"I’m going to be honest, since it’s just you and me here. I’d considered this my favorite film for many years. I hadn’t seen it in maybe five. When I came back to Los Angeles after our short hiatus on Jurassic World, I woke up early the first day of pre-production, still on Atlantic time. This movie was on Netflix, so I sat up in bed in a very nice hotel suite and watched it. The movie starts with a filmmaker in bed in a very nice hotel suite, who proceeds to remember his childhood and relationship with a great mentor and friend. I cried for two hours. Straight. It all unpacked right there and then. I got to our production office and my eyes were still red, my voice was gone. My producer, Pat Crowley, sat me down and asked if I’d been on a weekend bender. I hung my head and gave him the least embarrassing of the two available answers. “Yes.”"

"I think a lot about Martin Scorsese and how heavily influenced Paul Thomas Anderson was by him. I feel like he learned so much from Scorsese in Boogie Nights, and so I feel like picking Boogie Nights is somewhat accounting for my Martin Scorsese love. But I’m also being very honest about a movie that I can watch over and over. Just the epic nature and the grandness of it, and some of the shots and the style of it, and the music — my God, the way he uses music — and that great shot where somebody jumps into the pool and you hear the muffled soundtrack. It’s brilliant. I never get sick of watching it. And the acting is just some of my favorite actors at the top of their game. I love doing impressions and one of my earliest impressions of an actor was Philip Seymour Hoffman in that movie, when he’s saying how much he loves the name and he’s chewing on the pen."

"That’s another perfect movie in my opinion. It’s like all those dudes in there — the height of their abilities. I wish I could name six because I would put Training Day up there. That’s Denzel at his most, most confident. It’s an awesome movie to watch. But, Casino is just classic like, Goodfellas, and then Raging Bull and all of those things coming are like little seeds, and the flower that sprouts was Casino. Scorsese and all those dudes really knowing each other for years. Putting together an awesome story about the beginning of Las Vegas or the last time the mob controlled Las Vegas — was just a great story and then to execute it for two and a half hours like that from top to bottom. It’s like some of Joe Pesci‘s finest work ever — Goodfellas is, like, his greatest film. Both of those dudes — De Niro‘s got so many great ones. [But] for those dudes together, I think Casino‘s my favorite."

"This is my favorite movie of all time, and the only one that I watch on an annual schedule (Thanksgiving) other than A Muppet Christmas Carol (Christmas). I first saw it on that holiday, and the experience was so meaningful that I suppose I’m always trying to recapture it. Coincidentally, on Thanksgiving my family used to travel to West Virginia, where the novel’s author, Davis Grubb, was from, and where the book is set. Grubb arguably doesn’t get enough credit for the look and feel of the film: I can’t really think of a movie that is more faithful to the tone and even letter of its source, and Grubb also essentially storyboarded the film. It’s such a rich parable of good and evil, and a boundlessly profound exploration of intangibles like innocence, loss, deceit, and the yearning to be loved. Although terror is a central theme, it’s ultimately a very comforting film."