#FilmStruck4: What movies define these famous directors?

This week #FilmStruck4 was trending on Twitter. Using the hastag, Twitter users, including a few well-known directors, listed four films that define them.

If you’ve been on Twitter recently, you most likely have seen the hastag “FilmStruck4”. This week a challenge posed by the streaming service FilmStruck has gone viral.

On Apr. 17, FilmStruck’s official Twitter page posted a tweet encouraging people to choose four films that define them and tag four other people to do the same. Using “#FilmStuck4”, thousands of Twitter users took on the challenge.

Users interpreted the challenge in different ways. Some posted four films that inspired them while others posted simply posted their four favorite films.

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Celebrities took part in the meme as well, including a few well-known directors. If you are anything like me, you are curious about the films that impacted great creators like Guillermo del Toro and Ron Howard. This challenge gave us a peek at the movies that are very much a part of some Hollywood directors.

Barry Jenkins, the director of the best-picture-winning Moonlight chose films that made him “fall in love with cinema”. His choices were unique and somewhat obscure.

The only American film on his list is Gus Van Sant’s Elephant. Jenkins other three picks were all international movies. Besides Elephant, he chose Chinese director, Wong Kar-Wai’s, In the Mood for Love, Russian experimental film Russian Ark, and the French drama Friday Night.

The director of Baby Driver and Shaun of the Dead, Edgar Wright, chose more well-known films for his picks. Carrie, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Raising Arizona and 2001: A Space Odyssey made his four. 

A few days later he chose another four films stating “oh, my mind changes like the breeze”. This list included two classics: Taxi Driver and An American Werewolf in London. It also contained the 1973 thriller Don’t Look Now and the 1934 musical Dames.

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The Avengers director Joss Whedon had a variety of films for his “#Filmstruck4”. He chose the animated cult classic Wizards, the sci-fi classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the critically-acclaimed musical All That Jazz, and the fantastical The Seventh Seal.

Acclaimed directors Guillermo del Toro and Ron Howard broke the rules of the challenge. They both chose more than four films. Howard chose ten classic well-known movies.

It might not come as a surprise that del Toro chose a lot of films that center around creatures. He posted two parts for his FilmStruck challenge, eight films in total.

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He chose classic creature features such as Bride of Frankenstein and Beauty and the Beast (1946). The Spanish language films The Spirit of the Beehive (another monster-centric film) and Los Olvidados were also included on the filmmaker’s list.

Like fellow filmmaker Edgar Wright, 2001 and Taxi Driver inspire del Toro. His list also included the Charlie Chaplin classic Modern Times and Steven Spielberg’s Duel.

Time to add all of these films that I haven’t viewed yet to my watchlist.

Did you take part in the challenge? Did you take a peek at the choices actors and directors chose? Share what you found in the comments below.