Gareth Evans

"Then, my last one is going to be — this might be slightly more obscure, though it really shouldn’t be. I fell in love with this film when I first saw it and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film as beautiful, as contemplative. The film After Life by Hirokazu Koreeda. I remember when I first saw it, just being totally blown away by every single frame of it. The honesty of it, the fact that it celebrated life, the fact that it was so unbelievably profound and spoke volumes about living life to the fullest and cherishing every moment. I don’t think there’s been a more beautiful film about life itself. It’s so understated in the way he tells his story. It’s obviously a collection of vignettes and a collection of talking heads, but woven into this narrative. Again, I might be wrong, but I seem to remember that the number of the people who contributed to the experiences of life are real people — it’s almost like documentary-styled elements to the film itself. So you got these really personal memories that are very private. Sometimes they’re nostalgic, sometimes they are beautiful, sometimes they’re funny and amusing. That, for me, is the ultimate win. When the Blu-rays of that came out in Japan, straight away I was like, “I’m buying this film! I need this film in HD.”"

"I’m going to say Seven Samurai by Kurosawa. I’m going big to start with. I just, I feel like it’s close to being the perfect film. It’s thrilling. It’s adventurous. The action is incredible. The final battle, the rain-soaked battle, is just an absolutely phenomenal feat. When we did The Raid 2, we did a prison riot in the rain. We stopped the rain after about a day or two because it was costing too much money, and so we just shot the rest of it in just wet mud. That was us, modern technology, modern experiences, being able to be actually relatively quite comfortable in comparison. I cannot imagine the logistical nightmare that would have gone into them shooting that sequence in that time on film, so it’s an astounding achievement in cinema. It means something, and you feel something for each of those characters as well. I just feel like Seven Samurai is a no brainer."

"I mean, Scorsese has to be in there. I always feel bad for these, because there’s always about 50 films I wish I could have put in there. Scorsese for sure, and I always get torn between Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas. That’s my top three Scorsese films. I have a amazing soft spot for Mean Streets — I just think there’s something incredibly raw and energetic about that movie. But I think Raging Bull just shocked me to my core. I couldn’t believe that he could make me care about someone who was so animalistic, who was so brutal, who was so violent. And then I still felt sympathy for him. I still felt like I got to know a well-rounded human being, I got to know this character in that performance. De Niro is astounding. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it in my life. And those boxing sequences, they’ve never been matched, they’ve never been bettered for me. So, I think Raging Bull is definitely up there."

"The next one would be La Haine, Mathieu Kassovitz’s movie. I remember seeing that for the first time and being absolutely blown away by it. Not just on a technical level, but I’m always a fan of debut films that don’t just announce a director talent, but when the director talent is so confident and so self-assured that it feels like it’s their 10th or 15th movie already. That film just screamed that. It was filled with so many ideas and so much rage and anger. Again, it was an important movie, and I might be misremembering something now, but I’m pretty sure that the effect of the film was such that the president of France at the time forced his members of Parliament to go watch the film in order to understand the plight that people were living in the projects of France, of Paris, at the time. I’m sure I remember reading something like that. [Editor’s note: It was then Prime Minister Alain Juppé, who held a mandatory screening for his cabinet members.] It was such a powerful film and such a powerful story that’s told so unflinchingly. That film has always stuck with me and has been something I’ve owned in every possible format I could own it in. That’s definitely high on the list."

"Next movie, I have to put a [Takeshi] Kitano film in there somewhere. I get torn between two, but it’s always between Sonatine and Hana-bi for me. They’re both incredible, but I tend to always veer towards Hana-bi, because as much as I love Sonatine, what Hana-bi has is heart. The emotional resonance of that ending is probably one of the most subtly heartbreaking moments in cinema. I just think the film’s an absolute masterpiece. His nonlinear storytelling in that movie, I don’t think he’s ever kind of done that better. It’s just so incredibly well put together. The fact that he can go from these moments of horrific, brutal violence, but then, within a few minutes, have a scene as playful as when he’s playing “guess the card” with his wife in the car, and he can see the cards in the rear-view mirror. To have a scene that’s as playful and as funny and as contemplative as that… I just think he’s a master filmmaker, and I’ve pretty much watched everything he’s done. So, that’s high up on that list then."