"The masterpiece. I keep an American Cinematheque membership; they do an amazing job of regularly screening classics (including many from the Criterion Collection) at two great theaters in LA. Bronwyn and I had the privilege of attending their screening of Seven Samurai at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica last year. Seeing this on the big screen, among the more talked-about aspects of this film, the unexpected humor really shines. It was the shortest, most engaging three and a half hours I’ve ever spent in a theater."

"I grew up with this album, and I remember being really sensitive to the different musical styles. It's quite a New York album, as well—all the different styles melting into one city. This is a really witty album. There's a true masterpiece in it, "Real Men," which was queer before it was a huge subject of conversation, quite gender-bending—questioning this idea of being a man and what that means. Musically, it's really rich, and very frilly as well: lots of long songs with improvisation. It's an interesting and empowering album."

"This is my favourite album ever. I spent the end of my teenage years and my early twenties listening to old music – rockabilly music, stuff like that. Then I discovered folk music when I was 25, and that led me to Dylan. He totally blew me away with this. It’s like the great album from the second period, y’know? He did that first run of albums in the Sixties, then he started doing his less troublesome albums – and out of that comes Blood On The Tracks. It’s his masterpiece"

"It was co-written by my uncle [Juan Antonio Bardem]. It’s with the director [Luis García] Berlanga, and I think it’s a masterpiece of a movie about the Franco regime era in Spain. It is [about] a visit that is going to be paid by the American government into our country and how the little country town is preparing that welcome for the committee, the American committee. And it really is a great drawing on what it was like in the Franco regime era in Spain, it’s a masterful movie."

"A harrowing war film made with near-religious austerity. Most of the movie is comprised of two kinds of shots: these yawning, snow-swept vistas that swallow people whole, and unbearably intense close-ups of the human face. You get the sense that making The Ascent was an all-consuming endeavor for Larisa Shepitko. Which other filmmakers have so evidently given so much to their craft? That it’s her final film is a shame, but some of its power carries over into her husband Elem Klimov’s delirious masterpiece Come and See."

"Thank you, Criterion, for putting this amazingly creepy film out into the world in such a beautiful, definitive way. This is by far one of my favorite psychological horror films of all time. The Criterion version was an unbelievable step up from the VHS copy I had of this for years, when the film was strangely titled Corridors of Evil, for some reason. Carnival of Souls is like a fever-dream-elongated Twilight Zone episode. It’s a masterpiece, and I love falling asleep to the film as well. It induces great, strange dreams."

"Terry Gilliam’s masterpiece proves he is the only true heir to Fellini (and Salvador Dalì as well). Brazil is over-the-top, terrifying, funny, and moving. A hilarious and violent dystopian tale of the future using elements of the past, it strangely seems more and more like our present. Terrorism, surveillance, cosmetic surgery, hacking, and authoritarian control: Gilliam’s prescience is astounding. Ian Holm turns in one of cinema’s great supporting roles as Mr. Kurtzman, Jonathan Pryce’s sniveling and cowardly boss. And it has one of the most crushing and haunting endings in movie history."

"As clearly as there is only one Lino Ventura, there is a sole Jean Gabin. Neither have I seen a replica of Michèle Morgan nor Michel Simon (one of the reasons why Renoir’s Boudu should be in this list, but . . .). Port of Shadows is a pure actor-based melodrama full of prewar pessimism. Bicycle Thieves proves that even the tiniest dreams can be torn to pieces. Never in the history of cinema has hope been served in so minimalistic but heartbreaking a way as in the last shot of this masterpiece."

"As clearly as there is only one Lino Ventura, there is a sole Jean Gabin. Neither have I seen a replica of Michèle Morgan nor Michel Simon (one of the reasons why Renoir’s Boudu should be in this list, but . . .). Port of Shadows is a pure actor-based melodrama full of prewar pessimism. Bicycle Thieves proves that even the tiniest dreams can be torn to pieces. Never in the history of cinema has hope been served in so minimalistic but heartbreaking a way as in the last shot of this masterpiece."

"For all the splendors in this masterpiece, it’s another scene of actors watching a film within the film that left an impression on me. Guido is in a theater watching rushes of various actresses auditioning for the part of his mistress, while his wife (Anouk Aimée)—trying to contain her conflicted emotions—finally gets up to leave. This sequence was the basis for 8½ Screens, an art installation I did for the opening of TIFF Bell Lightbox, the home of the Toronto International Film Festival. There’s a clip of it on YouTube."