The Academy Awards are this Sunday, so naturally, film fans are hungrily rewatching not only this year's Best Picture nominees but also the past work of this year's talented crop of filmmakers. However, if you're one whose appetite still refuses to be sated, one thing that might fill your cinephilic belly is gorging yourself on the movies that inspired the work of those directors.

And since I'm team Parasite all the way (I'm not even going to feign objectivity this year), let's take a look at some of Bong Joon-ho's favorites.


The South Korean director has shared his favorite films over the years, including on a top 10 list for Criterion, in a poll for Sight & Sound, and selections he made for his Film at Lincoln Center retrospective. Check out the list below.

Bong_joon_ho_favs_0

  • Things to Come (dir. William Cameron Menzies, 1936)
  • The Wages of Fear (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1953)
  • Touch of Evil (dir. Orson Welles, 1958)
  • Lola Montès (dir. Max Ophüls, 1959)
  • The 400 Blows (dir. François Truffaut, 1959)
  • The Housemaid (dir. Kim Ki-young, 1960)
  • Psycho (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
  • Intentions of Murder (dir. Shohei Imamura, 1964)
  • Seconds (dir. John Frankenheimer, 1966)
  • Deliverance (John Boorman, 1972)
  • Nashville (dir. Robert Altman, 1975)
  • The Man Who Fell to Earth (dir. Nicolas Roeg, 1976)
  • Io Island (dir. Kim Ki-young, 1977)
  • Vengeance is Mine (Imamura Shohei, 1979)
  • Raging Bull (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1980)
  • The Thing (dir. John Carpenter, 1982)
  • Fanny and Alexander (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1982)
  • The Ballad of Narayama (dir. Shohei Imamura, 1984)
  • A City of Sadness (dir. Hsiao-hsien Hou, 1989)
  • Life is Sweet (dir. Mike Leigh, 1991)
  • Fargo (dir. Joel and Ethan Coen, 1995)
  • Rushmore (dir. Wes Anderson, 1998)
  • Cure (dir. Kurosawa Kiyoshi, 1998)
  • Being John Malkovich (dir. Spike Jonze, 1999)
  • Zodiac (dir. David Fincher, 2007)

Bong certainly has an eclectic taste in films, ranging in time periods to include French New Wave classics, contemporary tragicomedies, Japanese period dramas, and...British cult favorites starring David Bowie.

However, the common thread that brings all of these titles together is the quality of the directors that made them. I mean, if you're wondering which directors' filmographies you should immediately add to your must-watch list, Bong's list here is a great place to start.