Looking for what to watch this weekend? Try your favorite authors’ favorite films.
Ever since novelists started mixing with Hollywood, film and prose have been easy bedfellows. A lot of authors are proud cinephiles. Others go so far as to credit movies as major form or content influences.
And thanks to the fleet marketing department at Criterion and the rise of Letterboxd, it’s easier than it’s ever been to get a sense of your favorites’ favorite films.
Which favorites, you ask?
Thank heavens someone made a list.
Megan Abbott
The crime fiction novelist predictably goes for film noirs. But she’s also a fan of “sumptuous tearjerkers,” screwball comedies, and well-made adaptations. Hidden gems on Abbott’s Criterion list include Samuel Fuller’s The Naked Kiss (1964), and John Ford’s My Darling Clementine (1946)—the “Western for “people who don’t like Westerns.”
Hilton Als
The New Yorker critic and essayist has written fondly about The Group (1966), and Mike Leigh’s Topsy Turvy (1999).
Sloane Crosley
Blessings to Crosley, who takes the cake for having the most approachable list of Criterion favorites. Though she’s no shirk of the art house—Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander (1982) is a fave—Crosley throws props to some luminous American comedies. Like Broadcast News (1987) and Tootsie (1982).
And though she’s a fan of Spike Lee’s breakout hit, Do The Right Thing (1989), Crosley cryptically notes that “25th Hour is my favorite…for a whole bunch of reasons irrelevant for our purposes.”
Louise Erdrich
According to her “By the Book,” it’s “spy novels and kung fu movies all the way” for this genius.
Alan Hollinghurst
The Booker Prize-winning author once told Lambda Literary that he loved Sergei Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky (1938). And apparently, Peter Brook’s King Lear (1971) makes “the perfect antidote to heatwave hedonism.”
Kazuo Ishiguro
King Ish is a self-proclaimed lover of train movies, screwball comedies, Hitchcock, and fate. He’s pledged affinity to Kurosawa’s Ikiru (1952), Josef von Sternberg’s Shanghai Express (1932), and Dr. Strangelove (1964).
Marlon James
The Booker Prize winning author of A Brief History of Seven Killings is also a Kurosawa fan. Though according to his Adventures in Moviegoing interview, he prefers Throne of Blood (1957).
Other faves include Ozu’s Tokyo Story (1953), and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï (1967).
Miranda July
Your favorite maverick loves Jane Campion and Agnes Varda, which of course makes perfect sense. The author of All Fours told The Guardian that the proto-auto-fictional coming-of-age story, An Angel at My Table (1991) was a big inspiration for her own films.
Stephen King
The Prince of Darkness once gave Indiewire a list of 25 favorite films. Horror is pride of place, natch. The Blair Witch Project (1999), The Changeling (1980), and Ti West’s X (2022) all make the King cut. You may be slightly more surprised to learn that he’s also a fan of tender coming-of-age fare. Like Billy Elliot (2000).
Rachel Kushner
Predictably, Kushner gravitates toward the grittier neorealists. She told the Criterion Channel that her favorite flicks include Antonioni’s Red Desert (1964) and Barbara Loden’s Wanda (1970). Other favorites skew surrealish (Robert Altman’s 3 Women) and postcolonial (Ousmane Sembène’s Black Girl [1996], Resnais and Duras’ Hiroshima Mon Amour [1959]).
Naturally, there’s also a road movie in the mix: Two Lane Black-Top (1971).
Jonathan Lethem
Kurosawa, Cronenburg, Orson Welles. Knotty masterpieces. Metatheatrics. This all checks out, for this postmodern literary novelist. (And my personal favorite of The Jonathans.) Lethem’s love for early Richard Linklater (Slacker, 1991) is especially charming.
Carmen Maria Machado
The Folio-prize-winning author of Her Body and Other Parties loves Children of Men (2006), for its “gorgeous world-building.”
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
First things first—did you know that Gabo was a film guy from way back? He started out in the Mexican film industry.
According to Sightlines, he thought Bicycle Thieves (1948) was “the most humane film ever made.”
Ayana Mathis
This bestselling novelist favors lush, theatrical modern classics: Cabaret (1972), Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966).
Toni Morrison
Okay, okay. This charming remembrance from Kevin Young does not claim that Toni Morrison’s favorite movie was The Five Heartbeats (1991)—i.e.,the cheesy but lovable VH1 and BET weekend staple that follows a fictional Motown quintet. But it’s nice to picture our late queen enjoying this one at the art house.
Torrey Peters
This seismic novelist and style icon has expressed love for the Swedish vampire bildungsroman, Let the Right One In (2008).
Annie Proulx
Proulx told Vice that her favorite film is Carlos Saura’s La Caza (1966), a psychological thriller about three Spanish Civil War vets.
George Saunders
The people’s professor told us himself that he loves the film version of The Grapes of Wrath (1940), as well as Monty Python’s whole cinematic oeuvre.
Susan Sontag
Not a huge surprise that the late Sontag skewed serious. Her top fifty films list includes French and Japanese New Wave classics (Ozu, Kurosawa, Truffaut, Godard), as well as cinephile standards by Kubrick, Fassbinder, and Bergman.
Number one on her list? Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket (1959).
Ocean Vuong
Vuoung has shouted out the late Soviet auteur, Andrei Tarkovsky. A specific shot in The Mirror (1975) was formative for this poet.
Charles Yu
The National Book Award-winning author of Interior Chinatown told Berkeley Voices that Fist of Fury (1972), an action thriller and Bruce Lee vehicle, is his favorite flick.
All this raw data reveals some trends. A lot of writers love the roving eye of Robert Altman—3 Women (1977), especially. Others are Ozu and Bergman nerds. Anecdotally, there’s a real preponderance of Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) people and Dr. Strangelove (1964) acolytes. And I note a love for New Hollywood that seems to transcend the generations.
In general, many “surveyed” seem to go for character-driven, tonally elastic fare that isn’t afraid to cut deep.
Which makes sense, given what we know of paper.
Image via
