James Gunn's Favorite Movies List Includes One Of The Best Westerns Ever Made

James Gunn is a curious figure in popular culture. As a young man, just rising in the film business, Gunn co-wrote the witty and disgusting Troma epic "Tromeo & Juliet" with Lloyd Kaufman, and it featured kinky sex, a bisexual Juliet, cow monsters, mutant penis creatures, and an opening narration by Lemmy from Motörhead. After that, Gunn took the piss out of the superhero genre with "The Specials," a low-low budget film about what superheroes — petty jerks, mostly — do on their day off. He stayed aloft in Hollywood writing the screenplays for two surreal "Scooby-Doo" movies, and Zack Snyder's remake of "Dawn of the Dead" before making his directorial debut in 2006 with "Slither," another gross movie about body-invading worm monsters and wacko mutants. 

Gunn then deconstructed superheroes even further with "Super" in 2010, a film that hypothesizes that superheroes are mentally ill and addicted to extreme violence. "Super" is bleak, tragic, and seemingly hates superheroes. He was, then, a very, very odd choice to direct the 2014 ultra-blockbuster "Guardians of the Galaxy," one of the high-profile releases in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. "Guardians" was ostensibly meant to be "the irreverent one" in an otherwise stern comic book film series, but Gunn made a complete 180 from his usual tone, taking the material not only seriously, but sentimentally. "Guardians" was a light, fun, corporate-approved, effects-based comedy that proved Gunn had shed all his appealingly bitter punk sensibilities. 

Since "Guardians," Gunn has become a corporate powerhouse, directing multiple openly earnest superhero movies for both Marvel and DC Comics. As of this writing, he is the head honcho of the soon-to-be-launched DC Universe, a brand-new cinematic continuity centered on Superman. The punk is now the dominant paradigm. 

So one must wonder: what does Gunn's taste in movies look like? Luckily, IndieWire asked Gunn back in 2023 what his 12 favorite movies were, and he had an eclectic list to share. He included Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West." 

Several of Gunn's favorites are of the "traditionally masculine" variety, often beloved by young male college students who get really into stories of crime and mental illness. Gunn is very fond of Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver," of course, which one can see informing his "Super." Gunn also loves Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather Part II," which he openly declares to be better than its predecessor. 

One can also include Sergio Leone's sweaty Western "Once Upon a Time in the West" as a male-centric classic. That film features Charles Bronson as a brave gun-slinging hero, and Henry Fonda, playing against type, as his villainous rival. Leone has said that he had retired from Westerns after making "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," but Paramount offered him a plum deal, so he returned to the genre. "Once Upon a Time in the West" is just as abstract and as overheated as Leone's previous three Western classics. 

Gunn once listed "Once Upon a Time in the West" as one of his three favorite movies in a now-deleted Tweet. He also declared Robert Altman's 1973 deconstructionist noir "The Long Goodbye" as one of his favorites. That film stars Elliott Gould as a laidback, somewhat laconic version of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, and presents hard-boiled material as a little more relaxed. Soft-boiled, if you will. 

Gunn also selected Michel Gondry's 2004 sci-fi romance "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" as one of his top three. It tells the story of a heartbroken artist who, upon breaking up with his girlfriend, hires a specialized memory-erasing service to remove all memories of her from his brain. In so doing, he explores his own subconscious, recalling the good times and bad times with her. Gunn's three favorites would not make a good triple feature.

Beyond that, Gunn's taste seems to be pretty eclectic, although he does have a weakness for romance. Gunn selected Quentin Tarantino's 1997 updated blaxploitation riff "Jackie Brown" as one of his favorites, and that film pivots on the romance between the title character, played by Pam Grier, and the Oscar-nominated Robert Forster. He also likes Wong Kar-wai's 2000 non-romance "In the Mood for Love," a visually impeccable film about two married people, played by Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung, who find out their respective spouses have been cheating with each other. Rather than initiate an affair, they spend the film looking at each other. It's one of the most critically acclaimed films of its decade. 

Less romantic is David Cronenberg's "The Brood," a story that is essentially, a tale of a marriage that is falling apart in a horrifying way. Cronenberg extends the emotional turmoil into the bodies of mutant characters. The film is bleak and intense. Gunn also selected Steven Spielberg's classic 1975 monster movie "Jaws," which is about an undersea animal of some kind, possibly a squid (I'm kidding).

Perhaps unexpected is the inclusion of Paul Greengrass' ultra-realistic plan hijacking movie "United 93," a recreation of the events of 9/11, told from the perspective of the airplane passengers who wrested control of a commercial airliner from terrorist hijackers, aiming to crash the plane into the Pentagon. Several of the on-the-ground survivors of the real event played themselves in the movie. 

In terms of comedies, Gunn was fond of Preston Sturges' 1944 satire "Hail the Conquering Hero," a movie about a soldier who mercifully avoids service during World War II thanks to hayfever, but whose mother thinks he had served overseas. He has to steal only a little bit of valor when he returns home. Gunn also liked Lukas Moodysson's 2000 comedy "Together," also a satire built to poke fun at '70s Communist communes, common in Sweden in that decade. That film features an argument as to whether or not washing dishes counts as bourgeois.