Following the suggestion of filmmaker Edgar Wright, Rian Johnson has gone to Letterboxd to share a list of some of his favorite films. However, unlike Wright, who shared comedies, Johnson is sharing his favorite musicals of the ‘70s.
READ MORE: Edgar Wright Reveals His 100 Favorite Comedies, For Your Self-Quarantine Enjoyment
The “Knives Out” director prefaced his list of 10 musicals from the 1970s with a simple introduction:
“When you think of the movie musical, the 1970s are not the first decade that comes to mind. But I love how that funky vital wilderness between the fall of the studio system and the ascent of the modern blockbuster manifested itself in this genre. One of cinema’s most classic forms was taken up by New Hollywood directors. It resulted in nostalgia as often as innovation, but more often than not the two mixed and filtered through a culture that was itself reeling from the 60s into the 80s. Things got weird. This is not a comprehensive list, it’s one movie per year, and is highly personal, meaning better movies were ignored for ones that I have more of connection to, or just something to say about.”
READ MORE: Rian Johnson Would Have Given His Left Arm For A ‘Last Jedi’ Test Screening
Fans of musicals will automatically remember films such as “Cabaret,” “All That Jazz,” and “Jesus Christ Superstar,” but Johnson’s list goes a bit deeper than that. Among his choices are the cult-classics like “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” starring the Bee-Gees, Peter Frampton, Steve Martin, and Donald Pleasance, and “Phantom of the Paradise,” directed by Brian De Palma. And if none of those suggestions can entice you to give them a shot during your COVID-19 (coronavirus) self-quarantine, how about children’s films such as “Popeye” and “Pete’s Dragon?”
Overall, consider Rian Johnson’s list a nice supplement to the 100 previous suggestions from Edgar Wright. We’ll have to see which filmmaker is up next creating their own curated list of favorites.
