"I think I’ll probably have to go to from Seventh Seal to Seven Samurai. With Kurosawa using the tracking shots, the way he… the energy, just the kinetic energy on screen was amazing, especially with Japanese-style acting, which is very structured and very formalized, which then breaks out, and you’re slashing somebody in half. That is pure filmmaking. I just thought, “It’s just beautiful.” Again, another movie that’s about texture, and it’s a very different texture than you get growing up in America. That began my love affair with things Japanese."

"I wanted to write songs before I wanted to be in a band, and first started when I was 14 with my friend Andrew. We were both into Fleetwood Mac at a time when they were the most unfashionable band around. This Peter Green song is great. It’s got an amazing riff and the lyrics are: “I can’t help about the shape I’m in/ I can’t sing/, I ain’t pretty and my legs are thin’ – I thought, ‘Wow that’s me! If he can do that, I can do that!"

"There are lots of amazing Muppet Christmas movies, but none come to close to touching the heart of this scrappy little story of a young otter who just wants his mom to have what she wants for the holidays. Henson presents poverty without pandering, no small feat for a made-for-TV puppet show. In its own way, it’s a beautiful retelling of O. Henry’s Gift of the Magi. The talent show at the end has some of Henson’s funniest gags ever. And what exactly are those squirrels doing?"

"I loved The Big Short because it took a great approach to explaining the financial crisis to even someone who knew nothing about it. An all-star cast got together, and the movie was just done fantastically. The moments they broke the fourth wall were just amazing, to explain finance, which is really simple when you strip it down, but finance folks keep it complicated so no one gets it. Man, if society goes through that again, they just didn’t watch that. You can learn something from that movie."

"The Lives of Others would go in there. It’s just an amazing movie. And then he went and did The Tourist, which, I think, got a 20 percent rating on your site. We look at your website quite a lot. But, [The Lives of Others] was just a beautiful film. So many great movies coming out of Germany, like… Well, The Reader was a Stephen Daldry film, but it was all about coming to terms with their past. And also, Downfall was as well. God, I could continue forever because I love movies."

"In college, I took a poetry class with Jorie Graham, an amazing poet. She directed me to Hass, and his stuff moved me so much. His writing is very American, spare, clean. And manly. There’s a ruggedness to his poems. One in particular I’ve always loved is called ‘Dragonflies Mating.’ It combines a sense of abandonment in childhood with natural images. I don’t even know exactly what it means, but I think that’s what poetry does—it evokes all these feelings without our really understanding why or how it’s done."

"I really loved The Wiz with Diana Ross and Michael Jackson. I remember hearing that Stephanie Mills, who played the part of Dorothy on Broadway, wound up not getting the part. They had to change a lot of the details for the story to make sense for Diana Ross — that’s what got me interested to go see it. And then to see Michael and all the other stars in it. It was also really amazing how they transformed New York City into the fantasy world of an urban Oz."

"This is one of my favorite films. The way that Louis Malle shoots Jeanne Moreau—those are some of the most beautiful walking scenes I’ve seen. She’s walking in the rain with her head held high, lost in herself, mumbling, and with that amazing score being played by Miles Davis. There is something so modern about the film, and it feels like it opens so many doors. When I was making A Fantastic Woman, I was trying to get a little bit closer to the elegant approach that Malle used to capture Moreau’s presence."

"And then, another film that’s kind of out of this realm again: I really love Coppola’s Dracula. I just love it. I love the way it was made, how operatic it is. The production design — the production value — on that movie is so amazing. It’s just such a gorgeous, sumptuous movie to watch. And I think at the time that I saw it, I totally fell in love with Gary Oldman. I think I was 13 or 14, and it made me an Oldman fan for life. He’s incredible."

"Hey let’s lighten it up a bit shall we? This isn’t even my favorite Albert Brooks movie (that would be the amazing and prescient Real Life) but this is the funniest. Maybe one of the funniest movies ever. I’m not going to try to give written down examples as they will lose a great deal in that process. Just please go get it and watch it. The scene where he takes the Valium and then has to deal with a couple of — f**k it, trust me, every scene is funny and smart."