Dominic Monaghan’s Five Favorite Films

This is number one. It’s a perfect movie for me. Great camerawork, great editing and sound, incredible performances. Coppola at his best.

RT: What do you think of Apocalypse Now: Redux?

I like the Redux. I’m always looking for more out of Apocalypse Now. I’m not crazy about the French plantation sequence — I think it’s long and strung out — but any more of Martin Sheen or Dennis Hopper or Marlon Brando that you see is always a good thing. It’s a near perfect movie for me. I always see something new, or a new blend of one shot to another, or a new musical cue that says something about what’s actually happening in the film. It’s so well lit and edited — Coppola at his best, and I’m a huge The Godfather fan.

I love European cinema. I made a proviso that you have to watch it with the Swedish subtitles on, not dubbed in American. It’s terrible when it’s dubbed in American. It’s really a drama. It’s the story of a young boy who meets a young girl who just happens to be a vampire. But the editing, the way they show the bleakness of the world, the way that they show a period in time which is nondescript — they say it’s the modern world, but it feels like the modern world that has gone by somehow. Very beautiful part of the world, it’s sterile and full of snow.

I watched that one night; a friend recommended it to me. I was in my house on my own, at night, was very scared of it, and fell in love with it. I’m not a huge fan of horror movies, to be fair. There’s no reason for me to bring that into my life, that horror element. But with Let the Right One In, it was worth it because the performances and the story were both so brilliant.

The story of a young boy who finds a kestrel [falcon]. He comes from a welfare state, he doesn’t have anything else in his life, and it’s how he makes sense of something noble in a world that’s full of trash and rubbish. Great movie, really heartbreaking.

It’s a bit of a layman’s choice, but Star Wars is a huge deal for me. I have a Star Wars tattoo, and it’s one of the major reasons I became an actor. Empire Strikes Back has everything for a Star Wars movie: darkness and magic, light, great characters, and comedy — everything.

I love comedy. This got a lot of flak when it came out, because everyone said it was Monty Python’s diss towards Jesus. But it’s not. It’s looking at the ridiculous foundations of religions in general and how we set those things up to be things of truth. And when you point a finger at them, they can very easily become things of comedy. Great film, and one of those that the more you watch it, the funnier it gets. Like This is Spinal Tap.