Your quarantine to-watch list, as recommended by Guillermo Del Toro, Taika Waititi, Ari Aster, Edgar Wright and more

With news of the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) being extended until May 15 in selected areas, many of us will continue to spend every waking moment indoors. Worldwide, it seems like many other countries are going down the same route.

There’s a small silver lining to the lockdown, though: Media-shy creatives like Guillermo Del Toro are becoming active again on social media and interacting with the public. Cue an “Earth is healing” joke here.

We will be here a little bit and the first few questions are: What are you reading? What are you watching? What are you listening to? And How many days have you been indoors?

— Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) April 20, 2020

Case in point: The writer-director started a recommendation thread of shows that he and his colleagues are currently enjoying during quarantine. If it’s approved by these cinematic masters, then it’s definitely worth a watch in our book.

Ari Aster

Still from “Reds” (1981)

Is watching (film): Reds, Jacques Tati films

Is watching (shows): Sopranos (season 3), Scenes from a Marriage (series)

Ava DuVernay

Still from “Belly” (1998)

Is watching (film): Belly

Brad Bird

Is reading: The Wright Brothers by David McCullough

Darren Aronofsky

Still from “Barton Fink” (1991)

Is watching: Barton Fink, Amélie, Rashoman, Total Recall (original)

Is reading: Thoreau Walden and Pablo Neruda books

Is listening to: KMLN, Franz Schubert

Edgar Wright

Still from “Idiocracy” (2006)

Is watching (films): 49th Parallel, One Of Our Aircraft Is Missing, Ministry Of Fear, This Happy Breed, Rome Open City, Paisan, Germany Year Zero, It Always Rains On Sunday, The Small Back Room, Le Silence De La Mer, Late Spring, Umberto D, The Cruel Sea, Ice Cold In Alex, Judgement At Nuremberg, The Train, The War Game, The Battle Of Algiers, Shame (Bergman), Army Of Shadows, Being There, Idiocracy, Duck Soup

Guillermo del Toro

Still from “Death Takes a Holiday” (1934)

Is watching (films): Easy Living, Death Takes a Holiday, Midnight, Hold Back the Dawn

Isaac Ezban

Still from “The Devil’s Backbone” (2001)

Is watching (films): The Others, Hereditary, Sinister, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Devil’s Backbone, Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark, The Witch, The Conjuring, Angel Heart

Is watching (shows): Hunters, Zero Zero Zero, Tales from the Loop, Westworld, The Outsider, Dracula, Better Call Saul, Unorthodox

Is reading: Full Throttle by Joe Hill, Antkind by Charlie Kaufman, Rucrusion by Blake Crouch

Issa Lopez

Still from the “Babylon Berlin” series

Is watching (shows): Fosse/Verdon, Fosse’s Cabaret, Sweet Charity, Babylon Berlin, Deutschland ’83

Is reading: Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor, My Favorite Thing is Monsters, by Emil Ferris. And Harrow County, by Cullen Bunn

JA Bayona

Still from “Foreign Correspondent” (1940)

Is watching (films): Carrie, Silence of the Lambs, Nightmare on Elm Street, Evil Dead, Scream, Poltergeist, Psycho I & II, Clayton’s The Innocents, Welles’s The Stranger, Truffaut’s Argent de Poche, Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent & Rebeca, Weir’s The Last Wave and Dead Poets Society, Fleming’s Captain Courageous

James Gunn

Still from the “Patriot” series

Is watching (show): Patriot

James Mangold

Still from “Ugetsu” (1953)

Is watching (films): Red Desert, Ugetsu (also an Ari Aster recommendation)

Jorge R. Gutierrez

Still from “The Way of the Dragon” (1972)

Is watching (films): Enamorada, Operation Dragon, Fists of Fury, The Big Boss, Goodbye Bruce Lee: His Last, Game of Death

Lexi Alexander

Still from “Topkapi” (1964)

Is watching (film): Topkapi

Peter Ramsey

Is reading: Cartel Trilogy by Don Winslow, Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson by Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean, Conclusions by John Boorman, This Storm by James Ellroy