The Best Movies About Filmmakers, and ‘Boorman and the Devil’

Boorman and the Devil 2025

Kittredge's portrait of Boorman and his misbegotten ‘Exorcist’ sequel. Letts: catnip for film dorks, mostly heads and clips with faux-zippy animated recreations; not a great doc, but a great subject.

Exorcist II: The Heretic 1977

Both agree it's awful and, fatally, not scary. Praise reserved for Ennio Morricone's score (Boorman had him strip the melodic element) and its downstream influence on Italian horror. A worthy curiosity, best watched right before the doc.

The Exorcist 1973

Friedkin's documentary-realist approach, the opposite of Boorman's myth-and-symbol instincts; a claim on scariest film ever made. Boorman turned down directing it.

Deliverance 1972

Five-star masterpiece; the blank check that let him make Zardoz. Voight and Reynolds's best; Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox's film debuts. Letts disputes Tarantino's gripe about casting Dickey as the sheriff.

Point Blank 1967

Game-changing, prismatic L.A. crime film that redefined the noir.

Zardoz 1974

Connery in a mankini; a cult sci-fi fantasia. One of Sean's physical-media white whales, out of print on Arrow/Twilight Time.

Hell in the Pacific 1968

Mifune vs. Marvin; ruined for years by pan-and-scan that placed them on opposite edges of the Panavision frame.

Excalibur 1981

His return to form after ‘The Heretic.’

Hope and Glory 1987

Warm, autobiographical WWII childhood film; Roger Avary's favorite Boorman.

The General 1998

Irish crime film on Martin Cahill, with Gleeson and a Voight reunion.

The Tailor of Panama 2001

le Carré adaptation; the studio reportedly reshot Boorman's ending in which Rush's character kills Brosnan's.

Catch Us If You Can 1965

His Dave Clark Five debut, already a satire of the pop-machine that spawned it.

In My Country 2004

One of Boorman's 2000s films Sean hasn't caught up with.

The Tiger's Tail 2006

Another of the mid-2000s Boorman films Sean hasn't seen; he kept working up to 2014.

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse 1991

Eleanor Coppola's record of Coppola taking the failure onto himself; the alpha of the everything-goes-wrong doc.

Apocalypse Now 1979

Burden of Dreams 1982

Les Blank on Herzog; the omega of the crisis doc. Both directors knew the buck stopped with them.

Fitzcarraldo 1982

The Ghost of Peter Sellers 2018

Peter Medak reckoning with his aborted pirate comedy and his own share of the blame, echoing Boorman's.

The Ruling Class 1972

Medak's earlier success with Sellers and O'Toole.

Jodorowsky's Dune 2013

A what-if on an unmade film; a fantasia of ideas too big to realize.

Best Worst Movie 2009

Sean's pick for the doc that shifted expectations toward loving a failure.

Troll 2 1990

Not a sequel to ‘Troll’; a lovable fiasco set in Nilbog.

Troll 1986

The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness 2013

On Studio Ghibli.

Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron 2024

The NHK doc released alongside the feature.

Ingmar Bergman Makes a Movie 1963

Workman-like Bergman in the flow on ‘Winter Light’; dry but procedurally revealing.

Winter Light 1962

The Silence 1963

Through a Glass Darkly 1961

Lost in La Mancha 2002

Gilliam's Don Quixote collapse.

Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau 2014

The Island of Dr. Moreau 1996

Brando and Kilmer on one island: two maniacs, one doomed shoot.

American Movie 1999

Chris Smith on Mark Borchardt; bigger ideas about family and the American artist. One of Sean's favorites.

George Stevens: A Filmmaker's Journey 1984

By Stevens Jr.; oddly given a 4K upgrade.

Shane 1953

Giant 1956

Directed by John Ford 1971

Bogdanovich; a portrait of an artist performing disinterest, plus backyard interviews with Wayne, Stewart and Fonda.

Hal 2018

On Hal Ashby; Letts's happy place, two hours of smart people on a career.

Runnin' Down a Dream 2007

Bogdanovich's Tom Petty doc.

Friedkin Uncut 2018

Two hours of ornery Friedkin, who held Boorman in contempt for cashing in on ‘The Exorcist.’ Letts declined an interview for it.

De Palma 2015

Baumbach and Paltrow, camera fixed on De Palma going film by film. Sean's nightlight.

Hitchcock/Truffaut 2015

Kent Jones; you can see how the Finchers and James Grays absorbed the book into their work.

Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles 2014

Comprehensive but a little dry.

78/52 2017

Alexander O. Philippe on the ‘Psycho’ shower scene.

Chain Reactions 2024

Philippe's four reflections on ‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.’

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 1974

Memory: The Origins of Alien 2019

Philippe on ‘Alien.’

Alien 1979

Lynch/Oz 2022

Philippe on Lynch's debt to ‘The Wizard of Oz’; more about film grammar than the filmmaker.

The Wizard of Oz 1939

Billy Wilder Speaks 2006

By Sidney Lumet 2015

Milius 2013

Everything Is Copy 2015

On Nora Ephron.

The Beaches of Agnès 2008

Varda's self-portrait.

Lightning Over Water 1980

Wenders and the dying Nicholas Ray on whether Ray can make one more film.

The American Friend 1977

Wenders film Ray appeared in, shortly before ‘Lightning Over Water.’

Hammett 1982

They'll Love Me When I'm Dead 2018

Morgan Neville's chaotic mosaic on the making of Welles's last film.

The Other Side of the Wind 2018

Magnolia 1999

Its ~45-minute making-of was a rare portal-of-curiosity bonus feature for Sean.

White Hunter Black Heart 1990

Eastwood doing a John Huston impersonation on the ‘African Queen’ shoot; Letts's pick for his most underrated, still stuck on DVD only.

The African Queen 1951

All That Jazz 1979

Fosse's barely-veiled self-portrait; film directing is the sideline nagging the Broadway man.

Lenny 1974

The film-within; here the comedian is renamed and played by Cliff Gorman, who played Lenny Bruce on Broadway.

The Stunt Man 1980

O'Toole as the mythic idea of a director.

Mank 2020

RKO 281 1999

Me and Orson Welles 2008

Chaplin 1992

Gods and Monsters 1998

James Whale near the end.

Hitchcock 2012

Anthony Hopkins as Hitchcock.

Ed Wood 1994

The Fabelmans 2022

Spielberg on arriving at directing.

The Disaster Artist 2017

Franco on the making of ‘The Room,’ released just as he was deleted from the culture.

The Room 2003

Letts hasn't seen it and resists the so-bad-it's-good pitch; Sean says it only works in a theater with spoons.

Nouvelle Vague 2025

Sean hasn't seen it; more interested in the crew's link to the older French masters than the ‘Breathless’ making-of.

Breathless 1960