Jason Wood

Comments

La Jetée

Only 28 minutes long but an incredibly innovative and influential work. It approaches perfection and seems to me to crystallise the full possibilities of the medium.

Pather Panchali

The first in Ray's remarkable Apu trilogy, Pather Panchali shows us how film can be a window to the world.

Killer of Sheep

A work that grows in stature, it's an at times poetic but also remarkably realistic portrait of the Black American working-class experience.

Beau travail

A film which makes remarkable use of landscape and movement, it's a career highlight from a director who remains a potent force in cinema.

Sunrise A Song of Two Humans

A close call for me between this and the director's Nosferatu. Sunrise feels like such an audacious synthesis of genres and style. Plus, it has one hell of a performance from Janet Gaynor.

Meshes of the Afternoon

No matter how many times I watch this I find something new in it. It's like a dream that I yearn to return to.

Do the Right Thing

A film that demonstrates the ability to be explicitly political and forthright in its demands for change and equality whilst also having popular appeal. The soundtrack is also incredibly on point.

Los olvidados

A film that triggered my interest in Mexican culture, it balances the director's surrealism with a more realist aesthetic.

Night and Fog

A film that explores without sentiment humanity's capacity for hatred, violence and destruction. The film's sobering suggestion that we seem to have learned nothing remains depressingly prescient.

Seven Samurai

Ah. The pressure of lists. I felt the need to have one canonical title. And was torn between this and something by Tarkovsky or Godard. In the end I went for Seven Samurai for its sense of spectacle and ability to enthral and entertain.