"You know, I would pick Jim Cameron’s picture, Avatar, as a fifth. It’s the only new picture, I think, that can be up there in that group. Jim Cameron, one of our graduates — who started making low-budget science fiction pictures for us — went and jumped ahead and here’s Avatar, the most expensive science fiction picture ever made. Jim’s a technical genius, and the fact that he single-handedly brought back 3D — which had been up there, in and out a few times; in the ’50s and then forgotten — and he used it beautifully and sensitively. So many times when a director’s working with 3D you have the shot of the arrow coming out of the screen, shooting straight at the audience, and effects like that; he deliberately stayed away from that type of effect and just showed you the 3D world. And the use of computer graphics, green screen, motion capture and so forth for the blue-skinned people on the planet — I just thought it all came together as a brilliant film, both technically, in the way he used 3D, and in the beauty of the picture itself."

"Another all-time favorite would be Cuckoo’s Nest, which was particularly interesting from my perspective because a year or so before the film came out, I had seen the play. I was in college, and I was studying music. I wasn’t into acting or theater or any of that at the time, but a friend of mine was in the play, in a little black box production of the play at the theater department at the University of Montana where I studied music. And I went to see it, and it was, in many ways, an interestingly cast production, but it was brilliant. It was one of the first pieces of theater I saw that had that, you know, that real raw kind of Steppenwolf vibe that really blew me away. So when the movie came out, I kinda felt like, “You know, I don’t think I want to see this movie,” because the play was really so well done. But then I saw the movie, and obviously, [director Milos] Forman and the entire cast, down to people that didn’t even speak on camera, that movie was just so wonderfully done."

"Photek is moody, it really got me. The title track 'Modus Operandi' was fucking good, the tension, then the first four tracks are really good. It reminded me of CCTV, it caught the atmosphere of this emerging new world coming out the ashes, this refined capitalism, the greed of Britpop at the end of the 90s when things were becoming more intense. Very claustrophobic. They kind of merge, this album and Red Snapper. I used to like getting absolutely walloped after a gig and putting it on, fucking yeah. I was in a sort of Terry Callier type act at the time. He's fucking brilliant - he died about four years ago. That stuff doesn't make the list because it didn't influence the structure of Sleafords really, the kind of music I wanted for it or the vocal. At that time, I only really listened to jungle or drum and bass at home. I was never into those nights, fuck that, no way, I wasn't interested. By that time bar culture had come along and I liked to sit around doing lots of sniff, you know. Sit around, soaking it all in, looking like a tit, you know."

"I always defend this movie. Some people hate it. I love it, although I am not in a rush to watch the first half again… There is a scene near the end of the film where it is just Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel lounging around their apartment. One of those lazy days you have with a partner. They were a real life couple and that chemistry shoots through to the film. You can tell they are madly in love. I always break into tears at this moment. It puts everything you’ve seen prior into heartbreaking context. The film is a tragedy told in reverse. I think it’s brilliant because by the design of its structure, it makes you think about the tragedy more than if you were just experiencing it in chronological order. Instead of getting to the end of the film and rooting for our protagonist to bash this guys head in, we get to the end of the film and think about how pointless all that pain and violence was and how heartbreaking it is that the violence destroyed this pure love."

"It was great times, I was living in London. Actually, I should probably temper that. It was shit times, but there were one or two great times, it would have been like 2001, living London, having no money. I was working in shitty, office temping jobs, typing numbers in to computers, it was soul destroying and, in the evenings, we’d rehearse but I lived for the weekend. I remember that album came out and there hadn’t been any albums that had come out that had grabbed me that had the combination of being real songs that you could dance to, almost like house music dancing. Around that time, I was taking so much ecstasy and every weekend I’d take a couple of pills and go dancing. That album was a perfect companion for those times. I remember going to see them on my birthday at the Astoria or somewhere like that, and just having such a wicked time. These days I just don’t have the energy to go out dancing, but I loved it, it was truly brilliant. For me it’s still the greatest dance record that I know of."

"The whole [Godfather] series was brilliant. I loved all three of them. But my favorite was number two. I thought it was extraordinarily shot. I think the way Francis Coppola puts these incredible stories together where he has the juxtaposition of having people be killed while this incredible symphonic music is playing and some opera is taking place — it’s all an opera. I think the whole Godfather series is like one magnificent opera. I just think it’s one of the great movies of the century — since film making. I think he is a genius. I think he just captured the passion and the anger and the ignorance of the whole world of the Mafia, and what that meant — the Black Hand. He glamorized them in a way that made us want to know them, be there, experience it — even though it speaks of great danger. But there was something so enticing about their world, that whole world. And the people were such rich studies of character. Robert De Niro was the greatest he’d ever been, and of course, Pacino. Those performances – every single performance was genius. I loved the films. I even like the third one."

"I saw this at Helsinki’s Love and Anarchy Film Festival, only missed the beginning of the film, and had to leave early to present my own film at another cinema. This was just a great debut. Really stripped down and honest without the frills and trappings that often come with first film insecurity. I was completely immersed in the couple’s predicament and to my shameful ignorance, there was so much I didn’t know about IVF prior to seeing the film. I’d only seen Josh O’Connor in “God’s Own Country,” but he was just as believable and brilliant in “Only You,” and Laia Costa completely pulled me into the depths of her frustrations. It was also great to see not only a European character in a British film, but also a European played by a European rather than a Brit putting on an accent, which is still often the case. I wonder how that will pan out after Brexit. I had to leave the cinema when the protagonists had a row towards its final minutes and still don’t know or want to know how it ended until I watch it again."

"A fierce elegy to Britain’s past glories, this is a film to see again and again, if only because of Alec Guinness’s bold and vivid portrait of a rapidly tarnishing military hero. I am attached to it because I spent some of my two years’ service in the Royal Air Force at the Joint Services School for Linguists in Bodmin, Cornwall, not only with Navy and Royal Marines types but with soldiers from the endless list of British Army regiments, each with its fiercely prized individual identity, history, peculiarities of uniform, and traditions. No soldiers were more clanny or inbred than those of the fabled Scottish (kilted) Highland regiments, like the Black Watch, the Argyll & Sutherlands, or the Cameronians. The regiment in Tunes of Glory is like one of those, a small, enclosed world, and in it the rivalry between the brash and heroic young colonel and his replacement leads to a sad and messy tragedy. It is one of those brilliant “little” films that almost reaches greatness, and it remains, along with The Hill and Zulu, one of the iconic films about the British Army."