"Leviathan blew me away when I first saw it – half-awake on a Tuesday morning – and I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a movie, before or since, that in its use of visual mantras and sound design, creates a more convincing and yet buoyant nightmare of life on earth."

"With these three [Coppola’s] a great storyteller. Godfather: Part II, I just think it’s a master class in acting, production design, directing, lighting, composition. I think that if you were a film student, you’ve got — the way he tells the story, it’s masterful storytelling. And it never ever seems to disappoint."

"I probably watched this DVD twenty times within a year of buying it. Like Robocop, an example of “I liked this film, but now that it is on Criterion, it is probably more of a masterpiece than I remembered.” Also, my favorite Criterion package design, with the fake videocassette look."

"Generally accepted as Mizoguchi’s greatest work, Ugetsu is based on supernatural Japanese folk tales by the celebrated eighteenth-century author Ueda Akinari. Mizoguchi is most concerned with a compassionate telling of human sorrow, and he finds plenty of substance in Akinari’s short stories. Infamously uncompromising, Mizoguchi was a perfectionist when it came to all aspects of the process. His visual compositions, the production design, the special effects, the lighting, the performances by the actors (especially Machiko Kyo, who adheres in this case to a more traditionally Japanese theatrical style of performance), and the sound design are all so finely tuned and executed, it’s as though Mizoguchi had the ability to be in multiple places at once."