"I’ve seen it at least fifty times. I often put it on as I’m working or eating breakfast. Kore-eda has made several great, empathetic films––After Life, Nobody Knows, and the underappreciated I Wish––but for me Still Walking is his best. He made it shortly after his mother died, and you can tell. The film’s extraordinary warmth and humor are animated by deep feelings of grief and bitter disappointment. That emotional confusion exists in balance with his formal precision, restraint, and command of detail, and the result is remarkably, minutely true. It makes me happy."

"Both of these films are in the box set America Lost and Found: The BBS Story, which is a masterpiece. It’s too bad companies like BBS don’t exist anymore. These two films capture loneliness and melancholy in a way that affects me deeply, yet they also have humor and beautiful open endings. There are moments in the performances in The Last Picture Show—Cloris Leachman’s final scene with Timothy Bottoms, or Ben Johnson’s scene at the water tank, just to name a few—that are stunning. The film also has incredible mood and feeling, and sometimes that’s more important than anything."

"I was introduced to Fassbinder’s plays at nineteen and his films at twenty. His humor is handled with a kind of wonderful seriousness. Theatrical and absurd and full. The blocking alone makes me weak in the knees. In Beware of a Holy Whore, there’s a scene in which a woman is slapped in the face. It’s really not great, but the degree of detachment after this moment is so severe that it makes sense—not that she was hit but that people hit and get hit. Feelings are constant and often uncontrollable. I think in a past life I must have been German."

"Both of these films are in the box set America Lost and Found: The BBS Story, which is a masterpiece. It’s too bad companies like BBS don’t exist anymore. These two films capture loneliness and melancholy in a way that affects me deeply, yet they also have humor and beautiful open endings. There are moments in the performances in The Last Picture Show—Cloris Leachman’s final scene with Timothy Bottoms, or Ben Johnson’s scene at the water tank, just to name a few—that are stunning. The film also has incredible mood and feeling, and sometimes that’s more important than anything."

"I was introduced to Fassbinder’s plays at nineteen and his films at twenty. His humor is handled with a kind of wonderful seriousness. Theatrical and absurd and full. The blocking alone makes me weak in the knees. In Beware of a Holy Whore, there’s a scene in which a woman is slapped in the face. It’s really not great, but the degree of detachment after this moment is so severe that it makes sense—not that she was hit but that people hit and get hit. Feelings are constant and often uncontrollable. I think in a past life I must have been German."

"Starting chronologically, the oldest one, let’s say, would be To Be or Not to Be — Lubitsch — which to me is a perfect comedy. A flawless comedy with incredible wit and pace and rhythm, and a sense of humor that unfortunately disappeared in Germany, and all these wonderful directors like Lubitsch and Billy Wilder and — God knows — Fritz Lang, and everybody else left. This is such a wonderful film [about] fooling the Nazis — it’s just one of my favorites, and I think I’ve seen it probably more than 20 times. Each time I burst out in laughter, and I’m impressed by it."