
Zach Braff’s Top10
Zach Braff is an actor, director, screenwriter, and producer notable for his lead role on the television comedy series Scrubs. He made his directorial debut in 2004 with Garden State and most recently directed a remake of the 1979 Martin Brest caper comedy Going in Style, starring Academy Award winners Alan Arkin, Michael Caine, and Morgan Freeman.
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1
Harold and Maude
Hal Ashby
An early touchstone for me. One of the first art films that showed me at a young age what movies could be. They could make you laugh and also be super odd and eccentric, but there was still room for them to break your heart. It was a huge influence on Garden State. Two oddballs find love and strength within each other’s eccentricities, all set to the music of Cat Stevens. I love this movie.
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2
Rushmore
Wes Anderson
This is my favorite Wes Anderson movie. He is obviously such an incredible visualist, and there was something about Max Fischer that I really related to—I always felt like an outcast, but I had a ton of ambition. It’s quite a feat to make something so visually arresting while also making you laugh and breaking your heart.
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3
Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Stanley Kubrick
Well, I mean, come on. This is a masterpiece. I don’t know what to say that hasn’t already been said by many people way smarter than me, but it set a very high bar for brilliant satire, acting, cinematography, production design, everything.
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6
Brazil
Terry Gilliam
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve pitched something and said, “It’s like if Terry Gilliam directed ____.” I fell in love with this film and those of Jean-Pierre Jeunet while I was in film school at Northwestern. I would love more than anything to make a film with a Gilliam level of design and art.
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9
The Graduate
Mike Nichols
Post-college malaise. The quarter-life crisis. Obviously another huge inspiration for Garden State. So beautifully acted and photographed and written and directed. As you can tell from my list, I love movies about lonely people finding people to make themselves feel a little less lonely. That look on both of their faces on the bus at the end . . .
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10
The Ice Storm
Ang Lee
I love everything about this film—the script’s tone, the color palette, the production design, the costumes. It’s beautifully directed by Ang Lee, and it’s interesting to me that he so richly captured this specific time period in America without having grown up here. He is a master filmmaker. As a young actor, I wanted so badly to be Tobey Maguire in this film. He was so good! I’ve yet to be invited to a key party.