My favourite film

I don't really have one favourite film. I just really love movies - and I love going to the cinema. When I was growing up, the films that meant a lot to me were things like the early Martin Scorcese films - MEAN STREETS, RAGING BULL, TAXI DRIVER; things like Stanley Kubrik's A CLOCKWORK ORANGE . . . and then old cult movies like HAROLD AND MAUDE and IF.

I've always loved Kurosawa, the Japanese director, especially his movies starring the great star Toshiro Mifune; I love Hitchcock, I love early Roman Polanski, all that kind of stuff.

However, I think perhaps the two films which have moved me the most over the last ten years or so are both foreign indie movies - one from France and one from Japan.

The French one is called La Haine, which means HATE. It's shot in black and white and was made in 1995. I can't remember the name of the director, but the plot is basically about a day in the life of three young teenagers - a Jewish kid, a Muslim / Arab kid and a black kid - who all live in a horrible tower block in the suburbs of Paris. One of the guys ends up in hospital after a riot, but during the riot a policeman lost his gun. Another guy - Vinz - finds the gun and claims he will kill a cop if his friend in hospital dies. It's quite a tense, heavy film - a kind of thriller with social and political messages - but it's just amazing . . . and the ending is incredible. Really!

Here's the trailer for the film.
You can see more on YouTube.



The other film I really love is a Japanese movie by a director called Hirokazu Kore-eda and the English title is AFTERLIFE. It's basically about a place you go to after you die where they ask you to spend one week deciding on your best memory of the world. After one week, they make a short movie of this memory and put it into your brian and that's all you think about for the rest of eternity. It's a slow, lovely movie about what's important in life, how memory works, why film is important, the things we value, and so on. You can watch the whole thing on YouTube if you're interested. The first part is here:



Hope you like these two choices.
really looking forward to reading more about the films you love.

Hugh