"I came to Larisa Shepitko through reading about Elem Klimov after watching Come and See. When I saw that Criterion had put out two of her films through their Eclipse label, I snapped them up. These discs are probably my most prized in my collection. Watching The Ascent feels like being punched in the nose and rolled in the snow. I felt like I’d time traveled to the Second World War and was there as a silent witness."

"I came to Larisa Shepitko through reading about Elem Klimov after watching Come and See. When I saw that Criterion had put out two of her films through their Eclipse label, I snapped them up. These discs are probably my most prized in my collection. Watching The Ascent feels like being punched in the nose and rolled in the snow. I felt like I’d time traveled to the Second World War and was there as a silent witness."

"The masterpiece. I keep an American Cinematheque membership; they do an amazing job of regularly screening classics (including many from the Criterion Collection) at two great theaters in LA. Bronwyn and I had the privilege of attending their screening of Seven Samurai at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica last year. Seeing this on the big screen, among the more talked-about aspects of this film, the unexpected humor really shines. It was the shortest, most engaging three and a half hours I’ve ever spent in a theater."

"Well, England is to my taste a great, great film country. I don’t think any filmmakers have been greater than Hitchcock, fabulously represented in the Criterion Collection by The Lady Vanishes and a great box set, Wrong Men & Notorious Women; Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, represented by many films, including The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (one of their very best, also made during World War II); and of course Mike Leigh. Topsy-Turvy is so fascinating, because Mike Leigh celebrates precisely the approach to acting that he has driven his own actors farther and farther away from in his own films."

"One of the very few westerns, my favorite classical genre, in the Criterion Collection. How to make an almost huis clos in the immensity of Monument Valley? Only Ford had that secret. The apparition of the great John Wayne in the Ford family, as the Ringo Kid, in a beautiful tracking shot, made him a star. Later, Wayne said about Ford: “This made me a star, and I’ll be grateful to him forever. But I don’t think he ever really had any kind of respect for me as an actor until I made Red River for Howard Hawks, ten years later. Even then, I was never quite sure.”"