"Next to The Wizard of Oz, it’s my favorite movie of all time. The most honest on-screen depiction of mental illness ever. Cassavetes perfectly nails the heartbreak and frustration that eclipses a family when a loved one’s sanity slips away. It’s at times both gut-wrenching and oddly hilarious, and Cassavetes manages to make gorgeous cinema with colors and composition. Besides the impeccable, monumental performances of Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk, the supporting cast is flawless, including both Cassavetes’s and Rowlands’s own real-life mothers, Katherine and Lady, and in particular George Dunn in his role as Mabel’s one-night stand Garson Cross. In any other film the character would be played as a cad the audience would be rooting against. Not so in a Cassavetes film, where the roles of hero and villain shift moment to moment."

"I saw it when I was seven and it has stayed with me probably more than I’m aware of. I loved the Beatles and owned a bootleg single of “All My Loving,” so when the film came to my local cinema in Warsaw—called Moskwa (Moscow)—I queued up for half a day and got in. The film didn’t make much sense story-wise, but it was a mind-blowing experience. I remember it so vividly—the energy, the jokes, the crisp black-and-white shots, and above all the music. It’s a film that is carried by music, which was something new for me at the time. Was it the first music video? I think that British pop was responsible for some of the most inventive British films (OK, Richard Lester was American, but it’s still a very British film)."

"I don’t think I would name films as much as I would name filmmakers. You have to have a Frank Capra movie, you’d have to have a John Ford movie, and you’d have to have a Steven Spielberg movie in there. And then as a specific film, Pan’s Labyrinth would have to be in my Top Five. Because what Gabriel García Márquez was to fiction, that movie is to cinema. It’s magical realism, and it’s something that can only exist cinematically. It cannot be confused with any other medium. That makes it the perfect film. It’s also unlike anything you’ve ever seen before or will see again, it’s completely unique and not derivative, and it’s brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Setting fascist Spain — or fascist anything, for that matter –against this fantasy world created by this perfect, pristine, beautiful, pure girl."

"This one really shook up the filmmakers of my generation before we started making our own films. The late comedian Bert Lahr told me that, when he was in the first production of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in 1956, “I did that damn play for ten weeks, and I never understood a word of it.” I’ve seen Marienbad at least twenty times over the past fifty years, and I don’t understand one scene of it, but what a fantastic experience. I don’t 
understand the Grand Canyon or Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night, either, but they continue to move me. Marienbad is that rare film that changes the possibilities of narrative in cinema. I no longer try to “figure it out”; I just let it take me. The soundtrack can get on my nerves, but the film itself is visual music."

"RoboCop is one of the few films I remember from my early youth. When I was in sixth grade, I had a friend whose grandfather had a movie theater at home in Mexico City and he took us there and showed us the film several times. I was just blown away. I loved the rhythm, the intensity, and the honesty. Everything was straightforward but meaningful and deeply felt. The actors were unknown to me and so ordinary that it made it all so real. This was also probably the first time in my life that I realized that sound in cinema could be so important. I could hear every bolt in the machine moving, and it was the first time I realized that what I was hearing was actually artificial sound, which was what made it all so real."