"Simple storytelling at its best, character driven, beautiful and cinematic. The ending of that movie, if you’re not feeling good and your heart’s not twisted up and then melted back together then, I mean, I dunno, you don’t have a heartbeat. It’s one of the best feelings walking away from a piece of cinema. It’s all chalked up to really great characters. A really simple story, really. And that’s why I really enjoy it. It’s a beautifully… it’s a masterpiece. It’s a masterpiece of filmmaking in its simplicity. Its characters are lovely and tormented and flawed and beautiful and heroic. And I, again, love the themes of it."

"I guess because Werner Herzog might be the coolest man in the world. I like how he inserts himself into all of his stories. I’m a big fan of, I guess, “direct” cinema, but I don’t believe that a documentarian has to be a fly on the wall. That would be dull. I would listen to Herzog read anything. He could read the yellow pages. [On the influence of Herzog on Catfish] I guess just the basic instinct on our part just to be in our own films, to be a cameraman and a voice behind the camera and perhaps a character at times. We definitely get that from Herzog."

"I have been collecting Criterion Collection DVDs almost as long as I have owned a DVD player,” writes Alex Ross Perry, the director of Impolex (2009), The Color Wheel (2011), and Listen Up Philip (2014). “These are not my top ten favorite films in the Criterion Collection but my top ten favorite Criterion Collection DVD purchases. This is virtually impossible. My entire apartment has pockets of Criterion DVDs everywhere, and I am forced to just go with my gut and pick ten that shaped my ideas of cinema, meant a lot to me, and I can’t imagine not owning and having access to whenever I desire"

"The films that really changed my life were all the films made by Charlie Chaplin. Films like The Gold Rush. They were silent films, they were black and white. As a kid, I would just completely get mesmerized with every aspect of cinema. That kind of magic I’d never yet seen, the magic Charlie Chaplin created on screen — in terms of performances, in terms of technique, in terms of innocence, in terms of purity. I would wonder, “Is there anyone in the world who can match this?” I would see other films, and I’d think, “No, this guy is a real genius.” He makes me smile. And sometimes he moves me."

"Still with the Italians, I’m sorry! With many things in life you’re there because there’s a cute girl around that you want to go out with and you end up finding magic. You end up not caring about the girl but wanting to stay there because of what you found. That happened with Amarcord to me. I really thought a lot about creating images and the connection that cinema had with theatre in a way. That film feels a little bit like theatre. I lived all my life watching theatre and it’s when I found the connection with what I was watching and could do in my life."

"This is a journey of a film, which ends where we couldn’t have imagined it would. A lesson in complexity, pain, fun, and beauty. Karen Black comes off as a worse actress than she is, and Jack Nicholson comes off as a better actor than he is. I think I saw this on VHS in the mid 1980s and then again at the Cinema Village in New York City in 1989. Throughout both viewings, but more so during the second time, I felt: grateful, grateful. This movie keeps on giving. A month or two ago I remembered the scene between Nicholson’s character and the mute father. I’m grateful for that."

"I have been collecting Criterion Collection DVDs almost as long as I have owned a DVD player,” writes Alex Ross Perry, the director of Impolex (2009), The Color Wheel (2011), and Listen Up Philip (2014). “These are not my top ten favorite films in the Criterion Collection but my top ten favorite Criterion Collection DVD purchases. This is virtually impossible. My entire apartment has pockets of Criterion DVDs everywhere, and I am forced to just go with my gut and pick ten that shaped my ideas of cinema, meant a lot to me, and I can’t imagine not owning and having access to whenever I desire"

"I have been collecting Criterion Collection DVDs almost as long as I have owned a DVD player,” writes Alex Ross Perry, the director of Impolex (2009), The Color Wheel (2011), and Listen Up Philip (2014). “These are not my top ten favorite films in the Criterion Collection but my top ten favorite Criterion Collection DVD purchases. This is virtually impossible. My entire apartment has pockets of Criterion DVDs everywhere, and I am forced to just go with my gut and pick ten that shaped my ideas of cinema, meant a lot to me, and I can’t imagine not owning and having access to whenever I desire"

"I have been collecting Criterion Collection DVDs almost as long as I have owned a DVD player,” writes Alex Ross Perry, the director of Impolex (2009), The Color Wheel (2011), and Listen Up Philip (2014). “These are not my top ten favorite films in the Criterion Collection but my top ten favorite Criterion Collection DVD purchases. This is virtually impossible. My entire apartment has pockets of Criterion DVDs everywhere, and I am forced to just go with my gut and pick ten that shaped my ideas of cinema, meant a lot to me, and I can’t imagine not owning and having access to whenever I desire"