"When I was a kid I saw My Name Is Joe in the theater. I’d never seen anybody act like Peter Mullan before and I’d never seen a movie like that, period. Watching Mullan in that movie I was just like, how do you do that? How do you get actors to do that? After that I watched every Ken Loach movie I could. Kes is one of my favorite movies ever. The plot of We the Animals is very smiliar to Kes; we follow the same formula. In fact, the entire last third of our movie is completely ripped off from the end of Kes and follows almost beat by beat the storytelling of that film."

"I’ve seen this movie more times than I can count. I think it’s the best movie about being a kid ever made. It’s a fairy tale and a nightmare and a totally believable portrayal of a Swedish family in Uppsala at the turn of the twentieth century, all at the same time. It has always reminded me of one of my favorite novels, Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks. It’s also a movie about the weird magic of theater . . . Both the opening sequence and the reading from Strindberg at the end kill me. And the way Bergman shoots inanimate objects . . . The statues and the toy angels and the clocks and the puppets and the lamps . . . They’re all watching Alexander, the whole movie."

"I guess the first one would be the Mike Leigh movie, Naked. The performances in the movie are so great. David Thewlis — it’s just one of the greatest performances I’ve ever seen. And the movie — they improvised to find a script. They improvised for months and months, and then Mike Leigh writes a script based on the improv, and you can tell that it’s come from such a pure place, because it’s natural for all the actors, but it’s also just the — walking around London, and it’s just incredible. And also, my favorite actress of all time is Katrin Cartlidge, and she’s in that movie. She’s ridiculous in it, she’s so good."

"I like The Game; it’s one of my favorite movies. I love The Game. Oh, that movie was so good. I love not knowing what’s going to happen. I become a detective. My brain — I put myself in the character’s position. I sit there and I wonder how I would’ve reacted to this. You know, because there were parts of that movie that had me tripping. And you could not tell what was the part of the game and what wasn’t. That was the genius part of how they shot that movie. I just absolutely love it."

"I’m going to put Hitchcock’s Notorious on there — the Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant film — because I think that was one of the first films that I saw as a child where I felt like, “Ok, that’s my favorite movie.” I thought it was the most romantic movie I had ever seen. It’s impeccably written, impeccably constructed, and her performance in it, I think, is really peerless actually. She’s so simple and detailed. It’s a kind of perfect spy movie. I really love that genre and I think she’s incredible in it. I actually think she’s a really under-rated actress."

"That movie is the coolest Elmore Leonard adaptation that there is. It made me read a book. I went and read Get Shorty after I saw that. That never happens. Soderbergh to me in that movie is at his … I mean, because everything he does is … He may be my most favorite filmmaker, but he’s at his most commercial and Soderberghian. He had just shot The Limey, and he got that out of his system, and he was dabbling; there was that weird Jackie Brown connection. It was just awesome. It’s just so good. He’s got my favorite line in any movie, when Dennis Farina leans over to Michael Keaton, who’s wearing a tee shirt that says, “FBI” on it, and he goes, “You got one of those that says ‘undercover?'” He’s on in Out Of Sight. He should have won a million Oscars."

"""Next, I’ll go Die Hard. You have to understand, my son, who’s nine years old, is constantly asking me, “What’s your favorite movie? What’s your favorite action movie?” Every day. So, it’s hard to say to your nine-year-old, “Well, son, actually, I love watching The Magnificent Seven.” And I do, I love The Magnificent Seven. But he wants a movie that he can look forward to and see, something he can relate to, and I think, ultimately when I start talking about great action movies, you know, it’s Die Hard. Die Hard is a top five favorite film. Great villain, the right amount of humor and strength and, you know, sadism. [laughs] And Bruce Willis is fantastic. And again, the scenes with Bonnie Bedelia, you really get it. The estranged husband, conflicted home, and yet he really cares about her. It’s not just some cookie-cutter thing, like, “This is my wife; I’m doing this for you, baby!” They have major marital problems, but he’s there, and all of a sudden, he’s in the midst of it. It’s certainly the best out of the ‘80s, I think, one of the best action movies."""