"You know d’ast well this is my favorite film! Adapted from my super-violent memoirs, Marvel Studios brought to Earth the formerly little-known story of how a one-of-a-kind hero, YOURS TRULY, united a group of Kyln prison rookies and saved the whole krutackin’ galaxy! Bradley Cooper, an acclaimed cinematic thespian, starred as ME, while TV’s Chris Pratt turned in a surprising performance in what was SUPPOSED to be a supporting role (Don’t worry, Rocket fans, I got a “call” into his agent!). Still, this biopic was mostly factualistic. Only thing is, they messed up the title — the more accurate nomenclature is Rocket and Some D’ast Useless Flargs. I’ve offered it up free of charge for the sequel."

"My favorite Fellini movie changes as I age. At various times in my life, I might have cited 8½, The White Sheik, Amarcord, even Casanova or City of Women. The movies don’t change, of course. The viewer changes. And now La dolce vita speaks to me in its sweep and totality. As a younger man, I probably only responded to the higher-energy scenes, the orgy, the press corps, Ekberg. But now, at fifty-two, I’m flooded with sadness by the visit from Marcello’s father, and the Steiner storyline and the final moments provoke existential dread. The title used to seem like a winking joke to me. Now it feels more like a punch in the stomach. La dolce vita is forever."

"One of my favorites. It’s my two-year-old daughter’s favorite movie. She’s the green gargantua and my other son is the brown one, and she loves being the bad green gargantua. She’s obsessed with it, as I was. I grew up watching Japanese science fiction movies and I particularly, unlike most hard core film people, like dubbed movies — there’s something about that language and the translation that somehow fits into the movie; it’s like a weird poetry. There’s a beauty to these films, the Japanese character designs — there’s a human kind of quality to these things, which I love. Monsters were always the most soulful characters. I don’t know if it’s because the actors were so bad, but the monsters were always the emotional focal point"

"Probably my favorite book of all time because of the truthful, raw language—it sounds so modern. To think that it was written almost seventy-five years ago at the end of World War II seems both astounding and inevitable. Plain, honest communication and wild, spontaneous beauty were all that was left after they’d cleared away the rubble. Enter Holden Caulfield, an off-kilter personality balancing an unlikely mix of cruelty, kindness, truth, acceptance and rebellion in one rather average noggin. Holden represents a new type of heartthrob, presaging the bored, hyper-vigilant James Dean types of later cinema—the romantic nihilists, capable of loving fiercely in the moment but standing equally aloof from and critiquing their own emotions. The dawning of the age of emo."

"My current favorite Fassbinder film. A love story against all odds—the age difference is quite outrageous. Who would make a film like this now, about an older, somewhat stolid woman who finds unexpected happiness, for a time, with a handsome, younger Moroccan immigrant? Fassbinder walks a tightrope—it feels real and unsentimental, and he doesn’t shy away from cruelty, but he truly earns Emmi’s words to Ali: “Together we’re strong.” I admire the economy of the storytelling. The repetition of scenes (even camera angles)—when Emmi walks into the bar or sits on the stairwell eating her lunch—gives the film a fated quality. And I love the many strange moments when time stands still and everyone just stands there looking!"

"I’ll never forget when I saw Jaws in the theater, the impact it had on me — so much that I wouldn’t swim in a swimming pool for the rest of the summer. [Laughs] And I enjoyed so much hearing later how Spielberg had had a hard time working with the shark, so they had decided to not show the shark, and instead use the music, you know. The way they did that was just incredible; the way they would shoot so that you’d see just the shark’s point of view instead of seeing the shark itself. It taught me, as a feature filmmaker, how important music is and involving all your senses and all that. So that’s my all-time favorite movie — Jaws."

"One of my favorite films has always been Tootsie. I think I fell in love with New York and the romantic idea of being an actor from that movie. I saw it in a theater when I was really young and I don’t think I understood it all, but I remember people laughing so hard and I just knew I was watching a great movie. And all that stuff between Dustin Hoffman and Sydney Pollack is amazing. I revisit that movie a lot. I think, again it has that effect — it’s a very bittersweet movie, because it’s really funny but it also has those great sweet, honest moments. And it’s about a guy wearing a dress. I mean, it’s amazing that they pulled that movie off."

"When this came out, the hysteria over the clit-scissors scene was all I heard about, and when I watched the film, that was the least shocking thing for me. That scene with the crow in the foxhole and Dafoe beating on it trying to get it to die—that reminded me of an anxiety dream I've had, like a déjà vu from my own emotions. It's comforting when someone else’s darkness mirrors your own. Lars is brave with how intimate he is in his films. He goes off and says things that get him in trouble, and his bravery gets overshadowed. I see him as wonderfully vulnerable and brave. This is one of my top-five favorite films of all time."

"I was doing an assistant editor job in Prague for three months, and I brought with me about fifteen Bergman DVDs. Bizarrely, I was working on Shanghai Knights with Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson during the day and coming home to Persona in the evening. It was not necessarily good for my state of mind, but it was an amazing cinematic education. It’s virtually impossible to choose a favorite from his films, so I’ll choose two. I do think, though, that Cries and Whispers sums up what it means to be human—the moment when Agnes screams out in agony to her sisters as they stand by her deathbed “Can anyone help me?” and of course they can’t, or they won’t. Holy fuck."

"My favorite genre: movies that are for children that are not for children at all. (And when Mike Patton, with Fantômas, covered one of its songs on the band’s 2001 album, The Director’s Cut, an even darker veil was pulled over the film.) This film sends me back to summer nights down South, running through the woods long after the dinner bell rang. I’d freeze on the line between our glowing yellow porch light in front and the deeper woods behind. The compact blackness of those deeper woods terrified me, but it hypnotized me more. The Night of the Hunter’s river sequence and the title sequence of To Kill a Mockingbird are the truest portrayals of childhood that have ever been captured on film."