Films I keep returning to.
I tend to return to stories about people trying to remain human when the world around them becomes strange, lonely, absurd, or impossible.
Enter the film mapJojo Rabbit (2019). Scarlett Johansson and Roman Griffin Davis. Photo by Larry Horricks, courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2019 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. Used as an editorial film reference; display cropped.
A personal taste map
Genre is rarely the part I remember.
I remember the films that leave me with a question, a character I still understand differently years later, a world with its own internal logic, or an ordinary human feeling placed inside an extraordinary circumstance.
Some of these films are quiet. Some are absurd. Some are deeply uncomfortable.
Apparently, that range makes perfect sense to me.
01 / About Living
Is being alive the same as actually living?
I return to stories where movement begins only after a person notices how much of life has been happening inside anticipation.
- The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
- The Truman Show
- Yes Man
- Cast Away
- Whisper of the Heart
- Sing Street
- Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
02 / About Being Alone
Isolation changes its shape.
Sometimes it is physical. Sometimes it is emotional, social, or entirely internal.
- Mary and Max
- The Garden of Words
- Gravity
- Interstellar
- Her
- Cast Away
03 / Love, But Not Only Love
Love is rarely the only problem.
I like romantic stories where love is not the only thing happening to the characters.
- The Proposal
- The Lobster
- Breakfast at Tiffany's
- Pretty Woman
- Her
- 10 Things I Hate About You
- The Devil Wears Prada
- Up in the Air
04 / Worlds With Their Own Logic
The rules of a world change how people live inside it.
The amount of lore matters less to me than whether the world recognises its own logic.
- Howl's Moving Castle
- The Secret World of Arrietty
- Ponyo
- Rango
- Klaus
- The Truman Show
- Interstellar
- PK
05 / People Who Make Sense to Themselves
Unexpected is not the same as random.
I do not need to agree with a character. I need to believe the logic they have built for themselves.
- Gone Girl
- Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
- Gerald's Game
- The Mist
- The Lobster
06 / About Visual Worlds
The image itself feels authored.
Framing, colour, typography, costume, objects, and space can tell me what kind of world I am in before anyone explains it.
- Wes Anderson
- The Garden of Words
- Howl's Moving Castle
- Interstellar
- Selected animation and production design
07 / Finding Warmth Somewhere Unexpected
Warmth that has had to survive something.
A story does not need to look serious in order to say something serious.
- Klaus
- Jojo Rabbit
- Mary and Max
- The Intern
- Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
- PK
Long-form notes
Three ways into the map.
Romance, but rarely just romance.
Attraction becomes more interesting when it has to compete with the rest of a life.
02When the image knows what world it belongs to.
On visual systems that feel authored rather than merely beautiful.
03Atmosphere can carry information.
Weather, architecture, colour, scale, objects, and silence can do narrative work.
Film still sources
Jojo Rabbit images courtesy of Searchlight Pictures Press. Hero photo by Larry Horricks; second photo by Kimberley French. © 2019 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. The Garden of Words image courtesy of CoMix Wave Films. © Makoto Shinkai / CoMix Wave Films. Images are presented at reduced size for editorial commentary and visual reference.