"That movie for me was quirky done right. I feel like a lot of the time for me quirky is cringe-y, and it’s easy to mess up; Juno felt genuinely quirky and just cute, and the soundtrack is really inspiring to me because it’s got such a vision and perspective and such a sound to it. I love that movie. I think it’s really heartwarming."

"Again, a very simple approach, but there’s so much power in that film. You’re not quite sure what’s happening from the beginning, but you’re just kind of thrown into it. All you know is that these women have this mysterious meeting, and it takes you from there. The film gives you a great sense of what it was really like to live in Romania in the 1980s."

"Giulietta Masina is absolutely lovable and hilarious as a street-smart prostitute trying to find love in Rome. Just like she did in La strada, she creates an extreme yet real character that you want to befriend even as she frustrates the hell out of you. But it’s her sweet toughness that makes you both laugh and suffer with her. It’s really a delightful film."

"Very funny, again. I just think it’s really funny, that film. “I had an apple pie with cheese — I thought that was great choice.” It’s a really good film to like if you’re interested in directing, ’cause it’s full of so many brilliant directorial flourishes: it’s like an Italian horror film, but really funny. There are sort of Mike Nichols scenes in there, with all the Bava camerawork and the Godard stuff. And just [De Niro] — his performance. And how subjective it is — how it channels all that Hitchcock stuff with something that’s more docuemntary and more real. I know [Scorsese] always talks about The Wrong Man in relation to it and it would have been interesting to see what Hitchcock had done if he’d done more stuff on location."

"The same could be said about The Matrix movies, all three. A lot of people will be like, “Well, no, just the first one, because the other two weren’t to my fancy.” I liked all three because I like the entire story. What a unique concept that the world is completely fake, and amazing to think that machines could be running things, as I sit here and talk into a machine recorder. It’s just a really forward-thinking concept. I thought it was wonderfully done, and certainly a movie that, from an effects standpoint, changed the way people made movies. It’s one of those movies where people were wowed by the effects, but I think they took a back seat to what a wonderful story it was. It was such a fantastic story."