"If I were stuck on a desert island, I’d find it hard to let go of this record! It encapsulates every part of the perfect beauty of classical music, particularly Bach, yet it uses that with electronic synthesiser. It’s a totally new world, bringing the future and I think it’s fantastic. It also featured on A Clockwork Orange, which featured the 9th Symphony by Beethoven and is also one of my all-time favourite records. But that wasn’t on Switched On Bach, so I had to source the origin of that later."

"I just finished editing my new movie and I basically haven’t slowed down since the shoot in August, so I’m playing catch up on a ton of things I missed. This film has stuck with me like crazy. I’m trying to find some normalcy in life again and writing ideas for a new movie in my note pad, spending time with my girlfriend, and taking care of my cats. I think there is inspiration and beauty in so many small things all around us… This movie has latched on to me and hasn’t let go."

"When I became a film academic in the 1980s, I was allocated a class through which I discovered silent (or rather non-sync-sound) films. I had never appreciated the extraordinary beauty of this cinema and, most of all, I loved films of the very late twenties, made on the cusp of the transition—for instance, Josef von Sternberg’s Underworld and The Docks of New York. People on Sunday is an amazing film document of Berlin just before the Nazis came to power, and is also a “young modern woman” film."

"It’s a piece that Messiaen wrote when he was in a concentration camp. It’s very spiritual, and that’s one of the things that’s so interesting about it. The fact that he was in such a terrible environment and could create music of such beauty is pretty remarkable. I’m a big fan of Messiaen for his use of textures and colors. He’s like a lot of film composers in that you can really see his music; he creates a landscape of sound and uses unusual tones and instruments to tell a story."

"Cronenberg is a genius. He reinvented genre filmmaking, giving it the depth of the most ambitious fiction. This truly visionary work must be one of his masterpieces. When it was released, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I couldn’t believe a filmmaker could have not just captured the very soul of our present, or its hidden meaning, but also found its poetry, the mysterious beauty of it. eXistenZ, shot fifteen years later in a very different world, echoes it in fascinating ways. I consider David Cronenberg to be one of the great modern artists."

"Stripped to the bone, as sharp and lucent and alarming as a piece of broken crystal. An Englishwoman who has always depended on men to stay alive is older now and discarded. She has returned to Paris, which is as close as home to her as a place has been, but she no longer retains her one reliable resource, beauty. The intensity of her alienated helplessness renders with spectral clarity her memories and her precarious daily life in the city that no longer wishes to make room for her."

"A powerful journey through despair and silence. A magnificent reflection on death and the meaning of life, as well as the ways life sometimes unveils its beauty—by, say, the taste of cherries that have fallen from a tree, a tree shaken by a man who was planning to hang himself on one of its branches but who remembered, when savoring these wild berries, that life is worth living. Long single takes, car scenes (for which Kiarostami is famous, and rightfully so). A gem. Must see. Now, please."