"I’m gonna say Chinatown. That’s just great storytelling, acting, directing. I think Polanski’s an amazing director. It’s opera, you know. It’s the biggest issues. You can’t tell an epic without a big problem, and Chinatown is brilliant in the sense of Los Angeles history — the whole creation of the Valley, and the diversion of water to make the Valley. [Screenwriter] Robert Towne was able to take a very interesting historical fact — what’d he call it, Mulwray instead of Mulholland? — and tell this amazing personal story about it. I like that very much. I guess The Godfather is similar to that in many ways; obviously based on certain facts. I like that historical aspect to Chinatown as well."

"The first volume in the Neapolitan quartet, this one changes in the mind’s eye if you’re pulled, as I am, helplessly through the subsequent books, with its primal scenes from early childhood deepening throughout. Is there a better portrait of friendship in literature than the story of Elena Greco, the narrator, and her brilliant friend, Lila Cerullo? Elena escapes the old neighborhood, and the poverty of postwar Naples, through education, but Lila remains the incandescent figure. The tormented power of their relationship never flags, through “The Story of a New Name,” “Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay,” and the devastating “The Story of a Lost Child.” I hear the TV series is good. The books are a universe."

"Well I guess my first one has to be Withnail and I, the 1987 Bruce Robinson classic. You know, the plot is one that would get you laughed out of any Hollywood studio: Two unemployed actors go on a holiday, drinking, to one of their uncle’s cottages for the weekend; but it’s one of the most deeply rich, brilliant, tragicomic tales of male friendship. I actually remember seeing it when I was a kid, and walking out of the theater in London — and by the way, it did not do well at the time it was released; it was a tiny little film — but I remember thinking that I wanted to become a filmmaker after that."

"Speaking of Giorgio Moroder, you have to give it to the guy. What a brilliant team, him and Donna. From the very opening 'Once Upon A Time’, this is a kind of a mini-musical and completely sums up the studio 54 NYC disco era in one fell swoop. This record could actually turn a straight man gay - especially the trilogy 'Now I Need You', 'Working The Midnight Shift' and 'Queen For A Day' It must have cost an absolute fortune to record with all the brass and string arrangements, but this is Donna at her absolute post 'I Feel Love' best. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall."

"This isn't part of any phase in my life. I just heard it on Peel, and it had this "gathering of the tribes" time signature - not sure if that's true or not, but it's such a strange record. The delivery... the first line, "Saw her face in the window, it looks quite strange..." That's brilliant. And it's like an odd, surreal miniature. I don't know what it is that makes me like it so much. The chorus goes, "I just can't believe that looking over you, I find you appealing, but it seems that I do." That sums up the way I feel about the record. It's not a pretty record, but I love it."

"The story of singer Sally Bowles in the Weimar Republic, which came out late in 1972, into a very dreary Britain. I think of it as a glam-rock document, really: all those fantastic songs, confined to the stage, plus the brilliant makeup, in this frightening city. The notion of “divine decadence” was very intriguing when you were an 18-year-old student from Newcastle, recently arrived in London. It also had an impact on punk – look at Siouxsie Sioux: obviously influenced by Liza Minnelli. My friends and I would listen to the soundtrack in our Tottenham student flat, back-to-back with Lou Reed’s Transformer and Roxy Music’s second album. It had the same impact."

"To Be or Not to Be, Ernst Lubitsch’s World War II movie. To make a comedy about World War II in the middle of World War II is major league balls, and he pulls it off brilliantly. It’s Jack Benny and Carole Lombard. It’s her last film; she’s amazingly funny. And Benny does this great trick of playing the character in the film and yet getting laughs off what you know about the Jack Benny character from out of the movie, without ever disrupting the flow of the story. Just a brilliant movie. Really well worth studying for how to direct a serious comedy about a serious subject, and yet be really funny."

"I’m a big kid, I’m a kid at heart, so I still love the classic family films, such as the great Warner Bros film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory — not the remake, but the original. It’s still one of the best movies, hands down, ever made, and of course that goes back to the ingenuity of the characters and the storyline. [Producer] David Wolper did such an amazing job bringing it to life, and Gene Wilder gave such an amazing performance. The songs, the music, the colors, the scope — it was just brilliant and really lead you to a fantasy world that didn’t exist, but that we could all imagine was real."