"One of the scariest, most disturbing, and most beautifully shot films ever made, this was somewhat overlooked until recent years, and I’m glad it’s finally getting the reputation it deserves. It’s as much like actually experiencing someone’s nightmare as I can remember a film being. It blew me away when I first saw it on-screen (knowing nothing about it only added to its power), and I was so happy that Criterion gave us a beautiful transfer—which is the only way this film can really be appreciated."

"I saw this just recently—proof that you can still make huge discoveries and feel like a young cinephile again at fifty. This amazing film can be filed under “cinema as a beautiful, frightening hallucination,” and it includes a rare collection of anamorphically shot images of action and movement. This is also one of those special films that are hard to assign easy descriptions. One year later, 2001: A Space Odyssey came out. Very different movies, but similar in how unusual and thrilling their ideas of cinema are."

"I’ve watched this film many times to unravel its mysteries and have never succeeded. That’s part of its power. Though willfully irrational, the story is emotionally grounded in the love affair between the two women. This film contains so many others in its DNA (Persona, Rosemary’s Baby, etc.) but never in an obvious way. I admire the freedom of Lynch’s script, which I imagine was the result of a TV pilot script (with multiple subplots and B characters) getting jammed into the straitjacket of a feature, producing this improbable, beautiful hybrid."

"I watched “The Farewell” nearly too late to include it on this list, but thankfully was able to write in and add it at the last minute. I adored this film, not least for its beautiful simplicity. The camera work was gorgeous but never drew attention to itself, the writing was subtle yet smart and emotional, the acting honest and on point. I’ve read quite a few articles about this film and the challenges of getting it made and I’m so grateful it happened without compromises. More like this!!"

"I recently made a documentary about going to Moscow to try to help turn Everybody Loves Raymond into a Russian sitcom. And I had some problems. But this, this was nuts. It’s the ultimate nightmare and the wildest making-of movie. One of the all-time great metaphors for art, or life, dragging a steamship up and over a mountain was Fitzcarraldo’s burden. And so it was of the filmmaker, the great and possibly crazy Werner Herzog. Among the beautiful insights here are his rants against nature. That’s what keeps me inside watching movies."

"I would have picked Crooklyn but you guys haven’t put it out (yet), which I really do believe is one of Spike Lee’s most undervalued films. But Do the Right Thing had a similar influence on me growing up. It’s Brooklyn, it’s beautiful, it’s got a cast that is absolutely flawless—too many great performances to mention—and it was revolutionary and in-your-face. The cinematography by Ernest Dickerson is stunning and iconic. I felt so alive the first time I saw this film in high school and have in every subsequent viewing."

"Although any one of the recent godsend rush of Kurosawa releases could go in this slot. For years now this gem (and much of his filmography) has only been available for us poor Region 1 sods on crappy import discs, and though the broken English subtitles via a bad Chinese translation had a sometimes poetic dadaistic flair, it’s a relief to finally have a beautiful, intelligible disc of it. The film itself stands easily up to Stray Dog and High and Low as one of Kurosawa’s best contemporary crime dramas."

"Once Around is a beautiful movie. And it was funny, and it was moving, and it was great. The story itself, which is a true story, is such a remarkable — simple, but not simple — story about a woman who falls in love with a guy who is kind of socially unacceptable. He’s loud, and her family just thinks he’s chalk on a blackboard. It’s how they come to love him. Holly Hunter is fantastic. It’s actually quite a brilliant movie, and I’ve always been extremely proud of it."

"Porter accomplishes an extraordinary amount in a few pages. She addresses the horrors of war from a woman’s perspective; she touches on the difficult a terrain a working woman must navigate in a man’s world; she creates a desirable male, describing his physical allure from a female point of view: quite rare in most fiction. But most astonishing, in chronicling Miranda’s near death experience and her reluctant return to life, she describes the indescribable and deals with the most profound human issues: life, death, identity, in shatteringly beautiful prose."