"Was 1979 the year of excess? If we look at Spielberg’s 1941, Landis’s The Blues Brothers, and Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate, we see they are very different films made by young American filmmakers whose previous work had given them blank checks. Heaven’s Gate was so brutalized at the time of its release, but all things considered one feels most of the assessments now are actually positive. I think time has been kind to it; it’s an American epic that feels closer to a Soviet experiment than to straight-up Hollywood. And what a great disc this is."

"It’s a movie that I go back to probably once every other month, and I mean, it sounds so dumb, but it’s just something familiar. And I feel like I always discover a new little thing. A new tiny joke. A new little blink or a nod, or something of that nature. It’s a comedy from the era where, as crazy as the story elements are, the actual film feels as grounded and as real as three disgraced Columbia professors fighting supernatural ghosts alongside Ernie Hudson can be. It feels like real professors who are actually kicked out from the school, and the jokes are based on these characters, and are sarcastic. It’s not a big goofy chuckle fest of what crazy thing can happen to this group of people next, you know? It feels authentic. Something in me as a kid really liked that. Something in me now certainly loves that. I have an endless endless love for the original Ghostbusters."

"I’m going to go with Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It’s amazing. It’s just one of those films that, if it’s on — I have the DVD too — but if it’s on, I just can’t not watch it. A lot of times, that’s how I know that films are my favorite, if they’re on and I just can’t change the channel, and just have to watch it, even though I’ve seen it a million times, and it holds up and it’s still fresh, and it still feels good to me. That’s one of those films. I love everything about it. Again, it’s just one of those movies that makes you think, and it’s inspiring, and it just feels good, and it feels magical. I love Richard Dreyfuss as well, and Jaws is also one of my favorite films. But just the performance, and the whole tones at the end with the aliens, as they’re coming out, it’s just a feelgood film.#"

"Let’s tall about Kurosawa‘s Dreams. When Bravo first came on television, they were figuring out who they were as a cable network and would just play random foreign films. This was before the travesty of reality television permeated their station. I was at home alone in high school, I think I was a junior in high school and Dreams comes on by Kurosawa. I could not separate myself from it. I didn’t know who Kurosawa was — I didn’t care. I was just a kid absorbing things that flashed on the screen in front of him. I was immediately captivated by this thing that was at once beautiful — obviously surreal — but at the same time palpable enough to actually hit home emotionally. I think not many people would probably describe scenes in my movies as surreal, but there are some. Kind of this magical realism that exists in that film. Also it feels ancient; it feels like when this boy comes home having witnessed the wedding of foxes and his mother’s there and says he can’t enter the home because he spied on the foxes and then presents a dagger to him and says, “They want you to kill yourself. Run. Run and ask for forgiveness.” It feels like an ancient story, it feels like something — I’m not sure what. It feels like something that kind of bubbled up from our beginning. I was fascinated by that. Just go watch it. It’s all skits, it’s basically short films strewn together. Get’s real weird by the end, but the first three are three of the greatest films I’ve ever seen."