Michael Mann lists his favorite movies, which includes Avatar

Michael Mann’s Ferrari has raced onto screens this holiday season. The director enjoyed his time working with his star Adam Driver and will even work with him again on his next film, Heat 2. Ferrari garnered a 74% critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes with our own Chris Bumbray saying in his review, “While I assume Mann might have originally planned a more ambitious, sprawling Ferrari biopic, I’m not sure that one was needed. This does the trick pretty well, with it also, as usual for the director, impeccably shot. It’s a very enjoyable, entertaining look at one of the most important names in 20th-century automobiles and an often thrilling depiction of just how dangerous a sport of auto racing can be.” You can read the rest of his review HERE.

While Mann’s more recent projects have been hit-or-miss by many, the director has established his own prolific career with movies like Heat and The Last of the Mohicans. Recently, Mann would give praise to director James Cameron when he would list 2009’s Avatar as one of his top four favorite films. ComingSoon reports that Mann listed the 3D action sci-fi epic along with 1925’s Battleship Potemkin, 1950’s The Asphalt Jungle, and 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey when being interviewed by Letterboxd.

Previously, the Ferrari director marveled at James Cameron’s film when listing his ten favorite movies for the 2012 Sight & Sound Poll. When writing out his list, Mann stated, “Upon the foundation of an entirely invented biosystem, Avatar is a brilliant synthesis of mythic tropes, with debts to Lévi-Strauss and Frazier’s The Golden Bough. It soars because, simply, it stones and transports you.”

While Avatar and the sequel, The Way of Water, join Cameron’s Titanic in exceeding three hours, Mann recently spoke about how he aimed not to give Ferrari a lengthy runtime. Mann explained, “I wouldn’t have been interested in some lengthy biopic. Those are documentaries that belong on the History Channel. They never work. And within this four-month period, all the dynamic forces of Enzo’s life are compacted and in collision.”