The Best Film You've Never Seen: 35 Directors Champion the Forgotten or Critically Savaged Movies They Love
In The Film That Changed My Life (2011), Elder interviewed movie directors about the films that inspired them. This new book offers a twist on that theme as 35 directors tell us about their favorite overlooked or critically panned movies. There’s a good mixture of directors, from famous names (Guillermo del Toro, Peter Bogdanovich, John Woo) to filmmakers who haven’t yet become known by mass audiences. And the films are pretty diverse, too, ranging from unsung greats (the British true-crime film, 10 Rillington Place) to films widely considered to be, well, awful (Can’t Stop the Music, starring the Village People). The question-and-answer format allows readers to hear the directors’ reasons for their choices in their own words; Jonathan Levine, for example, points out that somehow, perhaps because of its badness, Can’t Stop the Music is about as entertaining as a movie could possibly be. Each interview explores its subject’s relationship with his or her chosen film—when they first saw it, why they enjoy it so much—and ultimately the book isn’t so much about the movies as it is about the moviemakers. Great fun for movie fans. --David Pitt