Alex Wolff’s five favourite films of all time
Most film fans would immediately recognise actor Alex Wolff from his appearance in Ari Aster‘s 2018 horror Hereditary, a project in which he gave a show-stealing performance as tormented son Peter Graham.
Wolff’s other roles include the English voice for Riku Matsuzaki in From Up On Poppy Hill, Bennett in My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, and Trent in Old. In addition to acting, Wolff has also ventured out into directing. His directorial debut came in 2019, a nice segway following his success with Hereditary when he wrote and directed The Cat and the Moon.
Wolff also played the lead role, Nick, in the film. The movie explores Nick’s experience of moving to New York to temporarily live with a jazz musician friend of his late father’s named Cal. During his time in the city, he befriends a group of local kids who waste no time getting him involved with the New York way of life.
As an actor and director in his early days, Wolff works from a palette of classic films full of heart and magnetic performances. He sat down with Rotten Tomatoes to discuss the five films he loves the most and that he carries through into his own career.
Wolff kicks off his list with a film classic known and adored nearly 50 years after release: “Taxi Driver is my favourite performance, and it’s my favourite score — Bernard Hermann, man”. The actor focuses on Robert De Niro’s haunting performance and the layered script in his discussion of Scorsese’s classic, citing all the key themes. “It turns this kind of sadistic ticking time bomb of a man falling apart at the seams into this dreamy, seductive, gorgeous portrait of a vulnerable person,” he expresses.
He also appreciates Scorsese’s ability to provide something two-dimensional in his story about a morally corrupt driver: “It’s the smoothest, most velvet, but also the roughest and the deepest pit of despair you could go into. It’s everything. It’s everything in one film”.
The preceding entry in Wolff’s list is another 1970s psychological drama, one he feels is “the most soulful, most heartfelt movie ever made”. Milos Forman’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo‘s Nest was adapted from Ken Kesey’s 1969 novel of the same name and follows some shared experiences in a psychiatric ward. It stars film veteran Jack Nicholson as Randle McMurphy- the role that earned him his first Oscar win for Best Actor.
Wolff comments on Nicholson’s acclaimed performance through character study: “Jack Nicholson’s just robust persistent optimism in that movie is so infectious. His complete lack of sympathy or empathy for anyone who wants to reject life. That character is something so unique”.
Robert Redford’s drama Ordinary People takes third place in Wolff’s five favourite films. The film explores the breakdown of a privileged family following the tragic death of one son and the suicide attempt of another. “Timothy Hutton’s performance in that is probably the most directly inspiring to me,” Wolff shares.
Hutton plays the son Conrad who deals with PTSD following his brother’s death. Wolff explains “the scene that always gets me” involves Hutton: “It’s the scene where Timothy Hutton has been going to Judd Hirsch for a little bit, and he’s opening up”. Wolff’s takeaway from this scene involves the authenticity and emotional punch: “It’s such a journey of what it means to be vulnerable and the importance of vulnerability in your own family, especially after trauma”.
Wolff ventures out into some foreign filmmaking when sharing his next favourite film: “Two Days One Night, it’s perfectly directed”. He explains how Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne’s 2014 drama “is one of the few movies that made me uncontrollably sob at the end, because of her power, the sweetness of it”.
For Wolff, this story of a young woman trying to convince her colleagues to give up their bonuses in order for her to keep her job deserves praise for its use of “this wide shot, handheld” style, as “nobody does like the Dardenne brothers”.
Last on Wolff’s list is Sidney Lumet’s biographical crime drama Dog Day Afternoon, released in 1975. The true story of a bank robbery that turned into a hostage situation is based on the Life article The Boys in the Bank, written by P.J Kluge. Wolff expresses praise towards the film’s star: “Al Pacino’s performance is connected to something deep in my psyche… I love the mania of Al Pacino’s performance.”
He also draws attention to the “hilarious seemingly improvised bursts of energy” that construct some of the scenes. Furthermore, Wolff summarises the film as “between Al Pacino and Sidney Lumet and John Cazale, it’s unforgettable and beyond inspiring, to say the least”.
Alex Wolff’s five favourite films:
- Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
- One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (Milos Forman, 1975)
- Ordinary People (Robert Redford, 1980)
- Deux jours, une nuit/Two Days, One Night (Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne)
- Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet, 1975)
