"“I’m not typically interested in poetry, but I discovered The Flowers of Evil in high school as I was just becoming a goth and getting into Trent Reznor – and everyone else was getting into the Beat poets, who I find comparably boring if we’re going to discuss druggy, surrealist poetry. This work is so visceral, filthy and gorgeously written. It feels like a distillation of the opium scenes from Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth, but more abstract and extensively documented. This one poem is just a disgusting, sexual description of a corpse that is permanently burned into my mind.”"

"This might be the next best thing to placing I Am Cuba on the list, which totally makes the cut if we’re including Criterion laserdiscs. Gillo Pontecorvo took real people and showed how real guerilla warfare goes down. Even more powerful is how he did it, and modern-day “documentary-style” filmmakers could take a page out of his book on restraint. The camera is not all over the map; it stays where it needs to and still grabs the immediate, important points in a way that feels involved and true. Then Ennio Morricone boxes your ears with flair and bravado."

"This is one idea, repeated, done in a simple palette of colour. So many records that I like are like that. I love putting it on in the background. It's like a tumbleweed in slow motion. It's stoic and sad. The rhythm of it is so beautiful. I loved the film when I was younger, too. It reminds me of weekend afternoons when I was a kid watching Westerns on TV, things like High Noon and The Searchers. [laughs] Remember that feeling? And that plangent Spanish guitar… this album feels intimate and epic all at the same time. 
"

"This is a record I've just fallen in love with. I've known Miles Davis and some Charles Mingus before, but this is something else. I was given it as a present, and I've just been captivated by it. It's so packed with emotion, and it takes you to all these different places in love: struggle, pain, joy, transcendence, chaos and calm. 

It also feels so complete in the story it tells musically. And to have this whole new musical adventure now, to be thrown into this other world, in this music I never listened to when I was younger, is really exciting."

"I’m a huge Mike Leigh fan and would love to work with him. His approach to filming sounds fascinating and exciting. I understand that he doesn’t give his actors a script but instead hands them scenes and encourages improvisation. I’m not sure if this is indeed his process, but the result is nothing short of beautiful intimate moments. And this film is full of them! At times it feels so intimate it’s almost voyeuristic. To me, that’s what makes a performance really exciting…when you’re almost embarrassed to be peeking into peoples’ lives. And that happens a lot in this perfect emotional drama."

"Another classic foundation piece of modern cinema. My personal favorite thing about this film is the relatable dynamic of the two main characters’ somewhat undefined relationship, a dynamic that after fifty years still feels as modern as ever. For different reasons, I’m also a big fan of the widely panned 1983 remake starring Richard Gere, in arguably the coolest role of his career. The remake is no Godard—really it’s a different film—but I challenge anyone to forget that they’ve ever seen the original for ninety minutes, revisit the remake, and not admit its criminally overlooked qualities!"

"Everything feels impossible until it happens. The #MeToo movement was revolutionary because it made real, in a sudden and irreversible way, a world that previously lived only in the minds of the most radical. In Believe Me, a roster of the most perceptive and fearless writers working today look at #MeToo and beyond: what could this world look like if we believed women the first time, if we didn’t punish women for speaking the truth, if we centered women in their own stories, if we allowed ourselves to imagine radical models of care and justice and then acted to make them real?"

"This reminds me of the time I went through a big Miles Davis phase. Talk about going into different worlds with an artist – he did that every time, from Kind Of Blue and Porgy and Bess onwards, anyway. This album's still the one I return to, from 1969, and the band is phenomenal. You've got Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea on electric piano, Wayne Shorter on soprano saxophone, John McLaughlin on guitar. This is truly cosmic music for me, or even music that feels like it's emerging from the cosmos. As it plays, you feel like you're coming up with the sunshine."