"This is a continuing theme, because it’s the same lead actor [Humphrey Bogart]. For me, this is the best love story ever, ever, ever shot. You could make an exciting, complicated, hot, sexy relationship between a pot-bellied alcoholic and a dried up, skinny spinster… Well, what it really tells you about is Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn, and what f—ing monsters they were."

"I love Bringing Up Baby. Anything that Katharine Hepburn’s in. I’m committed to the Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn era of filmmaking. The African Queen is influencing me on Chaos Walking, which I’m shooting right now."

"I think it’s just such a romantic adventure and Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart — oh my God! And that dialogue is so iconic. Paul Henreid — I just loved all the people that were in it. And the lighting was so dramatic — the way it was shot. It was an iconic film, I just loved it."

"I’d say Casablanca. I love that it was a combination of political… It had a great love story, and it was unpredictable. It didn’t have the classic Hollywood ending, and that was what was great about it. Also, I love Humphrey Bogart, because he had the great ability to be masculine, yet vulnerable, and that was the perfect role to display that."

"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."

"On the Waterfront, with Marlon Brando. Between the look, the feel, the casting… even the casting of the extras. Just to look back and get a sense of what America was like back then, and the details, it was just amazing. And again, it was another one of those movies where the leading man, the way they struck a balance between masculine and vulnerable. Humphrey Bogart did it in Casablanca; I think Marlon Brando did it in On the Waterfront, so that’s why they stick out as the best to me. They’re pretty incredible. You’re just like, you sit back and you say, “Damn, I wish I could do that!” [laughs]"

"What’s my fifth favorite movie? Now there have been quite a number of them. See now I’m sort of in no-man’s land, because I’m thinking Bonnie and Clyde, I’m thinking Chinatown… I’m just wandering around now. [laughs] One of my favorite books was Black Beauty; I read it when I was eight-years-old, and I’m trying to find if there was a movie, like that, that sticks with me. Oh, I know! Moby Dick. Yes. Now that was filmmaking. John Huston. Call me… Ishmael. I read the book, and there are very few books that I have read and seen the movie and liked the movie. Gregory Peck was in two of ’em: Moby Dick and To Kill a Mockingbird. Gregory Peck was one of my favorite actors. Gregory Peck and Gary Cooper and Humphrey Bogart, those guys."

"A romance between a beat up, tired, old, raggedy-ass drunkard hanging on by a thread and one last hurrah. There’s a theme in the film that I love. To see the two of them [Humphrey Bogart and Kathryn Hepburn], the chemistry was so magical. It was so easy and fun. They were having so much fun. Clearly. It was like watching a tennis match between two of the best players of all time. Just effortless. And they tell this phenomenal story. I’m a sucker for those. [Hepburn] had a similar chemistry with lots of people, with Spencer Tracy in the Pat and Mike film, it was just sparkle and fun. Going back and forth between her and Bogie and they let Bogie play this guy, this stumbling bumbling [does impression “Well, Ma’am”] which was great, he just went there. John Huston did a brilliant job with that thing."

"This stars Edward G. Robinson, and is directed by Fritz Lang. Edward G. Robinson, of course, was always known as the tough guy, the gangster, the one you do not mess with, and Fritz Lang had the brilliance to sort of counter-cast him as a man having a mid-life crisis. He falls for a younger woman and just throws his life away, and it is so contemporary and so touching and tragic. It’s the kind of thing that I saw probably 30 years ago and couldn’t believe the bravery and vulnerability that Edward G. Robinson put himself through. I always thought of him as a guy holding a gat intimidating Humphrey Bogart. It’s the kind of thing as you get older, his character and the themes of the movie just have more and more resonance. It’s one of those movies that stills holds up because of what it’s about. It’s a timeless subject."