"When I was a kid I saw My Name Is Joe in the theater. I’d never seen anybody act like Peter Mullan before and I’d never seen a movie like that, period. Watching Mullan in that movie I was just like, how do you do that? How do you get actors to do that? After that I watched every Ken Loach movie I could. Kes is one of my favorite movies ever. The plot of We the Animals is very smiliar to Kes; we follow the same formula. In fact, the entire last third of our movie is completely ripped off from the end of Kes and follows almost beat by beat the storytelling of that film."

"The Bicycle Thieves is extraordinary for the technique that the director uses to stage a street-life opera; [it’s] quite extraordinary. The stealing of the protagonist’s bicycle – that whole segment lasts 15 minutes, possibly 20 minutes. The guy has created a street opera including cars, roundabouts, work men, traffic — everything moves with such ease, with such flow. It’s like watching a painting being painted in front of you by Picasso. It’s an extraordinary way to open a film that is also an extraordinary vision of a director being able to conduct almost like a conductor with an orchestra. Just a piece of solid, 20 minute music. Almost like Mozart used to do where it’s just pure music for 10 minutes. This is pure cinema for the first 20 minutes. Pure cinema. Then it gets into the scene where the guy tries to recover his bicycle and is just driving through Milan trying to do this. But that first 20 minutes — that first opening is operatic. It’s incredibly beautiful and that makes it one of my favorite films."

"Big Night, the Stanley Tucci movie. Yeah, it feels like a play. It feels like you are watching this beautiful bare bones version of filmmaking. Especially after all of the big event or spectacle films, it just feels so simple and so beautiful, and it’s a heartbreakingly beautiful story about learning what’s important. Also, I love to cook, and cooking is such a big, pivotal part of that movie, and Tony Shalhoub is amazing in it, as is Stanley Tucci. It’s just a great cast, a great film, superbly written, superbly directed, and just nice and simple and bare bones, and I love that about it."

"We’ll start with the cheese. [laughs] I’ve seen Dirty Dancing about a million times in my life. Always a good one. Just because, you know, I watched it as a teenager and your hormones are going crazy at that point and you’re like, oh my god, “Nobody puts baby in the corner!” I dreamed about being a dancer. And Patrick Swayze was so sexy in that film; a guy who can dance is always so attractive. It was just like a dream being swept off your feet — one of those fantasy films."

"Corky Romano. I love that film. Literally, that’s one of the only films I’ve pissed my pants at. Like, I actually pissed my pants. The first time I was in L.A. I was watching it on TV. The scene where he’s on coke…was literally the only thing that they advertised, it was like the only point of the whole movie! I love that character. I love how Chris Kattan just stripped his whole career in one movie. The only guy off Saturday Night Live who just messed it up! It’s like, what happened? The only guy. That’s why I think it’s so great. I also love the behind-the-scenes stuff on the DVD where none of the crew are laughing; the director’s [hiding] and he’s telling Chris Kattan, “Just do something funny, just make Chris Penn laugh,” and none of the crew think it’s funny at all. And you can tell Chris Kattan is just freaking out. Also, he had that vein, which I have [Pattinson points to his forehead] which pops out of his head. I can really relate to him."

"Why this one over Here Comes The Warm Jets? Well, the obvious thing would be to go with stuff like that. Everything Eno does is great, but I like this one because it's a poppy record. It's a bit of a progression from Here Come The Warm Jets, which is a bit tied to glam - it's a bit of a hangover from Roxy Music. Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) moves away from that a little bit, and it's just completely bonkers. I think his singing and his lyrics are brilliant. It's also where A Certain Ratio got their name from - and that made me think, 'Ah, A Certain Ratio, they must be alright'. It's just lovely. It's sinister glam rock; there's nothing terribly glamorous about it. It's more like glam rock in Korea or China - I just like the idea of him using little Communist party references in there. Glam rock was basically seedy anyway, there's no getting away from that, but this was putting it in an interesting context."