"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."

"I knew and liked David Lean, a director of genius, who was very kind to me when he was making The Sound Barrier for my Uncle Alex, and Brief Encounter has always seemed to me the very best of classic British filmmaking, with its fiercely restrained emotions and good manners trumping passion, typical of its era. It is the best of the “small” British pictures, which my Uncle Alex tried to replace with “big” British pictures in an attempt to outdo Hollywood, rather than coexist with it, after he left it for Britain in 1932. Lean, who in Brief Encounter made this most English of English films (a distinction perhaps shared by This Happy Breed and The Fallen Idol, see below), moved onward and upward to ever bigger pictures, by way of The Sound Barrier, Summertime, and eventually the biggest and best of all epic films, Lawrence of Arabia, escaping from the confines of England to “international” films that challenged and beat those of the Hollywood studios. But Brief Encounter was a perfect, close-up view of a shabby, threadbare England, the England of “books from Boot’s, good drains, and class distinction,” in John Betjeman’s words, and of a muted, sad, doomed, and very English love affair. It has always been a film that puzzles the French, who find it hard to believe in a love story with almost no eroticism, and in which the lovers are usually dressed in raincoats. It is also Trevor Howard, a wonderful actor, at his best."

"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."

"Brief Encounter, I think, is just an exquisite movie. I think I see it at least once a year. It’s a Noel Coward and David Lean movie, and it’s so ahead of its time in so many ways. Visually, it’s ahead of its time. Oh my God, it’s like a piece of music. That sequence of lines in it, when they’re out in the countryside, and he says, “Are you cold, darling?” And she says, “No, not really.” He says, “Are you happy?” And she says, “No, not really.” It’s f—ing heartbreaking. I mean, it pulls every string; it’s beautiful. And it’s also a movie that’s… the first movie I can think of — maybe I’m wrong — where a woman has an affair and is the hero of the piece, and isn’t vilified by the piece. The husband is not evil; you know, the husband is kind of wonderful , and at the end he says, “You’ve been so very far away, and I’m glad you’ve come home,” and all of that. It’s just beautiful."

"Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece was an international critical and financial success, winning four Oscars. And that was in its truncated, just-over-three-hour version. Included in this set is Bergman’s full version, made for Swedish television. Presented in four parts, it comes in at over five hours, nearly twice as long as the theatrical cut. It’s truly a marvel to behold, intricately detailing every aspect of the lives of the Ekdahl family in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Sweden. As it brilliantly charts a span of several years through the eyes of children, the film is equally detailed with its adult characters’ points of view. Equal parts joyous and tragic. A marvelous and loving tribute to Bergman’s life in the theater. Full of magical realism and stark, painful reality. A meditation on death and a celebration of life. Dickensian in nature (Dickens is said to have been a major influence on Bergman for this film). Truly unlike anything else he ever did. It recalls the great epics of David Lean, which were massive in scope while also being concerned with intimate details of the human condition and its fragility. A masterwork in either version. Watch them both and never be bored for a moment."