"What else would I include on a list of top five? That is so tricky because that list varies on a week-to-week basis. Another movie I’m really a fan of — and again, I think it mixes all kinds of flavors — is Martin Scorsese’s After Hours. That’s a really eccentric little film. He made it, if you recall, he was trying to make The Last Temptation of Christ and that fell apart, so he went back to basics and wanted to make this sort of short film that he could shoot very quickly in just a couple of months on a small budget. It’s a very, sort of, eccentric film about Griffin Dunne trying to get home from a date that’s gone wrong. It’s like a black comedy equivalent of Taxi Driver; it uses New York as one of the characters, to some degree — this kind of weird, almost Hansel and Gretel forest kind of place, where you can’t escape and there’s strange oddities around every corner. It’s shot through with this brilliantly black sense of humor. Lots of really quotable moments. The playing, as well, from particularly Griffin Dunne, who I think is such an underrated performer, a really great performance of a man just trying to contain his ever increasing panic and rage. Yeah, that’s a film I’ve watched endlessly."

"Something actually I watched recently — my girlfriend hadn’t seen it yet — A Streetcar Named Desire. I’m a huge Marlon Brando fan, as a lot of actors are. I know it’s a cliché, but obviously there are many performances of Brando’s that are just exquisite, but there’s something about that performance as Stanley in Streetcar that I think is just so raw and electric, as everybody says. I’m not saying anything that anybody hasn’t said before, so excuse my banter, but you just cannot take your eyes off him. I think as a young male actor at the time, when I first started seeing that film, you just wanted to deliver everything that he could deliver, and of course, none of us can. I certainly can’t, but the envy that I would feel for him, as well as the thrill of watching what he could do, was so mixed up in my head and my body that I just go back to that film every couple of years and watch it again. Obviously, Tennessee Williams is such a wonderful writer, and we all understand, I think, those powerful emotions that exist within families, and those things that seem very subtle at one point that can then be the breakdown of a family. I just think the combination of his writing and Brando’s performance is just exquisite. It’s really exquisite."

"I’ve seen Koyaanisqatsi more than any other movie. For years, I would just put play the disc on repeat the way some people might play their favorite record. But more importantly, Koyaanisqatsi has had a profound effect on me as a filmmaker and editor. It’s not so much the obvious stuff (i.e. the time lapse cinematography, editing to music, etc.) but rather this age-old notion that an audience can experience a story just through imagery. Audiences are smart—give them some guideposts, throw out some complex ideas, and they will do the rest. Koyaanisqatsi serves as a constant reminder that film is a visual medium where explanation (and even plot) can sometimes be intrusive, and the most powerful statement a film can make is the one that the audience arrives at. The Koyaanisqatsi supplements are also really instructive. There are a couple candid doc pieces with the director, Godfrey Reggio. At one point, he says he explored having Allen Ginsberg recite poetry throughout the film. At another point, he talks about filming surreal Terry Gilliam–like scenes (at an enormous budget) that he ultimately decided to cut out. It reinforces the idea that with filmmaking, just like in life, sometimes you have to go through a lot of bad mistakes to discover what really works."

"I was 16 or 17. I'd just started doing Art A Level at school, and this whole world suddenly just opened up. For ages, I'd been playing the flute, playing the saxophone and skateboarding. That was it really and then all of a sudden, I hit that age. My friend Adrian had a ridiculous record collection. He started making tapes for us, me and another friend of mine, and he introduced us to all that stuff: The Doors, The Velvet Underground, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix. I was getting really into art and really into poetry. I discovered Picasso, Matisse, Magritte at the same time. I also discovered surrealism and surrealist poetry, literally in the same couple of years. It was like an explosion in my head. 
'Run Run Run' was just brilliant because it was so chaotic. I'd been into music for a while - I was really into The Police and various bits - but this was just so different. I just loved how nihilistic it was. Really dirty. Luckily my partner's a massive Velvet Underground fan as well, so we stick it on quite often, even now. I still get the same feeling from it when I listen to it now that I did that very first time. I still get that electric charge of energy from it."

"They're an incredible band, on Fiction and maybe even slightly discovered by The Cure. They were Americans but lived in London and were involved in the Camden scene with Silverfish, Ligament and all these kind of bands. It's almost metal, but it's also really bleak. A wonderful band, they made two records and then the bass player died so I never got to see them live. Martin our drummer saw them play. When we started Mogwai they were one of the bands we all bonded over. We were all big God Machine fans and actually used to do a couple of covers of their songs. The records have definitely held up and stood the test of time. I think I found them, you're about the same age as me so you'll remember this, but whenever a major label like Fiction tried to punt a new band they're pretty much give the records away, so you'd get singles and 7" for 49p. You could try out a lot of bands. When I moved my records a few years ago I had so many 7" of horrible bands that are just cataclysmically awful that I bought just because they were 50p. But that's how I discovered The God Machines and they're a big Mogwai band, there's no argument about that."