"Along with Airplane, An American Werewolf in London, and Raising Arizona, this film is one that I can silently mouth along with every single line of. I don’t know if Reiner, Guest, McKean, and Shearer could have ever known back in 1984 quite how far-reaching the influence of this movie would be. As a British director who made his start in TV comedy, I can vouch for the fact that this film is one of the key texts for every single UK comedy writer, actor, and director of my generation. The fact that it was performed by American actors doing killer English accents just makes that all the more impressive and ironic. So I cannot overestimate its position as an unassailable comedy classic. Along with Monty Python’s Life of Brian (also on Criterion) and Mike Leigh’s 1976 TV movie Nuts in May, it really became one of those movies that create strong bonds in creative partnerships. You either liked Spinal Tap or you were not worth talking to; it became that simple. And quite right too. It’s eighty-four minutes of comedy heaven."

"The Lady Vanishes is one of the great World War II films. I honestly might have seen it two dozen times. I adore it, each and every scene. As I adore almost every Hitchcock film. And, in passing, I have to mention the greatest book on Hitchcock, which is also one of the finest on film and on the creative process in general, Truffaut’s marvelous work called Hitchcock, in which he interviews Hitchcock about his films. As for Mike Leigh, he is one of my most treasured filmmakers. I love his subject matter, and I love his actors. I shouldn’t admit this, but part of the reason I love his actors so much is that I can think of no other director, no one, who works with his actors in ways so similar to my own. We could sort of be the same person as directors. And Topsy-Turvy is one of my favorite of all Mike Leigh’s films because, except for the actors who appear in it, it resembles no film he had ever shot before. The style is different. The content is different. And it’s about the theater!"