"Okay, we’ve gotten to number one for me. I know you’re not going in order. Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner — my favorite movie. I’ve watched it, again, about 15 or 20 times. The final shot, also perfect, maybe even better than Once. The helicopter up in the sky with them throwing the baseball. To me, it’s perfect. It is a perfect movie, and it also contains the single best moment of love on screen of all time — I’m getting emotional talking about it — which is when he says, “Am I crazy to build a baseball field in the backyard? Do you think I’m crazy?” And his wife says, “Yeah, but I also think that if you really, really think that you should do it, then you should do it.” It’s like if you really, really want to do it, you should do it. But then ultimately, the end is the best father-son — “Dad, do you want to have a catch?” I hardly can talk about it. Kind of the reason I became a screenwriter. I love it that much."

"The Age of Innocence has always been one of my favorite Scorsese films—it’s one of the most painfully beautiful unrequited love stories ever. It’s Scorsese’s Max Ophuls movie, and the best Ophuls movie that Ophuls never made. 45 Years and The Age of Innocence strike me as two sides of the same coin. Most filmmakers would tell the story of 45 Years from the perspective of the husband, the man who followed convention and married the woman he didn’t love and then lost out on the grand romance. But 45 Years is like The Age of Innocence as told from the point of view of Winona Ryder’s character fifty years later. She’s the woman who never questioned convention or the institution of marriage and then realizes later that she doesn’t recognize her own life. This illusion comes crashing down on her. I think the last shot of 45 Years is one of the all-time great shots—I feel confident in saying that even though it just came out a few years ago."

"The Age of Innocence has always been one of my favorite Scorsese films—it’s one of the most painfully beautiful unrequited love stories ever. It’s Scorsese’s Max Ophuls movie, and the best Ophuls movie that Ophuls never made. 45 Years and The Age of Innocence strike me as two sides of the same coin. Most filmmakers would tell the story of 45 Years from the perspective of the husband, the man who followed convention and married the woman he didn’t love and then lost out on the grand romance. But 45 Years is like The Age of Innocence as told from the point of view of Winona Ryder’s character fifty years later. She’s the woman who never questioned convention or the institution of marriage and then realizes later that she doesn’t recognize her own life. This illusion comes crashing down on her. I think the last shot of 45 Years is one of the all-time great shots—I feel confident in saying that even though it just came out a few years ago."

"I feel like at one point or another, this is everyone’s favorite movie. Danny Elfman is amazing. I’m a big fan of stop motion. I really have an admiration and appreciation for [it]. I think they do such an amazing job, and they take so long to make. It’s almost flawless. You can’t even tell that they’re fake toys. It looks like animation. I like the music; it was amazing. Danny Elfman always does it with his scores, and Tim Burton is really rad. It’s done so well for the time. That’s a movie that will come around every so often that will just hang in the air and will never — no matter how good the graphics get, or how good your TV gets — at the end of the day, it will never folly. There are some things you’ll put on and go “It looked like that?” But when you watch Nightmare Before Christmas, you know it never gets bad or old. The music is always amazing, and they worked really hard. And that rings through. Stop motion is so great."