"David Lean is always known for his big productions. Lawrence of Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai . . . But I’m particularly fond of some of his smaller, black-and-white films. And Oliver Twist is an extraordinary piece of work."

"I think my favorite movie is Lawrence of Arabia. To me, it’s just about a perfect film; in the performances and what it means to me. I saw it as a boy — and I just can’t stop watching it, every time it comes on. All David Lean’s movies, really. I love Doctor Zhivago, too."

"No list would be complete without Lawrence of Arabia. Again, I’m constantly looking at that film for its sheer bravado, magnificence, scale, scope, and having just shot [The Hurt Locker] in Jordan in the summer of 2007, I visited Wadi Rum, which is the desert in which they shot Lawrence of Arabia, just about two hours outside of Amman. And it’s in the middle of the desert, to which David Lean brought — and this is in the ’60s — arc lights, and a whole production. If you see this desert, first of all, it’s gorgeous, it’s beautiful. But it’s a very forbidding landscape, not one you would imagine would be very film friendly; these beautiful, magnificent, extraordinary kind of red rock buttes that rise out of this red sand… I think Lawrence of Arabia brought us to Jordan and made that the location of choice for The Hurt Locker."

"Next on my list is Lawrence of Arabia. 1962, Peter O’Toole, directed by David Lean. When you watch this movie digitally remastered… I would love, at some point, to see it in a theater, to see it on film, the way it was meant to be seen. I’ve never done that with Lawrence of Arabia, and I would love to be able to do that. But when you watch that on a flatscreen — get a big enough one — with surround sound, the epicness of this movie… I mean, there’s an intermission for God’s sake. I’m not sure there’s a greater adventure than Lawrence of Arabia. And Peter O’Toole, he’s another guy who doesn’t have any superpowers. He’s a human being. He’s working off the human condition, what it is to be a man, and what he believes in, and what he’s trying to do out there in the middle of the desert. It’s epic. It’s epic in scope."

"A story about compassion and forgiveness set in a World War II Japanese prison camp, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence seems to improve with age and repeated viewings. The screenplay, by Nagisa Oshima and Paul Mayersberg, based on a book by Laurens van der Post, is oblique, brutal, poignant. Tom Conti, David Bowie, and Takeshi Kitano all give first-rate performances, and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s score is heartbreaking. The last five minutes never fail to destroy me"

"Most people remember David Lean for his big-scale epics, like Doctor Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia, or The Bridge on the River Kwai. But here he is at his most precise and poetic. Both movies are epics of the spirit, and both are plagued by grand, utterly magical moments and settings; whether showing Oliver’s mother straining and in pain, by intercutting with a flexing branch of thorns, or by lovingly lingering on Miss Havisham’s decaying splendor, Lean understand the need for hyperbole in order to manage the larger-than-life Dickensian archetypes. Some of the passages in both films skate the fine line between poetry and horror."

"Most people remember David Lean for his big-scale epics, like Doctor Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia, or The Bridge on the River Kwai. But here he is at his most precise and poetic. Both movies are epics of the spirit, and both are plagued by grand, utterly magical moments and settings; whether showing Oliver’s mother straining and in pain, by intercutting with a flexing branch of thorns, or by lovingly lingering on Miss Havisham’s decaying splendor, Lean understand the need for hyperbole in order to manage the larger-than-life Dickensian archetypes. Some of the passages in both films skate the fine line between poetry and horror."

"I’m a big fan of David Lean. Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, and Dr. Zhivago take up three of my favorites. This can go for all three of Lean’s films, because they’re all very similar. They all have very strong characters, very developed characters. He has a unique visual style; it’s very important for the way the movie looks. There are stories about how he’d sit in the desert for half a day, just waiting for the clouds to be right before he’d start filming. You can imagine what a producer would be doing during this. [Smiles] So I love films that have strong visual styles, and all of those films have very unique styles."