Hideo Kojima is not shy about his love for motion pictures. The creator behind video games like Metal Gear Solid and Death Stranding even needed to make motion pictures earlier than turning into a sport developer, and his video games typically pay homage to a few of his favorites. Even Snake, the principle character of the Metal Gear Franchise, is known as after Escape from New York’s protagonist, Snake Plissken. He famously goes out of his method to inject cinematic sensibilities into his works and loves working with big-name actors. The man simply loves motion pictures.
Criterion, the group behind the Criterion Collection, invited Hideo Kojima to do a video in its ‘Closet Picks’ collection on its YouTube channel. The collection is devoted to highlighting notable voices in inventive industries the place a specific luminary picks their favorites from the “Criterion Closet,” which is strictly what it feels like; a closet containing bodily copies of every movie within the Criterion Collection.
In the video, Kojima seems to be like a child in a sweet retailer. “It’s like being in heaven,” he says, earlier than bemoaning the dearth of films from the ’50s and ’60s on streaming providers. He goes on to debate how he often buys bodily copies of his favorites from that point via Criterion as a result of it is the one place he can discover bodily prints of a few of his favourite classics.
Here are Kojima’s picks:
High and Low
Before choosing High and Low (1963), Kojima launched this police procedural-meets-domestic-drama as his favourite amongst director Akira Kurosawa’s different, extra in style works like Seven Samurai and Yojimbo. The Death Stranding director mentioned, “I like High and Low probably the most. I used to be so shocked after I noticed this, so I’d love so that you can watch it.”
Late Spring
“Now, the place there’s Akira Kurosawa, there’s Yasujiro Ozu.” Kojima launched Yasujiro Ozu alongside his extra globally identified counterpart. His first decide, Late Spring, is a narrative a couple of widower and his daughter set in postwar Japan.
Tokyo Twillight
The second image from Yasujiro Ozu to enter Kojima’s bag is an obscure choice that is a part of a posthumous anthology of Ozu’s movies. He mentions its totally different tone from different Ozu movies, “Ozu movies are often very gentle, however this one is admittedly darkish. I actually like that about this movie so I extremely advocate it.”
Ugetsu
Kojima was very visibly pleased to be in good firm with this one. Martin Scorsese helped to revive Kenji Mizoguchi’s 1953 traditional concerning the ravages of battle. “This scared me as a child,” he says laughing into the digicam, “It’s obtained ghosts in it. It’s a black-and-white movie, however it’s a gorgeous movie.”
Kwaidan
He mentioned, “They have my favourite. By Masaki Kobayashi. Kwaidan.” This collection of stylized, artsy ghost tales from 1965 additionally scared Kojima as a child, and are based mostly on tales from Japanese folklore.
Harakiri
Another Kobayashi joint, Kojima lauds this influential, award profitable samurai flick earlier than diving into its affect on the Spaghetti Westerns that began popping up afterward within the Nineteen Sixties.
Jigoku
Another horror movie, this time by Nobuo Nakagawa, Jigoku (also called Hell or the Sinners of Hell) places a scholar via–effectively–Hell. The Metal Gear creator talked about how one other of Nakagawa’s horror movies, The Ghost of Yotsuya, led him to discovering the way more surreal Jigoku.
Onibaba
“Again, I watched this at evening as a child and it shocked me,” he mentioned, earlier than he recalled discussing Kaneto Shindo’s folk-horror set in medieval Japan with Guillermo Del Toro after they met for the primary time. He added, “He loves this movie as effectively. There’s a monster known as Onibaba in Pacific Rim.”
Woman within the Dunes
Kojima obtained found Hiroshi Teshigahara’s 1960 art-house darling after studying Kobo Abe’s guide (additionally known as Woman within the Dunes).
If you would like to look at the complete video–and watch Kojima gentle up as he talks about a few of his favourite Japanese motion pictures–test it out on Criterion’s YouTube channel.
