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Bong Joon-ho names his five favourite movies of all time

Sat 28 October 2023 13:15, UK

There are few contemporary directors more beloved than Bong Joon-ho. Through a series of cinematic thrills culminating with the monumental success of Parasite in 2019, the South Korean filmmaker has endeared himself to critics, cinephiles, and casual cinema-goers in equal measure.

Since making his directorial debut with Barking Dogs Never Bite in 2000, Bong has spent the last two decades honing a complex filmography dominated by a sleek style and social commentary. From the masterful crime of Memories of Murder to the monstrous The Host to the swift-moving Snowpiercer, Bong helmed a number of fan favourites before delivering one of the undisputed greatest films of all time, Parasite.

Other people’s work has often inspired Bong in the medium, and his favourite films, expectedly, contain all the same complexity and command as his own filmmaking. As he once divulged to A.frame, his five favourites span almost four decades, ranging from an Alfred Hitchcock classic to a psychological murder film from Japan.

Bong’s earliest pick comes from 1958 with Orson Welles’ film noir, Touch of Evil. The director even told Vanity Fair that making a similarly gloomy noir feature would be his dream project. He certainly would excel at it, already having demonstrated his proficiency at marrying dark stories and landscapes with moments of comedy and rerelease.

The genre-defying filmmaker also picked out Hitchcock’s iconic horror Psycho. He has previously noted the inspiration of both Psycho and Hitchock’s filmmaking more generally in his own work, once telling Vanity Fair, “He always gives me very strange inspiration.”

Bong rewatched Psycho as he found that the structure of the Bates house – “not the motel” – had a “very interesting structure”. That concern with setting and story has been reflected in his own work, from the Snowpiercer train to the houses in Parasite, which place the rich physically above their poorer houseguests.

From the same year, Bong picked out the iconic South Korean film The Housemaid, directed by Kim Ki-young. Much like his own work, the film focuses on the horror of the home and discusses class and humanity.

Bong also shared his love for Martin Scorsese by adding the 1980 boxing classic Raging Bull to the list, a film he once dubbed a “portrait of human complexities and weakness,” while speaking with TIFF. “I think it’s the most honest portrayal of the conflicts and complexities of one man,” he stated. “Only Scorsese could create such a portrait.” It’s no surprise that Bong admired those elements, as he has so often examined human weakness in his own work.

Finally, the Parasite director rounded out his list with Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 1997 film Cure, a film which fit perfectly into the gritty, gruesome cinema of the 1990s and preempted the boom of Japanese horror.

Check out Bong Joon-ho’s five favourite films of all time below.