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Following the success of the 2019 Best Picture-winning Parasite, South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho solidified his status as one of the world’s best directors. Excitingly, Joon-ho’s next film is a sci-fi starring Robert Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, Toni Collette, Steven Yeun, and Mark Ruffalo. Sounds dope, I know, but that’s not why we’re here today.
The reason for this article is that during a recent interview with Sight and Sound Magazine — a publication largely known for its once-a-decade Greatest Films of All Time poll — Joon-ho named the ten films that he considers to be the greatest movies of all time, with four (or, uh, maybe three — we’ll get to that) American movies making the cut.
Here’s Bong Joon-ho’s Top 10 Greatest Films of All Time (in order of release year), then we’ll break it down a bit, particularly whether or not Fury Road should be considered an American film:
–Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock, 1960
–The Housemaid, Kim Ki-young, 1960
–Rocco and His Brothers, Luchino Visconti, 1960
–Vengeance Is Mine, Shōhei Imamura, 1979
–Raging Bull, Martin Scorsese, 1980
–A City of Sadness, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 1989
–Cure, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1997
–Zodiac, David Fincher, 2007
–Mad Max: Fury Road, George Miller, 2015
–Happy as Lazzaro, Alice Rohrwacher, 2018
While Fury Road might’ve been partially produced by RatPac-Dune Entertainment and internationally distributed by Warner Bros., Village Roadshow Pictures — the American branch of the Australian media company Village Roadshow Entertainment Group — were the primary producers of the film and its director, George Miller, is inextricably tied to the land down under.
So, considering that and for the sake of further diversity, when counting the totals, we’ll call Fury Road an Australian film, which means Joon-ho’s list features three American movies, two Italian movies, two Japanese movies, one South Korean movie, one Taiwanese movie, and one Australian movie.
As mentioned about, Joon-ho’s next film will be titled Mickey7 and is based on the 2022 novel of the same name. Production began back in August and is expected to conclude before the end of the year, putting the film on track for a 2023 release.
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