"Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, and Nicholas Ray: the film-noir hat trick. Based on Dorothy B. Hughes’s very different but equally brilliant novel, it’s doomy, romantic, pitch-black, and unforgettable. The Criterion extras here are particularly superb, with special attention to the movie’s turbulent backstory (Ray and Grahame were divorcing during production). This is the movie for which I’m most intensely evangelical. It feels as vital now as it did a half century ago."

"This is the unedited and unadulterated version of the stories that made up Isherwood’s books Goodbye To Berlin and Mr Norris Changes Trains, which were the source material for the play I Am A Camera and later the musical Cabaret. I find it fascinating that Isherwood still writes about himself in the third person. An interesting literary device, yet it feels like a smokescreen and leaves you wondering how much more there is to tell."

"Bob [Hardy, bassist] and I used to work in the same kitchen. This is one of the songs we bonded over. It’s unconventional, but it feels honest. It’s deceptively simple. It’s got a straightforward poppy feel about it, but it’s actually really cool and interesting. It reminds me of being back in the kitchen in Groucho Saint Jude’s in the year 2000 with Bob washing the dishes and me cooking the self-saucing chocolate pudding."

"Edith Wharton’s use of language alone isn’t easily paralleled. She takes you into this woman’s life and makes you feel for her while showcasing her shallowness, materialism, and lack of honor. It is a timeless story we have seen play out for hundreds of years — yet, it feels like it would only apply to modern day society in the form of a Kardashian. Her turn of phrase and sentence structure are beautiful."

"The best debut film. He mixes tones so elegantly and it feels very much of the character’s age. I love the scene in the movie where he gets hit by a car; everything changes from that moment, and without the lead character saying a word, he goes through a complete mental shift. It was inspiring discovering this film; it was a directing voice that was really speaking to me among my contemporaries."

"This film is as much about the landscape as it is about the people. It achieves such a delicate and alluring balance; watching Days of Heaven feels less like watching a screen in a theater and more like looking out a window in this farmer’s home. It’s an experience, not a tale. I remember watching this film for a class in college. When that train crosses the bridge against the bright blue sky, I gasped."

"This is a great, comprehensive introduction for the many people who don’t know the history of The Atlantic Slave Trade or the history of slavery. It walks you through who the architects of slavery were and more important, who the architects of the abolitionist movement were. It’s an integral part of our history that feels too ignored. It is painful, horrifying, but illustrative of the evil and the goodness that can live side by side."

"I really love all of Bresson’s movies, but I’m picking this one because it was the first one I saw by him and one of the first VHS tapes I ever bought. I still own that tape. There’s this beautiful, tender, awkward quality to all of Bresson’s movies that I really love. You feel like the actors might forget their lines at any moment . . . but then they don’t, and it just feels so transcendently real . . ."

"This book will be relevant forever: if you re-read it at various points in your life, every time it means something different to you, but it always feels fresh. In it, Warhol shares his musings on topics such as love, sex, money, underwear, and beauty, among others. So much of what he says is so simple and yet so powerful. I admire his ability to be at once superficial and profound."