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Five Favorite Films

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Five Favorite Films with Rose McGowan (99 comments)

by Ryan Fujitani on Wednesday, Aug. 17 2011, 03:07 PM

Over the course of her 19-year career, Rose McGowan has established quite an eclectic resume, working with notable directors across several genres and moving effortlessly between film and television. This week, she continues her string of strong but flawed female characters as the evil sorceress Marique in Marcus Nispel?s Conan the Barbarian, and we were happy to chat with her about the film. She not only gave us her Five Favorite Films, but also talked about what it was like growing up and watching movies overseas, and how she influenced a rather taboo relationship in the new film. Click through for the full interview!

Five Favorite Films with Footloose Director Craig Brewer (98 comments)

by Ryan Fujitani on Wednesday, Aug. 03 2011, 10:04 AM

Director Craig Brewer made a big splash at Sundance back in 2005 when his first major feature, Hustle & Flow, won the Audience Award in the category for Drama. Brewer followed up in 2007 with another gritty tale set in the South, Black Snake Moan, starring Christina Ricci as a battered nymphomaniac and Samuel L. Jackson as the troubled farmer who rescues her from the side of the road. Though it didn't prove to be quite the critical darling that Hustle & Flow was, Black Snake Moan saw its fair share of supporters. With all that in mind, it was a bit puzzling to some when it was announced that Brewer's next film would be a remake of the '80s pop culture classic Footloose. RT recently had the opportunity to chat with Brewer, who not only gave us his Five Favorite Films, but also went on to explain passionately why he joined the Footloose remake, what he changed in his version, and how it does, in fact, fit within his wheelhouse.

Five Favorite Films with David Hyde Pierce (76 comments)

by Tim Ryan on Thursday, Jun. 30 2011, 06:20 PM

There's a lot more to David Hyde Pierce than Niles Crane. Though he's best known for his multi-Emmy-winning role as a highbrow, fastidious shrink on Frasier, Pierce has carved out a distinctive career on stage (he won a Tony Award for his starring role in the musical Curtains in 2007) and as a voice actor (key roles in A Bug's Life, Treasure Planet, and The Simpsons). In the psychological thriller The Perfect Host, Pierce plays a man preparing for a dinner party when an escaped fugitive turns up at his door; what follows is as twisty as a corkscrew, and audiences expecting good ol' Niles are in for a surprise. In an interview with RT, Pierce shared his favorite films, and discussed his juicy role in The Perfect Host, how he prepares for a role, and the legacy of Frasier.

Five Favorite Films with John Carpenter (67 comments)

by Ryan Fujitani on Friday, Jun. 10 2011, 04:51 AM

riter-director-producer-composer (and occasional actor) John Carpenter is a modern horror icon whose keen sense of tension and terror has helped establish his work as some of the finest genre filmmaking to hit the big screen. His best known work is probably the 1978 slasher classic Halloween, but the '80s -- Carpenter's most critically and commercially successful decade -- brought forth other beloved gems like The Thing, Escape from New York, Starman, and the cult classic They Live. This week, his first directorial effort in a decade, The Ward, became availabe on Video on Demand, and he spoke to us about his Five Favorite Films.

Five Favorite Films With Submarine Director Richard Ayoade (74 comments)

by Luke Goodsell on Wednesday, Jun. 01 2011, 04:25 PM

Richard Ayoade is well known to fans of British TV as geek genius Moss on The IT Crowd, while his cult credentials extend to roles in Chris Morris' acerbic classic Nathan Barley and the surreal comedy series The Mighty Boosh. What the rest of the film world may not know -- and are about to discover -- is that he's also a talented and original director. This week, Ayoade's debut feature Submarine surfaces in cinemas, following on from its critically-acclaimed run in the UK. Based on the novel by Joe Dunthorne, the film charts the strange odyssey of 15-year-old Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) -- a peculiar miscreant in the lineage of Holden Caulfield, Antoine Doinel and Max Fischer -- as he falls for a quixotic girl (Yasmin Paige) and tries to keep his parents (Noah Taylor and Sally Hawkins) from splitting apart. Though it carries on the tradition of idiosyncratic coming-of-age cinema, Submarine also leaves its own imprint by staying true to the emotions of its characters. We caught up with Richard recently, where he chatted about Submarine and talked through his Five Favorite Films. Read on for more.

Five Favorite Films with Stuntman Vic Armstrong (75 comments)

by Luke Goodsell on Thursday, May. 19 2011, 05:11 AM

His name may not be instantly familiar, but his work most certainly is: over a prolific career, Vic Armstrong has been a stunt man, stunt coordinator and second unit director on some of the biggest and best-loved action movies of the past four decades. He's stunt-doubled for successive James Bonds from Sean Connery to Pierce Brosnan, worn the cape and tights on Richard Donner's Superman, and famously done stunt work for Harrison Ford on, among many of the actor's other roles, the original three Indiana Jones films. Then there's his work with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Cruise, Sylvester Stallone and Angelina Jolie, to name a handful. With the release of his book, The True Adventures of the World's Greatest Stuntman, we spoke to Armstrong about his career, filming action on Marvel's Thor and the upcoming Amazing Spider-Man, and his Five Favorite Films.

Five Favorite Films with Rutger Hauer (82 comments)

by Luke Goodsell on Wednesday, May. 04 2011, 03:50 PM

In a busy career tracing back to the late 1960s, Dutch actor Rutger Hauer has carved out a unique niche as a performer, alternating between dramatic parts and iconic cult roles that have earned him the admiration of successive generations of audiences. His performance in 1977's World War II drama Soldier of Orange made the world aware of both Hauer and director Paul Verhoeven, while several of his roles in the '80s -- like the menacing villain in action classic The Hitcher and replicant Roy Batty in Blade Runner -- continue to resonate with movie fans today. This week he's back in all of his full, starring glory -- headlining the splattery B-movie throwback, Hobo With a Shotgun. We spoke with the actor recently, where he shared his thoughts on the film, and what it's like looking back at Blade Runner today. Read on for the interview; but first, here are Rutger Hauer's five favorite films.

Five Favorite Films with Morgan Spurlock (111 comments)

by Ryan Fujitani on Wednesday, Apr. 20 2011, 10:28 AM

West Virginia native Morgan Spurlock's 2004 doc Super Size Me proved to be a critical success, touching on timely health issues ranging from school nutrition to fast-food marketing practices, and earned an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature. This week, he expands further on one of Super Size Me's themes in his latest documentary, POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. Once again utilizing the personal, hands-on approach, Greatest Movie's meta-narrative follows the adventurous director as he attempts to secure sponsorship funds for a film all about product placement in movies. RT had the opportunity to chat with Spurlock about his Five Favorite Films, and what it was like making Greatest Movie. Click through for the full article

Five Favourite Films with Nick Frost (162 comments)

by Luke Goodsell on Wednesday, Apr. 13 2011, 10:39 AM

Right now, you might say that Nick Frost and Simon Pegg are living every sci-fi movie fan's dream. The irrepressible British comedy duo, who came to attention via cult TV series Spaced and scored big-screen hits with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, are currently enjoying the success of their third movie collaboration, Paul, which finds them as road-tripping nerds inadvertently harbouring an intergalactic fugitive with an attitude (Paul, voiced by Seth Rogen). With Paul landing in Australian cinemas this week, we got a chance to talk with Nick Frost about the film, what it's been like working with Spielberg, and what to expect from Attack the Block. Read on for the full interview, but first, as always, we asked him his Five Favourite Films.

Five Favorite Films with Emma Roberts (121 comments)

by Ryan Fujitani on Tuesday, Apr. 12 2011, 06:33 AM

Emma Roberts established herself as something of a teen icon in her starring role on Nickelodeon's Unfabulous, but the young actress has been hobnobbbing with celebrities since the day she was born. Her father Eric has had a fruitful career spanning more than three decades, and she even spent time on set with her superstar aunt Julia during the prime of her "America's Sweetheart" days. Lately, Roberts has been stepping away from children's entertainment to work on more adult-oriented projects, and this week she takes it one step further with Scream 4. She chatted with RT about her Five Favorite Films and what it was like working with Wes Craven. Click through for the full interview!

Five Favorite Films with Max Winkler (154 comments)

by Luke Goodsell on Friday, Apr. 08 2011, 12:56 PM

First-time writer-director director Max Winkler isn't a household name like his dad, but that may very well change in the future. The 27-year-old son of Happy Days' star and producer Henry Winkler has several buzzed-about projects in the works, including the comedy The Adventurer's Handbook, starring Jason Schwartzman, Jason Segel and Jonah Hill, the intriguingly-titled fantasy The Ornate Anatomy of Living Things, and a film he's written with Jason Reitman attached to direct, Whispers in Bedlam. Reitman also serves as executive producer to Winkler's directorial debut released this week, the comedy-drama Ceremony, in which precocious fantasist Michael Angarano crashes a wedding to pursue his older ex, played by Uma Thurman. An impressive debut, the film exhibits the influences of Wes Anderson, Hal Ashby and Noah Baumbach -- which is a good thing -- and it's something that Winkler is the first to admit. Read on for a chat and Winkler's Five Favorite Films.

Five Favorite Films with Morgan Freeman (280 comments)

by Luke Goodsell on Wednesday, Apr. 06 2011, 04:22 PM

He's played Dracula, Nelson Mandela, the American President, God, and Batman's tech guru, done time at Shawshank, rode with Eastwood and driven Miss Daisy, but Morgan Freeman is arguably just as famous for his presence as cinema's esteemed all-purpose narrator -- from his work on numerous history series to March of the Penguins to that haunting final line of Se7en, he's the guy filmmakers turn to when they want to infuse their work with a sense of awe and authority. This week, Freeman lends his particular vocal stylings to the IMAX documentary Born To Be Wild, a tale of two species of baby orphans -- orangutans and elephants -- fostered in the care of two rather remarkable ladies, Daphne Sheldrick and Birute Galdikas. Filmed in a 3-D that captures the creatures and their environments in vivid detail, the film, under its narrator's steady hand, makes an entertaining case for animal orphanages helping displaced babies back into the wild. We had the chance to sit down with Freeman recently, who graciously obliged our request to distill a lifetime's movie-watching into a list of his Five Favorite Films. "It's gonna be difficult," he admits.

Five Favorite Films with Michelle Monaghan (244 comments)

by Luke Goodsell on Thursday, Mar. 31 2011, 04:14 PM

In Duncan Jones' time-twisting sci-fi thriller Source Code, Jake Gyllenhaal plays a soldier sent into a space of eight minutes aboard a train bound for disaster; a temporal pocket he must inhabit over and over until he unravels either the identity of a bomber -- or his own. Fortunately he gets to relive those same eight minutes with his delightful co-star Michelle Monaghan, who plays a passenger on the train in possession of a possible key to Jake's future. Or past. No, wait, is it the future? Yep, it's one of those cyclical narratives that revels in its sometimes confounding paradoxes. For Monaghan, who Jones cast having liked her in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, it meant playing the same scene, and character, on endless loop; adjusting her performance ever so slightly in reaction to the changing trajectory of Gyllenhaal's time-tripper. We caught up with the actress and asked her to name her Five Favorite Films. "That's really hard," Monaghan laughs, "but I'm sure everybody tells you how hard it is." Indeed. Read on for the full list.

Five Favorite Films with Bradley Cooper (248 comments)

by Luke Goodsell on Friday, Mar. 25 2011, 04:35 PM

Between enjoying his new status as America's number one box-office draw, performing a promotional tour of Europe and acting as the resident celebrity authority on Rotten Tomatoes , Bradley Cooper's been a very busy guy of late. (Insert NZT joke here.) With his techno-thriller Limitless still doing strong business across the US and opening in UK cinemas this week, the actor took time out for a chat, and to run through five of his favorite films. "I?m over the moon that it did well," Cooper says of the unexpected success of Limitless. "It really is a kind of an underdog movie in many ways -- it's a drama, a thriller, it cost 27 million; it's taking a chance of putting me in a lead role. There's a lot of factors that wouldn't point to it being number one. I thought it was gonna be a festival movie, and when [studio] Relativity started to get excited and talk about it in a bigger way, I was nervous -- I never saw this as that kind of shot." Read on for more...

Five Favorite Films with Julian Schnabel (224 comments)

by Luke Goodsell on Friday, Mar. 25 2011, 04:22 PM

As an accomplished modern artist, sometime provocateur and acclaimed film director, Julian Schnabel's long and diverse career has taken him from much-lauded exhibitions of his paintings to widespread critical praise -- and several Academy Award nominations -- for his movies. Schnabel's feature-film career began with 1996's Basquiat, a portrait of fellow American painter Jean-Michel Basquiat; his follow-up, 2000's Before Night Falls, garnered star Javier Bardem's first Oscar nomination for his affecting portrayal of exiled Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas; and his next film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, solidified his reputation as a unique stylist, becoming a critical smash and earning the filmmaker a nomination for Best Director from the Academy. This week, Schnabel returns with his latest project, Miral. We sat down with the filmmaker for a chat about his Five Favorite Films.

Five Favorite Films with Ryan Phillippe (155 comments)

by Ryan Fujitani on Thursday, Mar. 17 2011, 08:30 AM

From being "discovered" while getting a haircut to landing his first major role in a Ridley Scott film, Ryan Phillippe has enjoyed the kind of good fortune that many only dream of. But his success didn't come without hard work; the young actor has remained busy since his fist stint on the ABC soap One Life to Live almost nineteen years ago. This week, Phillippe takes on a nuanced dramatic role as Louis Roulet, a successful LA realtor accused of a mysterious murder, in the film adaptation of Michael Connelly's novel The Lincoln Lawyer. RT was fortunate enough to chat with Phillippe about his Five Favorite Films, as well as his fortuitous introduction to the film industry and what it was like to work with legendary directors like Clint Eastwood and Robert Altman.

Five Favorite Films with Ray Stevenson (115 comments)

by Matt Atchity on Friday, Mar. 11 2011, 04:22 PM

Ray Stevenson has starred as a soldier in the HBO series Rome, and has a comic-book anti-hero in The Punisher: War Zone. Now he's got another lead role, this time as Irish mobster Danny Greene, in the new film Kill the Irishman. We got the chance to talk to him about the film, and of course, we asked him to tell us about five of his favorite movies. Although he admitted it would be hard to narrow it down to five, "I'm a Gemini - it's like asking what side of toast to butter. Bloody hell, ask me to solve world peace!" We also talked to him about working with Christopher Walken, and whether or not he'd return to Rome in the future.

Five Favorite Films with Malin Akerman, Kate Mara and Josh Radnor (214 comments)

by Luke Goodsell on Friday, Mar. 04 2011, 04:05 PM

It's a three-in-one Five Favorite Film fest today, as we sat down with the stars and writer-director of the indie comedy-drama happythankyoumoreplease, which opens in select theaters this week. The debut feature for How I Met Your Mother star-turned-filmmaker Josh Radnor, the movie follows the unpredictable ups and downs of late twentysomethings as they negotiate life and relationships in modern New York, and stars Radnor, Kate Mara and Malin Akerman. Akerman talks about changing her physical appearance for her role, and Radnor discusses some of his inspirations for the film. Read on for the full favorite films from each of the stars.

Five Favorite Films with Topher Grace (225 comments)

by Luke Goodsell on Thursday, Mar. 03 2011, 04:45 PM

For a guy who got his break appearing on TV's That '70s Show, Topher Grace sure is obsessed with this '80s thing. In this week's new release Take Me Home Tonight -- which might superficially be summarized as That '80s Movie -- Grace, who co-wrote the story and produced, stars as Matt Franklin, a talented-but-aimless college grad adrift between a yuppie career and a dead-end video clerk job in the summer of 1988. Pining after his unattainable high school crush Tori (Teresa Palmer), Matt, his sister Wendy (Anna Faris), and his buddy Barry (Dan Fogler) crash a reunion party in LA's Valley -- thus setting in motion the kind of "all-in-one-night" adventure in which the characters work out their lives via an evening of raucous misdeeds. It's a film that proudly wears its "I Heart John Hughes" pin on the rolled-up sleeve of its sports blazer, a passion project that Grace has clearly had percolating for some time. Read on Grace's Five Favorite Films and a chat about the movie.

Five Favorite Films with Stephen Merchant (124 comments)

by Tim Ryan on Tuesday, Mar. 01 2011, 04:29 AM

The multitalented Stephen Merchant has proven himself to be one of the freshest comic voices in recent years. The co-creator of The Office and Extras (with longtime collaborator Ricky Gervais, with whom he co-directed the 2010 comedy Cemetary Junction),Merchant's blend of outrageous scenarios and deep pathos makes for potent observational comedy. Known for his supporting roles in Hot Fuzz and Tooth Fairy, Merchant has also worked as a radio personality, a stand-up comic, and, in his early adulthood, a film critic. Currently, he stars in the Farrelly brothers' comedy Hall Pass and has a voice role in Gnomeo and Juliet. In an interview with RT, Merchant shared his favorite movies, and talked about his love of New York's cinematic sensibilities, why he relishes supporting roles and why he'd love to make a conspiracy thriller or a musical.