Hideo Kojima may not be on Letterboxd (yet), but that hasn’t stopped him from revealing his top four favorite movies of all time – and every single one of them is a banger.
Before Kojima created Metal Gear and earned worldwide fame as a video game designer, he wanted to make movies.
Cinema, like life, finds a way, and now he’s developing a Death Stranding movie for A24, as well as an anime adaptation.
Kojima often shares mini-reviews of movies on X/Twitter (or, more ominously, he’ll post that he’s watching something and never mention it again, a sign that he didn’t enjoy it). His work in video games draws massively on all sorts of movies (as well as influencing what’s come after), so it’s no surprise that he has four elite picks for his favorite films.
Hideo Kojima’s top 4 movies of all time
These are Kojima’s four favourite movies, as per GQ:
- 2001: A Space Odyssey
- Taxi Driver
- Mad Max 2
- High and Low
While he said his list changes all the time, these are familiar picks. In 2019, he explained his love of 2001 (one of the best sci-fi movies ever made) to Rotten Tomatoes.
“It’s like a monolith to me, that movie. Every time it’s re-shown in theaters, I always go. Star Wars was a big hit in 1977 which created a big sci-fi boom,” he said.
“[2001] was a real space experience. Exploration even before man went to the moon. I always wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid, but Japan doesn’t have NASA. You had to go either to USSR or China.
“Although I felt like I had to give up on the dream of becoming an astronaut, when I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey, I felt like I really went to outer space. It’s a life-changing movie because it made me feel like I accomplished a dream.”
As for Taxi Driver and Mad Max 2, Kojima described them as two gods in his GQ interview. High and Low, a 1963 thriller, comes from Kojima’s father showing him Akira Kurosawa’s movies at a young age.
“Entertainment isn’t really just entertainment. It leaves something in people’s hearts, and that person might be moved to create something,” he said in the earlier interview.
“It’s a push for that person the next day, and I think entertainment should be similar, including games. When you experience something, and then come back to the real world, I want people to feel a little influence in their world.”
In the meantime, check out our list of the best movies of all time and find out what else is dropping this year with our 2025 movie calendar.
