"I'm a big John Waters fan and re-watched Pink Flamingos recently. I love his trashy unpredictability and child-like desire to shock at all costs. Divine is a cinema great. I was watching it with some people who I didn't know too well... it's a good way to find out if you're going to get on or not."

"Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: “A posh life!” [From the song “Posh!”] “Lullabye Bay.” [From the song “Hushabye Mountain”] Those songs that Dick Van Dyke (as Caractacus Potts) and his father (Lionel Jeffries, as Grandpa Potts) sang blew me away! I saw it as a child, and I watch it as an adult. I love that movie."

"I know this film may seem out of place on this list, but for pure entertainment it’s my favorite. As a child I got to see this in Cinerama. Criterion did an incredible job mastering it, and I love all the extras on the Blu-ray—especially the maps of locations in southern California where it was shot."

"Why did Constance Towers have such an abbreviated career in the movies? She’s wonderful in Sam Fuller’s perverse examination of perversity, launching the film by beating up her pimp (you might say she wigs out) and closing it by identifying a child molester through the revelation of his naked kiss. It’s a drunken tabloid party, almost absurdly brazen."

"I’m fascinated by the premise of Lessing’s horror story where the threat to survival is not external but literally inside the body and home of the protagonist. The moral quandary of raising a dangerous child is not one many of us will ever confront, but the painful struggle of this family is impossible to look away from."

"The dark lord of midnight movies. Lynch films are scary in a way that modern horror films seldom are. He talks directly to my inner child, to the nightmares of my seven-year-old self. It’s a singular cinematic experience. I remember watching this whenever it was on in London—Eraserhead and Blue Velvet . . . double bills . . . mmm."

"This book has fascinated me since I was a child. I’m always dipping into it and finding new things. Some of his Anglocentric conclusions date horribly, but the material gathered gives a magical insight into the people that have populated our planet and the rituals we observe. The illustrated edition was a later discovery and it’s an ethnographic treat."