"Jules Dassin again. One of those movies that I wish I was around then and could have been in . . . if I could speak French!"

"Clouzot’s gripping film about a group of men driving a truck full of nitroglycerine to end a mining disaster is, although it could not be more French, one of the great buddy pictures of all time, with a degree of white-knuckle suspense that has never been bettered, before or sense. It is, or could be, an elegy to the French film industry, which in its heyday could produce films of every kind that captured an international audience, and is now pretty much reduced to love stories or French comedies that, with rare exceptions, seldom seem funny to foreigners."

"It’s a French movie. Came out, like, four or five years ago. It feels to me like the French The Godfather. That would be one way of describing it. It’s about a French-Algerian guy who goes to jail, and watching him work the system of being in jail amongst the — sort of, like, negotiating a specific French jail, and how he’s able to navigate a very tricky world of his Muslim identity, French identity, criminal identity and drug-dealing identity, all these various things. It’s super intense and a super beautifully laid out story. It’s a crazy-engaging movie. Came out in 2010. I would highly recommend that. [Director Jacques Audiard] came out with another movie called Rust and Bone in the last couple years. I just remember seeing [A Prophet] and I was really blown away by it. When I saw it, it genuinely felt like watching The Godfather, watching Al Pacino as a younger man slowly navigate and figure out how to dominate a world that seems to be, you know, overwhelming him."

"Truffaut is French cinema all by himself. He is Renoir, Vigo, Guitry. He is also Balzac, Stendhal, Proust. He is the true Eiffel Tower of France."

"One of the most cynical films ever made, a French mockumentary about a serial killer with the complicity of a camera crew—hilarious, the darkest of humor.."

"The poet. He is almost the inventor of our current sensibility. Never naive, sometimes evil, always brilliant. I am lucky to be able to read him in French."

"Sciolino gives us an inside view of how seduction works in all areas of French life, from advertising to politics to interpersonal relationships. “La Seduction” at its core is just a way to appeal to someone by finding common ground, and no one does that like the French! And in my opinion, it’s so much more interesting than the brow-beating we resort to here in the USA."

"A glorious version of the French fairy tale that puts others to shame. The imagery is powerful and fantastic, and Cocteau’s screenplay dramatically illustrates the transformative power of love."