"I saw Le samouraï for the first time at Cinema 21 in Portland, Oregon, when I was a teenager. The main reason I went was because of an ad in the alternative weekly that said it was John Woo’s favorite movie (which meant a lot to me when I was sixteen). Over the last twenty or so years I have enjoyed it for many reasons: Alain Delon’s embodiment of cool, its evocation of 1960s Paris, its melancholy reflection on self-sufficiency and isolation."

"Steven Soderbergh totally rocks. He is the bravest, smartest, most original filmmaker in the U.S. today. I don’t like all his films, but I not only like but admire most of them; and even in his minor work there is still more genuine love and understanding of cinema than in the most accomplished works of some others. Che, the one movie ever made that seriously deals with military strategy, helped me imagine Carlos on a scale that otherwise would have intimidated me."

"I love this movie and its revisionist style and its radical politics, but most importantly there is no more punk-rock move in cinema history than having the opening credits be the checks that you’re writing to the cast and crew. Godard—the rich-kid film nerd to end all rich-kid film nerds—gets the machinations of the motion picture “industry” better than any of us. Contempt is masterful, Weekend is a lark, Tout va bien burns everything to the ground."

"Train Station Fight Hero fights with two people are the most fun to choreograph and probably also the most entertaining to watch. This film was a long time in the making – almost three years. The actors trained hard to learn martial arts and it all shows in this scene. Zhang Ziyi’s bagua and Max Zhang’s xingyi are on full display and we incorporated the best moves from each style. It was the perfect culmination of martial arts, hard work, and cinema."

"Few films have ever satiated my appetite for an experience of pure cinema the way Cul-de-sac did the first night I watched it. It’s a film that doesn’t strictly belong to any one genre but dances between thriller, psychological horror, and comedy. One of my favorite actors, the hugely undervalued Donald Pleasence, turns in a career-best performance as a highly pedantic, sexually frustrated, oddball English husband, while his fiery young French wife is played with dangerous irresistibility by Françoise Dorléac."