Euan Franklin

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The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Extended Edition)

Is there a better conclusion to a film trilogy? I'm waiting…

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Extended Edition)

It's rare to have an action/adventure film where the plot, the characters, and the world-building are all perfectly balanced, but Jackson achieves such a feat. Hobbiton is my happy place, and hobbits are much like myself – adoring their homes and scorning adventure. It's why they're the most heroic race in Middle-earth

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Extended Edition)

"How can the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened?" It was an unfortunate coincidence that The Two Towers was released a year after the September 11th attacks, but the final message of this masterpiece of fantasy filmmaking resonates in retrospect. The power of these movies is not only in the escape, but in the upholding of moral triumphs that should be ubiquitous in the real world.

Mulholland Dr.

My entrance into surrealism; the film that changed the way I saw movies and storytelling. Lynch may not, initially, appear an emotional filmmaker, but he's much more humanistic than fellow surrealists like Buñuel and Cronenberg. He cares about his characters. Here is a tale of an aspiring actress in Hollywood, thrust into a bizarre film noir storyline with an amnesiac, and torn to pieces by the darkness of her own dreams.

A Clockwork Orange

Stanley Kubrick established himself as a Hollywood auteur, then dropped into the low-budget gutter of A Clockwork Orange: a small, seedy dystopian drama that sees a near-future Britain narrated by Alex, an amoral boy with a bizarre vernacular. Many have been put off by the first act, watching Alex and his droogs "tolchocking and the like", but stay for the rest and you'll find a surreal skewering of moral philosophy.

Wild Strawberries

You need a Bergman in there, don't you?