THE FLICK's Annie Baker Compiles Criterion Collection Top Ten Films List

The playwright behind Pulitzer Prize-winning THE FLICK picks her own favorite flicks!

Annie Baker, the playwright responsible for the universally acclaimed Off-Broadway cinema-centric play THE FLICK, chooses an intriguing list of films and discusses them in a new feature on the Criterion Collection website.

In the list, Baker reveals favorite films including Andrei Tarkovsky's ANDREI RUBLEV, Ingmar Bergman's FANNY & ALEXANDER, Chantel Akerman's JEANNE DIELMAN, 23, QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES and Eric Rohmer's LA COLLECTIONNEUSE, among others.

Additionally, Baker selects the theatre-based documentary VANYA ON 42ND STREET, directed by Louis Malle and featuring Andre Gregory and Wallace Shaw, as well.

Writing about VANYA ON 42ND STREET, Baker candidly shares, "I saw this movie at the Academy of Music in Northampton, Massachusetts, when I was thirteen. It was my introduction to Chekhov, and it changed my life. I think I went into the theater in large part because of this movie . . . I didn't see much theater as a kid, and this was my first clue as to what it could be like. They really nailed what's so great about Chekhov, and it made total sense to a thirteen-year-old girl in Massachusetts. Then all the Chekhov I saw after that as a young adult that was so terrible and haughty and faux-British . . . I'm just really grateful that this was my first encounter with his work. Wally Shawn's performance is incredible, too."

Discussing her top choice, Tarkovsky's ANDREI RUBLEV, Baker opines, "I saw this movie at Film Forum when I was in college. I remember watching all three hours of it with my mouth open. It fueled my interest in so many things: monks, bells, medieval Russia, structuring movies and plays like novels . . . I was taking a really dumb screenwriting class at the time, and this contradicted everything I had just been taught."

Touching upon Bergman's FANNY & ALEXANDER, Baker posits, "I've seen this movie more times than I can count. I think it's the best movie about being a kid ever made. It's a fairy tale and a nightmare and a totally believable portrayal of a Swedish family in Uppsala at the turn of the twentieth century, all at the same time. It has always reminded me of one of my favorite novels, Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks. It's also a movie about the weird magic of theater . . . Both the opening sequence and the reading from Strindberg at the end kill me. And the way Bergman shoots inanimate objects . . . The statues and the toy angels and the clocks and the puppets and the lamps . . . They're all watching Alexander, the whole movie."

Check out the entire list at the official site here.

Of note, Baker provided an essay for the Criterion Collection edition of Noah Baumbach's FRANCES HA in addition to being a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright known for THE FLICK as well as CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION, BODY AWARENESS, THE ALIENS, JOHN and more.