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Boots Riley Reveals the Chaotic and Fun Films ‘I Love Boosters’ Lifts From in New Alamo Drafthouse Guest Selects [Exclusive]

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Eight years after his leap from making music with The Coup to directing with his absurdist black comedy Sorry to Bother You, the visionary Boots Riley is finally heading back to the big screen next month with a colorful cinematic statement. His next film, I Love Boosters, brings together bright outfits and clothing chaos as it follows a group of shoplifters known as the Velvet Gang who steal from a cutthroat fashion designer played by Demi Moore. Filled with crime, absurd comedy, and plenty of star power, it’s another bonkers effort from the artist, and Alamo Drafthouse is preparing to clear the runway for its arrival. With tickets on sale today, Collider is excited to exclusively share a new installment of the theater chain’s Guest Selects series, highlighting some of Riley’s greatest inspirations.

For a creator with as distinct a style as Riley, it’s unsurprising that he also has an eclectic mix of films that have shaped him and his latest film over the years. Leading off the list is Black Cat, White Cat, a 1988 romantic crime comedy helmed by acclaimed Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica. Above all else, for Riley, it’s just fun to watch, constantly presenting new things and keeping the chaos fresh with scenes, like one of a couple frolicking in a sunflower field, that stand among his favorites in cinematic history. He also cites Michel Gondry for shaping his surreal approach to filmmaking, particularly with the film Moon Indigo. The 2013 feature doesn’t just focus on execution, but gets inventive with its setpieces and costumes in a way that conveys just how fun it must’ve been to make.

Riley’s last three Guest Selects will all be screened at select Alamo Drafthouse locations across the U.S. starting next week as appetizers before I Love Boosters arrives. Among those is the surreal fantasy Holy Motors by Leos Carax, which the director loved for its ability to surprise him with what it actually is at its heart. A stellar Denis Lavant performance helped make the piece all the more mind-blowing for him. Riley also highlights Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, which he believes is Paul Schrader‘s best film, for how it marries three distinct visual styles and makes a statement about art and action. Last but not least is Jacques Tati‘s Playtime, a mostly dialogue-less film that has directly inspired the multi-hyphenate’s sense of physical comedy. The use of space, long-takes, and architecture to make painstakingly crafted humor that Riley is “delighted” to share with more viewers.

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Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz
Which Oscar Best Picture
Is Your Perfect Movie?

Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country

Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.

🪜Parasite

🌀Everything Everywhere

☢️Oppenheimer

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🐦Birdman

🪙No Country for Old Men

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01

What kind of film experience do you actually want?
The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.





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02

Which idea grabs you most in a film?
Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?





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03

How do you like your story told?
Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.





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04

What makes a truly great antagonist?
The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?





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05

What do you want from a film’s ending?
The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?





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06

Which setting pulls you in most?
Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.





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07

What cinematic craft impresses you most?
Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.





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08

What kind of main character do you root for?
The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.





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09

How do you feel about a film that takes its time?
Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.





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10

What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema?
The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?





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The Academy Has Decided
Your Perfect Film Is…

Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.

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Parasite

You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.

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Everything Everywhere All at Once

You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.

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Oppenheimer

You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.

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Birdman

You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.

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No Country for Old Men

You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.

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Critics Are in Love With ‘I Love Boosters’

Accompanying Riley in his return to theaters is a stacked roster, including a couple of familiar faces from his last cinematic outing. Keke Palmer leads the film alongside Moore, Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, Poppy Liu, Eiza González, LaKeith Stanfield, Will Poulter, and Don Cheadle. Between the star power, Riley’s colorful chaos as both a writer and director, and a timely message about workers’ rights against the leaders of a capitalist society, I Love Boosters won over critics at its SXSW debut earlier this year, earning a 94% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Collider’s Ross Bonaime similarly lauded it in his 8/10 review, saying, “I Love Boosters is an adventure unlike anything you’ve ever seen before, proof that Boots Riley is one of our most adventurous filmmakers, and a film that feels essential in 2026.”

Tickets are now on sale to see I Love Boosters at Alamo Drafthouse on May 22. Check out the exclusive new Guest Selects video in the player above.


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Release Date

May 22, 2026

Runtime

113 minutes

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Director

Boots Riley

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Writers

Boots Riley

Producers
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Aaron Ryder, Allison Rose Carter, Jon Read, Andrew Swett, Boots Riley

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