, you can go
(20:45):
check it out look for a Chinese ghost story. Those
are all my my kind of favorites, you know, other
other ones like that, that kind of fantastical kung fu
action stuff like what was it called Zoo Warriors from
the Mystic Mountain or Magic Mountain maybe something like that.
That I used to find those films so much fun
(21:05):
and they would draw me in and then I'd find
myself watching all these dramas because they're from the same directors,
but I think they've been some of my most influential directors.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Yeah, yeah, I know, there's like so many out there
like I find the same thing doing mine that it's
so difficult because there's directors out there that have kind
of shaped the way that that I write. So like
growing up watching James Cameron movies like that definitely shaped
(21:45):
the films that I love today because I can still
remember seeing like the Terminator films and Titanic, and I've
still got a Titanic poster that hangs in my office.
So like, there's directors like the kind of shaped who
I am. Even Steven Spielberg, even though I wouldn't say
I'm a massive Steven Spielberg fan, his films shaped who
(22:09):
I am today kind of thing with when it comes
to films, But my favorite director is my first. One's
kind of weird because he's not always known for his directing,
but Taylor Sheridan. I started off loving his screenplays. I
loved Sacario, Hella high Water, which I still think is
(22:36):
one of the best films of the last decade. He
basically writes the kind of films that that I almost
wish that I was writing. It's probably the best way
to put it. But then he's gone into directing over
the last few years, and he's directed a couple of
films that I've really liked as well. So of course
(22:59):
for TV he's been doing Yellowstone, which a lot of
people will know, and that's like basically his style. But
he also started to direct things like Those Who Wish
Me Dead and wind River, And even though Those who
Wish Me Dead it's not a great film, I still
really enjoyed it. But I loved wind River. I thought
(23:21):
that was absolutely fantastic. But I love the directing that
he's been doing on Yellowstone in eighteen eighty three, So
that's a bit of a cheap one because he's more
of a screenwriter as a director. But he's directing now.
So my two favorites that I guess like whenever I
hear that they're making a movie, I get really really
(23:42):
excited about festival is Kelly Reichhart. She's kind of an
indie filmmaker from America who rose to prominence with a
movie Wendy and Lucy, which was basically just Michelle Williams
and a dog going on a road trip. I just
I love the way that she makes her film so
(24:02):
simple that they can be shot on such a small budget.
Like Wendy and Lucy, the most expensive part of that
film was Michelle Williams's pay. The rest of the film
was just this really really great road trip movie. She
also did this fantastic film as their follow up to that,
(24:25):
called meex Cutoff, which is about the early settlers in
America going out into the West. And again, it was
one of those movies that was shot on a really
small budget, so it felt like you were there on
the wagons with these guys and like it's a hard hitting,
harsh film, which she kind of also recreated a couple
(24:49):
of years ago with their film First Cow. She doesn't
make easy to watch films. They're kind of harsh and
and confronting when you watch them, but that's what you
come to know and love, and that's what I love
about Kelly Raichhart's films. But my all time favorite director.
You've probably guessed from the fact that when we talked
about favorite films, I mentioned two of his films, Danny Boyle.
(25:13):
He just went through this whole season in his career
where every movie he made he loved. I loved Shallow Grave,
train Spotting, a Lifeless Ordinary, The Beach, twenty eight Days Later, Sunshine,
slum Dog, Millionaire One, twenty seven Hours, Trance. It was
just like everything he made to me was almost like
(25:37):
perfect films. But I also love the fact that you
never knew what you were going to get with his movies,
Like he'll make a hard hitting drama like Trainspotting, and
then he'll go make a film noir kind of film
with a lifeless Ordinary, and then he did The Beach,
which was kind of like this surreal crime thriller, and
(25:57):
then he made a horror with twenty eight Days Later.
Then he made a kids film with Millions, and then
did Sunshine, which was like this epic sci fi film
that I still think is one of the most underrated
films of like the last twenty thirty years. So yeah,
Danny Boyle would have to be my favorite director, just
(26:18):
because nearly every movie he's ever made I've really enjoyed,
and because I love the fact that you never really
know what you're going to get when you sit down
to watch one of his films. So I guess that
wraps up our look at our favorite directors. Hopefully that
will give you a little bit of an insight into
(26:40):
what kind of movies and that that we like. So
what we're going to cover.
Speaker 4 (26:45):
I think look out for a part too. I'm pretty
sure we're all going to leave his team. I kind
of want to mention this one as well. In this one,
I can already think of it.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Bit yeah, that I didn't even touch on my favorite
Aussie directors like John Hewett and people.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
Like that, so exactly clear, and I didn't talk about
it any of my French directors because they were so
influential in what movies I started to watch you away
from the Hollywood stuff. So yeah, there's there's a lot
out there. It's just really hard topic.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
And we probably should mention al Kenos telemen Us as
well because of course, is one of my favorite Aussie directors.
So yeah, but we better finish up now. But stay
tuned on Patreon because we've got a lot of great
content coming up for you all.
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