Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson's favourite films - 4 is a gangster classic

Few filmmakers in modern cinema have inspired quite the level of awe as Peter Jackson. From his humble beginnings making splatter comedies in New Zealand, to reshaping the fantasy landscape with The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Jackson has long been open about the films that shaped him.

In a 2009 interview with Rotten Tomatoes while promoting The Lovely Bones, he sat down to name his five favourite films of all time. Here, we list them, along with his commentary for each.

It's perhaps no surprise that Jackson's list begins with King Kong. The original RKO classic, directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, is one of the defining spectacles of early cinema.

A tale of beauty and the beast, the film follows adventurers to a mysterious island, where they discover a gigantic ape who ultimately meets his fate on the skyscrapers of New York.

It was the film that sparked Jackson's dream of filmmaking, and in 2005, he paid the ultimate tribute with his own big-budget remake.

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Set largely in a shopping mall under siege by the undead, Dawn of the Dead combined social commentary with extreme gore, creating an allegory about consumer culture as hordes of zombies shambled through brightly lit department stores.

Jackson's early films - from Bad Taste to Braindead (Dead Alive in the US) - gleefully combined outrageous violence with an absurdist sense of humour, much in Romero's spirit.

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Though a box office disappointment in its day, The General is now considered one of the greatest comedies ever made - a masterpiece of timing, physical stunts, and technical innovation.

Keaton performs jaw-dropping feats atop speeding trains without the aid of special effects, a kind of raw cinema that Jackson admires.

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"That's a movie that I always see when I feel that my imagination is kind of stuck and trapped, and I can't think of a way forward. I watch Goodfellas and suddenly it frees me up entirely; it reminds me of what great film directing is all about."

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Steven Spielberg's 1975 thriller about a man-eating shark terrorising a small beach town practically invented the modern summer blockbuster, joining character-driven suspense with pulse-pounding set pieces. Spielberg's handling of suspense, from the ominous John Williams score to the shark's delayed reveal, set the gold standard.

"It was the start of the summer blockbuster, it was the beginning of an entire genre of filmmaking and obviously the beginning, in some respects, of Steven Spielberg's career. I think Jaws is a remarkable film."

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