Charli XCX just gave us a glimpse into her film appreciation during an appearance on the Lipps Service podcast, sharing five underrated movies that clearly influence her creative vision. Her picks span multiple acclaimed directors and genres, showcasing someone who thinks seriously about cinema. Robert Altman’s Prêt-à-Porter gets praise for its incredible cast and fashion focus, while Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring earns recognition as a generational time capsule that “gets better and better with age.” She even defends M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening as genuinely entertaining and unfairly dismissed, calls Nicolas Cage’s performance in Bringing Out the Dead “amazing,” and includes David Lynch’s quirky The Straight Story about a man traveling by lawn mower.

What makes Charli’s film taste compelling is how she talks about these movies without sounding pretentious or gatekeeping. She appreciates them for their entertainment value, their cultural relevance, and their artistic merit equally. The Bling Ring gets her attention partly because it captures a specific era so perfectly, while The Happening succeeds simply by being “very fun.” This approach shows she’s consuming cinema actively rather than passively, thinking about what these films do and how they work.

The timing of these recommendations matters too, especially with her new album ‘Music, Fashion, Film’ dropping today and her North American tour beginning at the end of July. You can tell film is genuinely fueling her creativity right now, and her recommendations are worth exploring if you want to understand the artistic influences shaping her work. So which of these underrated films are you planning to watch first?