Walking into the golden age of hip hop a few names will always shine brighter than most. Tupac, Biggie, Jay-Z and a whole host of other artists can be rightly regarded as some of the most potent and prominent in the game. However, to discredit Wu-Tang Clan and the illustrious rappers who made up the hip hop collective, such as Method Man would be to forget a huge chunk of their mammoth influence.
It wasn’t just within music that Cliff Smith, aka Method Man, was able to craft out a career. He also enjoyed success as part of a few franchises including starring roles in Oz, and The Wire, also appearing in Zach Barff’s *Garden State. In short, Meth has had a stellar career across the entire spectrum of pop culture. It makes him selecting his five favourite films of all time all the more interesting.
Speaking with Rotten Tomatoes, Method picked out his five favourite films of all time. It reads as an essential watching list for any Wu fan or cinema lover. First up on his list was the Bill Paxton film Frailty from 2002. Meth said of the film: I love that movie. I love the premise behind it. I love how we all thought that the father was insane, and then it pays off in the end. I don’t want to put spoilers in there for people who haven’t seen the movie. Great freakin’ movie. The bottom line is, any time you put Powers Boothe in a movie… This fuckin’ guy, man. I just love Powers Boothe. I don’t care what you put him in.”
Another film from around the same time makes Method’s list, as he selects the 2003 movie by Tom McCarthy The Station Agent. Meth effuses: “I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. Peter Dinklage, I mean, the way he carries that thing. Michelle Williams, Patricia Clarkson, and Bobby Cannavale? Just that cast alone, man. The way these people interacted together, you could tell this wasn’t words on paper. These were people living these lives, man.”
Perhaps the most famous selection on Meth’s list is the indie classic Napoleon Dynamite, about which the rapper said: “I saw someone one day, and I was like, ‘What is this thing about?’ He’s like, ‘Oh this movie? You’ve never seen it?’ Gave me the DVD. So I go home — I mean, the thing sat there for like two weeks. I got bored, watched it. Incredible. Now, I hang around nothing but real, you know, killers, thugs, right? I’m like, “Yo, y’all gotta check this movie out.” And I’ve thrown on movies in the past because comedy is comedy to me. I don’t care if it’s white, black, whatever, but they usually shoot down a lot of the white comedies because they don’t get that white innuendo, whatever. I threw on this Napoleon Dynamite, they looked like they were gonna shoot me down again. I mean, they still use some of the quotes from the movie to this day. From there, it was cool for me to play Walk Hard and Anchorman and stuff like that, you know? Now it’s cool.”
Method Man also pays homage to Damon Russell’s defiant Snow on Tha Bluff: “It looked like a documentary. It’s like a found footage movie, but in the hood, and this shit is incredible, the way he flipped it, because you could tell some of the elements were reenacted, but some of those elements look real as shit.”
His final selection is the brutal 2012 film from Gareth Evans The Raid, it’s a bullish action flick that deserves attention: “I love how it was shot. I think that some of these people that make these comic book movies need to take note.”
See the full list below.
Method Man’s five favourite films:
- Frailty (Bill Paxton, 2002)
- The Station Agent (Tom McCarthy, 2003)
- Napoleon Dynamite (Jared Hess, 2004)
- Snow On Tha Bluff (Damon Russell, 2012)
- The Raid (Gareth Evans, 2012)
