"Then The Graduate. It’s just one of the greatest comedies of all time. The way Dustin Hoffman is… You know, I guess that was his first big break and he just blew me away when I first saw that. Extraordinary performance, and you know, Mike Nichols. Just amazing, the way it’s shot; it’s just absolutely beautiful. And also, an incredible, quirky kind of love story."

"This is an absolutely glorious film. I adore Juliette Binoche and have had very confusing feelings in my tummy about her ever since I saw the The Unbearable Lightness Of Being. She is amazing in this film and it’s a really heartbreaking tale of loss and hurt. The scene where she water-skis up the Seine is one of my favorite spectacles in all of cinema."

"The Thin Red Line is extraordinary. It’s war seen from the POV of God or something. There’s a spirituality that you don’t see in a lot of war films. The battle for the hill is amazing. Ben Chaplin receiving the letter from his wife is heartbreaking. And the music is great. I was so happy Terrence Malick decided to make another movie after twenty years."

"There’s a film called Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring. I saw it at the Angelika on my birthday in New York, maybe ten years ago? It never left me — it’s such a good film. It’s tremendous and beautiful. There’s like twelve words in the whole thing. It’s about a floating monastery in the middle of a lake. There’s like three people in it. That was amazing."

"“I don’t know what it is about it, but I just love Whoopi Goldberg. She’s amazing – every role that she does, she’s so underestimated and underrated. When she’s given a script she always goes through as a black woman and asks for things to be changed if they’re not accurate to life. And I love the idea of nuns running around and going wild.”"

"I saw Great Expectations when I was maybe five or six years old. I actually don’t remember it as being an amazing movie, but it affected me very much. These characters, like Miss Havisham and the bandit, are etched into my mind. It’s very different from the costume dramas that are made nowadays because this actually has an authentic feel and some kind of primitiveness to it."

"I adore melodrama. All That Heaven Allows and Written on the Wind are movies that I learned so much from. The trick for me is: how can you create something so beautiful, with such amazing mise en scène, color, and composition, and also talk about something profound? Sirk’s films grab viewers in an oblique way by getting through their hearts, not through their minds."

"I adore melodrama. All That Heaven Allows and Written on the Wind are movies that I learned so much from. The trick for me is: how can you create something so beautiful, with such amazing mise en scène, color, and composition, and also talk about something profound? Sirk’s films grab viewers in an oblique way by getting through their hearts, not through their minds."