"High and Low is my personal favorite Kurosawa movie. I love everything about it: the chamber piece of the first half, the sprawling police hunt that follows, the fact that Toshiro Mifune’s character is so committed to making high-quality women’s shoes. And there are so many great moments throughout: the pink smoke, the train sequence, the amazing ending scene. I find it so stunning and effective, and I love the way the film gets at themes of class and social inequality in the form of such an exciting procedural crime thriller."

"I like The King of Comedy by Scorsese. I like that one. It makes me laugh a lot. I think it’s very funny. I mean, I like the combination, the trio of Robert De Niro, Jerry Lewis and Sandra Bernhard; that’s just one of my favorite trios in a movie. The three of them had a pretty amazing chemistry, I thought. I’ve heard that Scorsese was reluctant to make it, that it was on the shelf for a while; I guess that makes me appreciate it even more."

"The remaining three are films that I just feel are nearly perfect. The Graduate, from top to bottom, visually, sonically, performance-wise, the energy, and the time when it came out, and what it represented – that whole Holden Caufield sort of aspect to it. I think the music, obviously; there are very few films where the music has been so married to the actual film itself, and I love that about The Graduate. It seems like that’s the way it always should have been. It’s just amazing to me how perfectly it complements the film."