"I love all of Nick Cave's albums, but this was the first one that I got. It’s very powerful and confrontational, and it’s even a little ugly at times. “His lyrics are always so beautiful, even when he’s singing about things that are quite violent. This record got me into the Bad Seeds, and I became a very big fan of theirs, as well. Nick is brilliant."

"I love Being There, it’s one of my favorite movies — with Peter Sellers, who I thought was brilliant. I love how underplayed but so incredibly funny it was, you know… dry. [Laughs] There’s something wonderful about the misconceptions [about the main character] that create the simplicity of all of it. The misconceptions create a simplicity which then creates this aura. I love that movie."

"Family, generations, hero worship, a classic American landscape and anti hero… Paul Newman, a lead with no arc. A bastard, an ass, a great character who never wavers in his ornery and despicable ways, yet I loved him. Great example of how brilliant drama can happen even if the lead character never changes. P.S. – Patricia Neal, “You want an orange? I’ll peel it for ya.” Wow."

"Love in the Time of Cholera is not a love story, but more a treatise on the subject of love in all its many forms. Márquez’s brilliant storytelling here is a joy, transforming the mundane realities of a long marriage into moments to be savored and relished. The intimate discoveries and daily bonds of marriage are at once thoroughly human, relatable, as well as spiritually transcendent.​"

"Having now seen it about ten times, I'm convinced that Andrew Haigh's brilliant ghost story is one of the best films I've ever seen. It also has one of the most perfect final shots in all of cinema. Pair this one with the also-perfect The Age of Innocence (1993) (which serves as the opposite side of the same thematic coin) for a pummeling double feature."

"This book is the best insight into unknowable Russia, a country I’ve been fascinated by since I studied its language and literature at school and university. It’s the pretend biography of a real-life Russian contrarian, poet, politician, anti hero and punk, Edward Limonov, whose life has shadowed Putin’s and who is now one of Putin’s biggest apologists. It’s a totally brilliant, badass book."

"Yes, that was a brilliant film. I particularly liked Elizabeth Banks in it, she was great. And it also relates a bit to what I'm doing now – I moved back to Los Angeles and made this new album, and I think half of the songs were recorded in the studio where Pet Sounds was made. So I'm just very much part of that tradition."

"Brilliant melody. Lovely, swishy swashy song. Again, the lyrics are a bit cheesy, and sometimes you get the impression with Axl Rose that there's a really American 80s high school drama thing going on. All my mates were sucked into those Molly Ringwald films. We were all brought up on them, and some of the lyrics remind me of that. It's a really good tune."