A Guide to Kanye West's Favorite Movies

Did you know that Kanye West is a cinephile? Seriously, his love for film goes deep, and he's always had a knack for packing movie references into his lyrics, unabashedly admitting he's seen everything from Shrek to The Devil Wears Prada. And he doesn't spare expenses when it comes to cinema either—the dude will drop $500 per movie to get new releases screened at his home theater or rent out theaters for special occasions (last year he surprised Kim with a Steve Jobs screening on her birthday, which is kind of weird but I guess also sweet and Kim apparently loved it so who am I to say). He and the wifey—whose relationship he compares to Romeo and Juliet—initially bonded overStar Wars (that's so nerdy-cute), they see a lot of movies together, and they reportedly even want to make a movie together soon (that'll surely happen any day now).​

Kanye's enthusiasm for the cinema isn't casual, and his taste covers a wide range of genres and eras. Outside of his heavy film-referencing rhymes and his weirdly strong allegiance to Will Ferrell films (he's sampled Blades of Glory and has starred in Anchorman 2), Kanye has often mentioned his favorite movies via tweets and interviews, each name-check revealing a little more about the endlessly fascinating rap deity. Surely there are probably a few more references made in his upcoming album, Swish turned Waves turned T.L.O.P., but here we try to figure out a little more about who Kanye is based on the all-time favorite movies he's already copped to.

Quote: "And I don't know if y'all have heard of [Nikola] Tesla, and I'm not talking about the car, I'm talking about the inventor. Or if y'all ever heard about [Alejandro] Jodorowsky, the director who made Holy Mountain. But there's so many amazing creative inventors who weren't recognized in their time." —November 19, 2013 during his Yeezus tour set at Barclays.

Kanye flexes his film bro muscle hard on this one, dropping that director you maybe learned about in your college years and spent long hours into the night discussing the meaning of his work with your B.A. buddies. The eccentric filmmaker not only directed and wrote but also stars in The Holy Mountain, which is kind of an obvious favorite for Kanye because 1) it's an important movie for any film lover and 2) surely a man who calls himself "Yeezus" must love the film's abundant religious—well, sacrilegious—imagery. In fact, my coworkers made an in-depth analysis of Kanye and Jodorowsky here. What they left out, especially in light of recent events, is that there's quite a lot of butt play in the movie (something I hear Kanye may or may not be into). Either way, *finger emoji*.

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OF ALL TIME! This is an important movie for Kanye, who claims he's seen it "over and over, into that 30 times and 40 times." It hasn't been THAT long since the movie came out, meaning he averages about four views of There Will Be Blood a year, which might I add is over two and a half hours long. That's a lot of fucking There Will Be Blood. Anyway, it's no surprise Kanye is into an auteur filmmaker such as Paul Thomas Anderson, whose 2007 epic follows Daniel Day Lewis' miner character Daniel Plainview in a story about oil, religion, and greed. Plainview is, like Kanye, a lone visionary who's often misunderstood in his mission to expand his empire. Kanye also probably has a complicated relationship with capitalism, something that's personified by Plainview's character (a stark contrast from Paul Dano's hyper-religious counterpart, Paul Sunday). Whatever Kanye's takeaway is, There Will Be Blood is a certified classic. He and I would both agree it is a must-see.

And that brings us to his other all-time fave, Akira (see tweet from above). In another tweet, which has now been deleted, Kanye once wrote, "No way Spirited Away is better than Akira… NOOO WAAAY…sorry was just looking at a youtube of top 10 anime films." Spirited Away is a masterpiece but Akira, with its dystopian fashion, is basically Kanye's beautiful dark twisted fantasy, so it makes perfect sense that he would choose it over the Miyazaki classic. Plus, there's a hallucinatory teddy bear that comes to life, which, as we all know, is so very Kanye.

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Pacific Rim wasn't really my kind of movie (Pan's Labyrinth, on the other hand, very much is), but I can see why Kanye loves it. He's hinted at his inner anime geek multiple times (I mean, he's out here looking up top 10 animes on YouTube), so he's already part of the Pacific Rim fanbase, but it gets even better for him with director Guillermo del Toro's stylistic flourish. Kanye makes a point to reassure everyone this is not just "another 'Robot' movie" and he's right, even though aesthetically it's very much Godzilla meets Transformers. It's not even just another "Monster" movie, either. Judging by his other favorite films I feel like Kanye is very interested in movies about the human condition, and what is unique to Pacific Rim's disaster story is that the human race isn't necessarily to blame for the apocalypse. It's a unique take on dystopian fiction. Also, it's not surprising someone who considers Akira an all-time fave would also like Pacific Rim.

P.S. There's a rim joke to be made here but... I won't go there.

Source: Esquire points out that Kanye's most-viewed movie of all time (surpassing the 30 or 40 times he's seen There Will Be Blood) is Menace II Society.

The 1993 Albert and Allen Hughes film is undoubtedly an important film for black men growing up in America. The movie follows a young man who tries to escape the drug and crime lifestyle he's known since childhood in a poignant picture that's troubling and at times even heartfelt and funny. The violent portrayal of protagonist Caine's life underlines the powerful message: Again, this is a film about the human condition, haunting because of the what-ifs of how someone's life would have turned out had they been given different opportunities. I'm sure there's a lot to think about there for Kanye. On a less deep note, the movie is chock full of quotables. You just KNOW Kanye knows every line by heart.

Quote: "For me, I felt like the main character [Solomon Northup] in what I’m dealing with, even as a mega-popular-rich-celebrity-fuck-you-who-do-you-think-you-are-to-complain-about-anything situation that I’m in. Or, in the past, when I’ve dealt with attempting to create in other fields [such as] clothing. I was sitting in Paris and dealing with all of these companies that I promoted, and...my friends promoted, and the reason literally why they would sell on Barney’s floors, is because me and Jay Z wore it." – November, 2013, on Brett Easton Ellis' podcast

Director Steve McQueen would go on to direct Kanye's music video, but before that, Kanye raved about the eventual 2014 Best Picture winner. Aside from the importance of 12 Years' historical story, Kanye identified heavily with Chiwetel Ejiofor's character, especially in his own creative process ("New Slaves" anyone?). "It will be something that I sort of discovered maybe four years before," he said on the podcast. "And then you say, 'Hey, I want to be part of the creative conversation and be able to make money off of that,' — and they stop you right there. I kind of saw that as the parallel of the main character in 12 Years A Slave. When it was taken away from me, it felt like as a creative to be enslaved, to have all of these ideas for product, things you were talking about earlier."

Source: The Yeezus promo starring Scott Disick

He referenced the movie in a song in 2010, only to revisit it in depth in this strange Yeezus promo, starring Kardashian-adjacent Scott Disick and Jonathan Cheban as Patrick Bateman and whoever Jared Leto played in the movie, respectively. So yeah, safe to say he loves that movie. And we already know his allegiance to American Psycho writer Brett Easton Ellis. To be fair, it's a great movie (even better than the book, in my opinion) and it speaks volumes about the trials and tribulations of the male ego, something Kanye is more than familiar with.

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Lmao this movie is so silly, I'm having a hard time taking Kanye's comments seriously. Just when I'm like, "Man, Kanye has good taste in movies!" he throws out something like The Walk, in which Joseph Gordon-Levitt puts on a really goofy French accent to portray the high-wire artist Philippe Petit. 2008's Petit doc Man on Wire is a much better film but alas, Kanye considers this 2015 biopic a "modern elegant masterpiece." Not hard to see why a movie about a genius most people thought was batshit crazy would resonate with Kanye West. But still, there are so many other better films about people like that.