Movies recommended by Taika Waititi

Taika's Cinematic Crush - 10 Favorite Movies


Taika Waititi

Taika Waititi namedropped 10 movies that he loves the most. Though this prominent actor and director has a lot of favorites, these 10 are 'creme de la creme' of all the movies he likes.
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Stalker

Stalker. I went through a big phase, a Tarkovsky phase, when I was in my mid-20s, and that film always stuck with me. For me, I think visually there’s something about that film that manages to get inside your head and touch you on your emotional synapses or something; it somehow just gets in there.
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Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore — one of the greatest performances of a woman, and that kid as well, that little boy; those two together. And again, it’s just something about a film about normal people just trying to follow their dreams.
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Days of Heaven

Days of Heaven, which is again another flawless film. His use of voice over is the best out of any filmmaker.
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Badlands

Badlands, for me, is a very important film because I feel like a lot of the time it’s the kind of film I would love to make, if I could just make one. It’s so small, but really perfect. I
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The Last Detail

There’s always the great films, like Harold and Maude, sure; but then there’s ones that people kind of forget about, you know, or they sort of get swept to the side a little — and I think Coming Home is one of those films. Even The Last Detail is one of those films.
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Harold and Maude

You think about something like Harold and Maude, which is to me one of the most flawless films there is.
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Coming Home

Another one’s Coming Home, by Hal Ashby. I mean, I love all of his films — if there’s any filmmaker I would love to be, it would be him. It’s just an amazing film.
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Mirror (1975 film)

And it doesn’t always matter what people are saying — because the film’s full of dialogue, full of poetry and stuff, but that’s what I love about that film, and also The Mirror. It just washes over you, and you can watch it again and again and take more and more in each time. Mirror is also one of my favorites but it’s a baffling, baffling film.
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The Graduate

The Graduate is always a good one to have on my list. It’s hilarious, but also has that element of treading between comedy and drama and doing it so well, and actually being about something. It’s probably the best version of those films about rich people and their boring problems, you know, that anyone’s ever made.
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Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Dr. Strangelove. I think purely because of Peter Sellers. I love his characters; he’s just having so much fun. And that kind of subversion of very serious things going on is right up my alley; I really like that. I love Kubrick’s films, but that for me is also a very different Kubrick film. People either get it or they don’t. I love that film.
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