How am I just seeing this? I certainly do! Haha
I’d recommend starting with Stalker. What were you thinking?
I like your choices too. I need to watch Greta Gerwig. Little Women looks so good! Agnès Varda is another. A friend recommended her to me.
What do you recommend by Ken Loach, Damien Chazelle, and Bong Joon-ho?
I just got my first films by Hayao Miyazaki the other day. I’m really looking forward to watching his work. I got Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind and My Neighbour Toroto.
I wrote that list late at night, and completely forgot that I’ve already seen Ivan’s Childhood. Some really striking compositions in that film. I own Stalker on blu-ray, so that probably will be my next port of call - then because I’m a sci-fi fan, I think I’ll watch Solaris next. I remember seeing a clip from the film - the long driving scene - which totally mesmerised me.
With Agnès Varda, I’d recommend you start with Cleo from 5 to 7, which is my favourite of her films. Ken Loach, start with Kes, then The Wind that Shakes the Barley (my favourite I think), and his most recent ones I, Daniel Blake and Sorry We Missed You are very good as well. Damien Chazelle, I honestly don’t think it matters where you start (I haven’t seen his debut, about the two people meeting on a park bench, yet though). Bong Joon-ho: I became interested in him after Parasite, then you could always go back to some of his earliest films like Memories of Murder. However, Snowpiercer from 2013 is a great companion film to Parasite: while Parasite visually depicts wealth inequality on a vertical scale, and in modern day Seoul, Snowpiercer visually depicts wealth inequality on a horizontal scale, and in a post-apocalyptic world. You’ll understand what I mean about vertical and horizontal if you see the films.