This is not a drill. Filmmaker Michael Mann has joined Letterboxd. To celebrate, our newest member shares a list of fourteen favorite movies—with reasons why, of course.

First Marty, now Michael—today marks the day that Michael Mann (yes, the maestro of Thief, Heat, Ferrari, Collateral and so much more Michael Mann) joins Letterboxd. And naturally, we are all celebrating by diving into all the movies that he loves too. 

To mark the momentous occasion, Mann has graciously shared not just a list of the films (full list here), but also some notes on what they mean to him as well. The list is “in no particular order (except Potemkin)”, aka 1925’s Battleship Potemkin, which has long been Mann’s favorite—his filmmaker-origin story, if you will. In his list notes, Mann praises Sergei Eisenstein’s 75-minute classic for “applying theory to montage, composition and meaning,” adding that “its influence on British, Weimar and American cinema is huge.” 

The list covers movies from cinematic titans including Stanley Kubrick, Denis Villeneuve, Guillermo del Toro and fellow Letterboxd member Martin Scorsese. There’s Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, which Mann calls “an operatic masterpiece”, and even last year’s Poor Things, which he distinctly distils down to: “Kafka, if he was droll. Brilliant.” 

More pleasures on the list include Mann’s love for Out of the Past, which he calls “a masterpiece of noir in the wake of WWII”, and Kathryn Bigelow’s multi-Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker, for “its brilliant directed performances, as penetrating into the psyches of combatants moving progressively, inexorably closer and closer to annihilation”. 

For a deeper dive into Japanese post-war noir, James Wong Howe’s chiaroscuro lighting, and poetry and humanity at every turn, you can find it all over on Michael Mann’s Letterboxd account. What a brilliant thing to say! 

— Reporting by Ella Kemp