I don’t know if y’all noticed, but Hideo Kojima likes movies. A lot. I know this will come as a great shock to the maybe 12 of you who haven’t been paying that much attention over the man’s nearly 40 year career in games, but even the Metal Gear / Snatcher era saw him taking direct inspiration from The Terminator, Blade Runner, and Escape from New York way before it was cool. But fast forward to now in 2025, and the man has been able to live some very specific cinephile dreams over the last decade and change, one of which involves being able to meet some of the best filmmakers in the world and then ask if he can stick their likenesses into his wackypants delivery service games about death and societal collapse.
Read More: Kojima On Whether Or Not He’ll Play Metal Gear Solid 3 Remake: Lol, Nope
Famous film talent was a big factor in the first Death Stranding, and it’s even more of a nerd flex in Death Stranding 2. Somehow, most of them wind up saying yes to being in Kojima’s project. Game literally recognize game, really. Kojima’s one of the few game devs who can legitimately lay claim to the auteur label–which, tangentially, we need to define as a creator whose clarity of vision guides a project, not that they’re doing all the work themselves; I cannot stress enough how important that distinction is–and the folks he’s invited for cameos in the whole Death Stranding project are all directors with a similar bent towards their work.
That’s why it’s even more important, in these times when there are a shitload of games and movies created without that clarity, to recognize the filmmakers Kojima held sacred enough to nest them into his own work. TL;DR, Kojima’s got dope taste in film, and that’s clearer even than it was in the first game. Once Sam Porter-Bridges is done delivering his last package in Death Stranding 2, you owe it to him and yourself to fall into the big beautiful rabbit hole of cinema that Kojima wanted to show off to the world. So, here’s your starter pack of all the real-world film directors crammed into Death Stranding 2, and the very first thing you should check out from their filmography.
Guillermo Del Toro (Deadman) – Blade II [2002]
Del Toro’s probably the most well-known and beloved filmmaker in either Death Stranding game, which is why you probably don’t need to be told that yes, you should check out the excellent flick where the mom from Paddington fucks a fish man that somehow won a Best Picture Oscar (2017’s The Shape of Water). That also goes for Pan’s Labyrinth, a movie whose aesthetics have now been strip-mined for parts hundreds of times over in games and film (but you should watch it again anyway).
So as a late summer blockbuster treat, you should go watch Blade II. One: because it’s looking pretty likely we ain’t getting the Daywalker back in multiplexes anytime soon (Deadpool & Wolverine doesn’t count, and you know it). Two: because you get a bonus Death Stranding connection with Norman Reedus playing Scud, Blade’s interim man-in-chair before Whistler re-enters the picture. Three: because it fucking rules. It’s a perfect, big, brutal sequel to one of the most effortlessly cool action flicks of the modern era, kicked up a notch by Del Toro adding some genuinely fucked up horror to the mix. Prior to Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu last year, Blade II’s Reapers represent the last time bloodsucking vampires weren’t intriguing or tragic or sexy, just absolutely goddamn terrifying. Watch it 100 times and the money shot reveal of a Reaper’s mouth will still be an all-timer blood-curdling moment.
Honorable Mention: The Devil’s Backbone [2001]
If you still want to aim higher class, The Devil’s Backbone seems like it’s fading into the background of Del Toro’s filmography, and it absolutely shouldn’t. Maybe wait till it’s October and spooky season begins in earnest; but it’s a very different take on a ghost story that doesn’t have the luxury of falling back on facestabbings like Crimson Peak. Not that we have anything against the many, many facestabbings of Crimson Peak.
Nicolas Winding Refn (Heartman) – Bronson [2008]
The other returning filmmaker from the first Death Stranding, Refn’s kind of an oddball first step for learning how arthouse cinema differentiates from the multiplex. Ostensibly, the man operates in familiar genres. It’s pretty likely that if you’ve seen any Refn film, it’s probably Drive with Ryan Gosling, and that’s a perfect example. You can sell your friends on it as a slow burn action flick/crime drama, when in reality, it’s kind of an off-kilter, neurodivergent deconstruction of the whole idea of an action hero; and you’re either on its wavelength or you’re not. Or you’re a guy who made Gosling’s jacket your entire personality and need a lot more time in therapy. Point being, the man’s films are never what you want or expect.
Except for Bronson, which isn’t trying to hide a damn thing about what it is: a psychofuck trip through the life and times of one of the most ruthlessly destructive people to ever pass through British prison, Charles Bronson. The entire film feels delirious, punch-drunk, and vicious—and that’s exactly the point. This was Tom Hardy’s breakout role, and without a doubt it’s the one that got him the part as Bane in Dark Knight Rises on sight. It’s a perfect, unnerving portrait of an erudite psychopath.
Honorable Mentions: Only God Forgives [2013] / My Life Directed By Nicolas Winding Refn [2014]
So, Only God Forgives is a mixed bag, and that’s being generous. It’s Refn trying to do for Asian crime epics what he did to American gangster films with Drive, but with less success outside the visuals and the way-too-brief action. It’s like watching The Raid 2 on Xanax.
However, it’s worth it just so you have context for the much more interesting My Life Directed By Nicolas Winding Refn. It’s a one-hour documentary directed by Refn’s wife, Liv Corfixen, which is less about the actual behind-the-scenes day-to-day making of the film–though you do get to see Refn and Alejandro Jodorowsky hang out together for a bit, which is neat–than about Corfixen’s life being upended by having to move herself and her two kids to Bangkok for six months for the sake of her manic-depressive husband and the crowd-repulsing movie he’s making. That’s a fascinating angle to take. There’s also another very good reason to check it out, which is that Death Stranding 2 is another family affair for Refn. Corfixen plays The Hydrologist, and their daughters Lizzie and Lola play The Chronobiologist and The Metagenomicist, respectively.
Fatih Akin (Dollman) – In The Fade [2017]
Even beyond Fatih Akin being a talented director with amazing control over tone–the man does more with tense silence than some directors do with an entire orchestra–as a German-born Turk, the man’s got a cultural perspective you definitely don’t see much of in Western media. He’d be a gem for that alone, but just about every off-the-cuff interview with the guy is bursting with energy and enthusiasm for life, art, everything. To wit, as a side tangent here, I highly recommend this interview Kojima and Akin did at Cannes this year about their philosophies towards art and their own work. Kojima making Dollman such an integral part of Sam’s journey was a stroke of genius and the whole game is better for it (though yes, I know the Tranq Sniper Rifle doesn’t have a suppressor, sir, you can stop reminding me, I’m good, thanks)
As for a starting point for Akin’s work, though, In The Fade is almost the winner by default: It’s Akin’s most easily accessible film (it’s on HBO Max at the time of this writing, in fact), and probably the most horrifyingly relevant. A reformed drug addict named Katja (Diane Kruger, who, fun trivia, happens to be married to Norman Reedus IRL) marries a similarly reformed Turkish ex-con named Nuri (Numan Acar). When Neo-Nazis set off a nail bomb outside Nuri’s workplace, killing him and the couple’s young son solely for the crime of being immigrants, Katja’s entire life spirals out of control, and Germany’s criminal justice system is, well, less than helpful, leading Katja to take matters in her own hands. It’s not the easiest watch, but it’s impossible not to once you’re engrossed in it.
Honorable Mention: Head-On [2004]
Once you’re done with In The Fade, though, and want another downward spiral to dig into, Head-On is a damn fine choice. A Turkish woman (Game of Thrones’ Sibel Kekilli) meets a suicidal, aging punk named Cahit (Birol Ünel) while at a mental health facility, and out of sheer desperation to escape her extremely traditional Turkish family, she asks to marry him on the spot. It goes about as well as you might think. Despite that rom-com setup–complete with a Greek choir of Turkish musicians, which is a wild choice—it is often just as fatalistic and grim as it is funny and hopelessly romantic.
George Miller (Tarman) – Three Thousand Years of Longing [2023]
If the first time you ever heard the name George Miller was due to Mad Max: Fury Road, congratulations, you’re the next contestant on America’s favorite game show “Holy Shit, The Guy Who Made Fury Road Directed THAT?!” Because Miller has had a hell of a diverse career, from the Mad Max saga, to beloved childrens’ classics such as Babe and Happy Feet, to weepy dramas like Lorenzo’s Oil. To wit, this could very easily have just been a recommendation to go watch Furiosa and call it a day, because that flick deserves way more love than it got, especially that unhinged Chris Hemsworth performance. But oh no, y’all are not getting off that easy. Furiosa failing to set the world on fire is nothing compared to the absolutely lovely Three Thousand Years of Longing basically being dumped on the side of the road by Amazon and left to starve.
In fairness, I’m not sure how many millions of dollars more were really left on the table by not marketing a romantic fantasy by the Mad Max guy about Tilda Swinton finding a genie in a bottle, but living such a fulfilled life that she refuses to wish. Surely, a lot of people would certainly have spent the money to hear Idris Elba try to convince her to make a wish with multiple magical tales of love, lust, greed, and power gone wrong across the vast expanse of time itself, especially when those tales are as lavishly directed as these are and when they lead to a modern love story unlike any other. Seriously, it’s a $60 million movie that looks like it cost $300 million, with one of the most achingly beautiful film scores in recent years, from Junkie XL of all people. If nothing else, come to get a debilitating addiction to those pistachio cookies Tilda and Idris are eating in their hotel room the whole movie.
Honorable Mention: The Witches of Eastwick [1987]
If that’s a little too schmaltzy for your liking, there’s also that time The Guy Who Made Fury Road directed a romantic horror comedy about three witches (Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Cher) winding up in a polycule with Satan himself (Jack Nicholson). Somehow, that thing is scored by John Williams, too. I don’t know what to do for you if that premise alone can’t perk your ears up.
Mike Flanagan (Mike Northcote) – The Life of Chuck (2024)
Mike Flanagan might be the best thing to ever happen to Stephen King. Flanagan seems to be a perfect creative distillery, boiling out everything clunky and problematic in King’s post-car-accident work, while accentuating the sobering poetry and grim insight that’s still present even in his weaker efforts. That’s of course to say nothing of Flanagan’s own work on stuff like Haunting of Hill House, the brilliant adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher, and Midnight Mass (which is, ironically, a better Salem’s Lot remake than the actual, garbage Salem’s Lot remake from last year).
That makes it all the more frustrating that Flanagan finally broke his confinement at Netflix to put a new King adaptation in theaters for it to release with absolutely zero impact. Not even a thud. It’s yet even more frustrating that Life of Chuck is easily one of the best damn films of the year, to say nothing of being one of the most affecting, heartfelt films in recent memory at a time when we desperately need it. It’s got less of a linear narrative–or even a reverse chronological narrative–than a series of seemingly disconnected vignettes from the life of a man named Chuck (played at various ages by Cody Flanagan, Benjamin Pajak, Jacob Tremblay, and Tom Hiddleston), spiraling out from the simple, haunting moment that Chuck finds out through supernatural means exactly how and when he will die.
Armed with the knowledge of a tragic, comic, and beautiful past, and an equally beautiful, but truncated future, the film is basically a literary argument for the value of life itself–a common thing in all of Flanagan’s work, really. It’s all that and it’s got one of the most wonderfully unorthodox ensemble casts you’ll ever see. That, of course, includes Flanagan’s wife, Kate Siegel, who also pops up in Death Stranding 2 as West Fort Knot’s Olivia Westbury (with an Irish accent, weirdly enough). It just hit digital this week. Do yourself the favor of getting your eyes on this.
Honorable Mention: Doctor Sleep: Director’s Cut (2019)
Oh yeah, don’t think I’ve ever forgiven y’all for the last time this happened. Granted, the world had an excuse last time. Doctor Sleep: The Novel is a complete mess of ideas, and the trailers for this made it look like a cheap Kubrick legasequel cash in. Flanagan, however, finds the beating heart in all of it, again stripping out all the problematic landmines of King’s book and replacing them with a genuinely empathetic and still often-frightening look at alcoholism through the lens of The Shining, both King’s book and Kubrick’s film. Come for the storytelling, stay after you fall madly in lust with Rebecca Ferguson’s Rose the Hat.
Yes, hunt down the Director’s Cut, the added bits make it perfect.
Danny and Michael Philippou (Mr. Impossible) – Talk To Me [2022]
At some point, someone’s gonna have to write a deep, academic paper on why great comedians are somehow absolutely incredible at horror. (Partial theory: Any truly great comedy played straight is horror) Millennials saw this play out with Peter Jackson and Edgar Wright. Gen Y and Z get to see it with Jordan Peele and, now, the RackaRacka guys, a.k.a. The Philippou Brothers. Somehow, these Aussies, known for their Suburban Violence videos and genre mashup shorts, started plying their trade on the big screen, and with all the same DIY tools that made their Youtube videos utter chaos, managed to deliver one of the most chilling tales of possession in recent memory.
It’s a simple setup, too: Australian teenagers have somehow stumbled upon an unholy relic in the shape of a hand that allows them to communicate with the dead. Saying “Talk to me” while holding it lets you see a dead person. The phrase “I let you in” allows the dead person to possess you, which is safe only for 90 seconds. Surprisingly, teenagers, long known for how much they love to follow rules, let the possession go on too long and…well, bad things ensue. The film never quite escalates after an absolutely gnarly bit of self-mutilation at the halfway mark, but things are still pretty fucking far from sunshine and daisies after.
Honorable Mention: Bring Her Back [2025]
Bring Her Back wasn’t as much of a smash hit as Talk To Me, but to be fair to the general public, it’s also a much, much, much more fucked up piece of work. It’s about two orphaned kids whose new eccentric foster mother (Sally Hawkins) loves them so much that she intends to let one of them become the new vessel for her dead daughter’s soul by performing a Satanic ritual. Fun fact: This was the movie Sally Hawkins did immediately after dropping out of Paddington in Peru. Good call, tbh, I don’t want her anywhere near children or that sweet, trusting bear after this.
S.S. Rajamouli (The Adventurer) – RRR [2022]
If RRR is somehow a new title to your ears, I’m gonna politely invite you to drop everything you’re doing right this second.Clear the rest of your day and go experience the greatest three hours you will spend this year. Like what are you even doing reading this article? It’s on Netflix, don’t argue with me on this.
If you’re still here, sure, I guess let’s qualify that for you. For folks who might be dipping their first toe into the Wild World of Indian cinema, Indian movies tend to have a reputation for a kitchen sink approach to filmmaking, which is why you might have a concept of them that’s mostly centered around weird bespoke musical numbers. It’s actually very much by design. Especially for areas so remote that going to the movies means most of the day is spent travelling, the entire country’s various film industries–and no, not every Indian film is Bollywood–have the unspoken mandate that they need to make the trip worth it for every single potential viewer. So action movies aren’t just action movies, musicals aren’t just musicals, romantic comedies aren’t just romantic comedies. Every film’s got to do a lot, and many end up feeling like tonal whiplash to Westerners as a result.
And even by that standard, RRR is just an unlimited Golden Corral buffet of awesome things on every single conceivable creative level. The core plot plays out like an Indian historical fiction riff on The Departed, except imagine Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio are not just friends, not just best friends, but the best friends that have ever lived. When our heroes, Komaram Bheem (N.T. Rama Rao Jr.) and Alluri Sitarama Raju (Ram Charan) meet for the first time during an explosion on a bridge, they wordlessly decide from a half mile away to perform one of the most heroic rescues ever executed, all while swinging from a bridge waving an Indian flag. The big conflict of the film comes down to (of course) the goddamn British being assholes in the 1920s. And when some foppish fuckhead starts laying into Bheem about being an uncultured peasant, Raju steps in and the two clap back with one of the greatest dance sequences ever committed to film. It’s so undeniably great that the song they dance to become the first song from an Indian film to win Best Original Song at the Oscars. Raju is introduced as a soldier so badass he’s ordered to arrest one single dude who threw a rock during a full-scale riot, and then literally fights his way through a pissed-off crowd of thousands with nothing but a nightstick and his goddamn mustache. Bheem’s ultimate plan involves rescuing a kidnapped village girl with a full on assault on a British palace whereupon he unleashes a truck full of every single pissed-off forest animal he could trap onto the property. The money shot of that sequence would make Zack Snyder soil himself with awe. Don’t even get me started on the sequence they actually reference in Death Stranding 2 with that hologram up above. This is a fraction of the various glories RRR delivers on, all while still making good on being a fist-pumping story of the marginalized fighting their oppressors by any means necessary. The actual title is Rise, Roar, Revolt for a good god damn reason. Why are you not watching it right now, fool? Get out of here!
Honorable Mention: Baahubali: The Beginning and Baahubali: The Conclusion
Look, if RRR took that long to hype up, we’ll be here till next weekend running down the Baahubali flicks’ whole deal. We’ll keep this one nice and short. I’ll just say “Indian Lord of the Rings” and leave it to you to find out. And even the LoTR flicks didn’t have Aragorn doing a Van Damme split riding two flaming bulls into Helm’s Deep.
Oh, and in case you were wondering about Rajamouli’s Death Stranding 2 appearance, yes, that’s his actual stepson, S.S. Karthikeya, playing The Adventurer’s Son; yes, Karthikeya’s a director in his own right, he did second unit on Baahubali; yes, I got tired of saving The Adventurer’s ass up in the mountains too, for god’s sake, put an AirTag on that man or something.
Yusaku Matsumoto (The Architect) – Winny [2023]
Admittedly, Matsumoto was the director I knew the least about going into this article. Finding out about him wasn’t a particularly easy feat either, with Winny being the only one of his films available to stream in North America. Thankfully, Winny is a fascinating piece of work. The framework is easy to nail down as basically the story of Japan’s very own Napster/Limewire equivalent, but as opposed to going down the Social Network route of showing the new titans of Silicon Valley as antisocial children playing businessman, Winny is more about the actual trial, and a scathing indictment of the law enforcement response to the app’s success. It could use some of David Fincher’s flair for making dry procedurals feel energetic, but it’s still a riveting watch.
Honorable Mention: House of the Owl [2024]
One of Matsumoto’s only other directorial credits that’s readily available is actually a TV show currently on Hulu. It’s kind of a Japanese riff on Succession, except there’s less satire, since it’s not as much about the powerful patriarchs than it is the political schemer guiding their hands. It’s also slower and drier than Succession, but it’s rare to see this kind of show cross the Pacific in general, and Matsumoto’s style fits the material like a glove, so there’s still an interesting perspective to be found in here.
Kevin Ko (The Ghost Hunter) – Incantation [2022]
For much of its runtime, Incantation isn’t doing anything folks haven’t seen out of every other found footage horror flick this side of The Blair Witch Project. But the very beginning snaps you to attention regardless: a woman talking about perceptual illusions, and asking us, the audience, to remember a specific chant and a specific symbol. It’s mostly a slow burn possessed-child story for most of the time after that.
Thing is though, you might remember a little game called Devotion from a few years back, mostly famous for getting stomped out of existence by the Chinese government for the dumbest reason imaginable. That controversy sadly obscured the fact that Devotion was a completely unmooring sort of horror experience that relied on very specific Taiwanese religious symbology to emphasize something extraordinarily fucked up is going on. Incantation does much the same, using a lot of that same symbology, but taken even further into the realm of pure horror, made even worse by the found footage factor. The ambient score plays its hand a bit too much but when Incantation gets down to business, it’s still terrifying. The final stretch in particular, if you know what you’re seeing, is an all-timer of a blasphemous exclamation point on the whole thing. The film begs for a bit of patience, but it certainly earns it by the end. There’s absolutely a reason Ko is cast as a post-apocalyptic ghost hunter in Death Stranding 2.
Honorable Mention: A Choo [2020]
On the complete flipside of Incantation is a genuinely bizarre take on a superhero film. Actually, “superhero film” feels like the wrong description too. It’s a film taking place in a universe where superheroes exist, but it’s mostly a boxing movie about an orphan named EJ who falls in love with his best friend Hsien-Hsien at a young age and dedicates his life to being a good enough fighter to be able to protect her–despite her life very much moving on without him. It’s.very weird, kinda like a cruder, loopier version of Kick-Ass, and it doesn’t entirely work, but, it’s kind of a running pattern in Kevin Ko’s work that the ending will always pull it all together. And even as ridiculous as A Choo can be, the climax, connecting the course of EJ’s history to one lucky punch against a rogue supervillain, is pretty wonderful.
Mamoru Oshii (The Pizza Chef) – Ghost In The Shell [1995] / Ghost In The Shell: Innocence [2004]
Being a Millennial anime fan is a weird position to find yourself. I’m not “Speed Racer / Astro Boy on Saturday mornings” old, but I’m not “Naruto / Bleach on Toonami” or “Demon Slayer / Jujitsu Kaisen on Crunchyroll” young either. I am, specifically, “Project A-Ko and Demon City Shinjuku on the Sci-Fi Channel Annual Anime Festival” old. I am “Paying $50 to a dude in NYC for a bootleg VHS of Street Fighter: The Animated Movie recorded off a laserdisc” old. I am “Programming the VCR to record the one time Showtime will ever broadcast Dominion Tank Police at 2 am on a school night” old. My tastes in anime skew slightly off the pulse, is the point I’m getting to here.
And as such, it’s hard to say whether Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost In The Shell remains one of those immovable gargantuan touchstones of any otaku’s experience anymore (especially as more and weaker GTS adaptations keep happening, each of them taking another tiny step towards making Major Kusanagi into lolicon). The ‘95 film absolutely should be considered must-watch material, mind you. It’s still a stone cold masterpiece of animation, whose influence continues to worm its way through modern sci-fi to this very day. Kojima certainly recognizes that–it certainly helps that his ride-or-die mech designer Yoji Shinkawa worked on the original manga–but you don’t often hear about it in the same hushed tones you used to, compared to, say, One Piece. So, it’s also included here as a mandate and reminder that this is required viewing.
That said, if the original Ghost In The Shell film has fallen ever so gently out of the zeitgeist, its sequel still deserves to finally breach into it. Oshii had no interest in conforming to genre convention with Innocence, and not only does he take the iconic Major out of the equation–except as the metaphorical angel on the shoulder of World’s Greatest Cyborg Simp Batou–but drags GITS kicking and screaming into a philosophical ponderance of what artificial life has done to the nurturing part of the human mind, all centering around a series of brutal murders by supposedly-soulless gynoids all around the city.
There are still plenty of baser joys to recommend in there. There’s two absolute banger shootouts; there’s a Mobius Strip sequence in a “haunted” mansion that’s kind of a masterclass in fucking with the audience; Kenji Kawai’s score is incredible, especially the evolution of the opening credits theme; and just, sweet swaddling Jesus, the entire film is breathtakingly animated. There’s still very little in film as a medium as astonishing as the parade sequence intermission here. It’s just that it’s a film that demands more patience than folks who go in looking for flashy cyberpunk thrills have ever been ready for. But just maybe, as way too many of the technological nightmares in Oshii’s universe come to fruition, the world might want to take more notice of what he tried to say with Innocence.
Honorable Mention: Avalon (2002)
All that said, if you really want Mamoru Oshii reading the year 2025 for filth, Avalon predicted the entire rise of live-service gaming and its effects on human empathy and creativity. The film–shot and set in Poland, weirdly enough–posits the GaaS future as a land laid to waste because the generation best equipped to handle inequality can only really make a living–or, really, even function as human beings–in the confines of the world’s most popular MMO. This is the gamer dystopia Ernest Cline wishes Ready Player One was.
