The comedian and actor presents a selection of his favorite films, and talks about watching movies with his dad, fart jokes in Ozu pictures, and why Bergman’s THE VIRGIN SPRING is hilarious. Be warned—some introductions contain plot spoilers!
The actor and comedian on a lifetime of moviegoing
Directed by Akira Kurosawa • 1952 • Japan
Considered by some to be Akira Kurosawa's greatest achievement, Ikiru presents the director at his most compassionate, affirming life through an exploration of a man's death. Takashi Shimura portrays Kanji Watanabe, an aging bureaucrat with stomach cance...
Directed by Satyajit Ray • 1955 • India
With the release in 1955 of Satyajit Ray's debut, Pather Panchali, an eloquent and important new cinematic voice made itself heard all over the world. A depiction of rural Bengali life in a style inspired by Italian neorealism, this naturalistic but poetic...
Directed by Ingmar Bergman • 1960 • Sweden
Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Ingmar Bergman's THE VIRGIN SPRING is a harrowing tale of faith, revenge, and savagery in medieval Sweden. Starring frequent Bergman collaborator and screen icon Max von Sydow, the film is both...
Directed by Wim Wenders • 1977 • Germany
Wim Wenders pays loving homage to rough-and-tumble Hollywood film noir with The American Friend, a loose adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel Ripley's Game. Dennis Hopper oozes quirky menace as an amoral American art dealer who entangles a terminally ...
Directed by David Cronenberg • 1979 • Canada
A disturbed woman is receiving a radical form of psychotherapy at a remote, mysterious institute. Meanwhile, her five-year-old daughter, under the care of her estranged husband, is being terrorized by a group of demonic beings. How these two story l...
Directed by Jim Jarmusch • 1986 • United States
Director Jim Jarmusch followed up his brilliant breakout film Stranger Than Paradise with another, equally beloved portrait of loners and misfits in the American landscape. When fate brings together three hapless men--an unemployed disc jockey (T...
Directed by George Sluizer • 1988 • Netherlands
A young man embarks on an obsessive search for the girlfriend who mysteriously disappeared while the couple were taking a sunny vacation trip, and his three-year investigation draws the attention of her abductor, a mild-mannered professor with a cl...
