"All About Eve. Bette Davis is just extraordinary in that film. I can’t really give more insight; it’s just an incredible movie and, I think, incredibly evolved for its time. I think with any good performance, it’s inspirational in some way. I just think it’s an amazing movie. You know, it’s hard for movies to last, and there’s something really timeless about that story and the performances. There’s something really modern about — and really antiquated as well — but it’s just, I think, a really powerful film and performance."

"In my teens I got to know García Lorca’s poems in Icelandic translations. I was instantly fascinated by their dramatic tales of tragic loves, their intense night visions and images of human and botanic flowers. Infused with a surrealist use of metaphor, folkloric energy derived from flamenco and the Arabic heritage of al-Andaluz, Lorca’s poems reach deep into the ancient origin of soul while flashing with modern wit and bravery. Wonders happen when the poet travels over the Atlantic and tests his poetic tools in the New World."

"This is one of my favorite films. The way that Louis Malle shoots Jeanne Moreau—those are some of the most beautiful walking scenes I’ve seen. She’s walking in the rain with her head held high, lost in herself, mumbling, and with that amazing score being played by Miles Davis. There is something so modern about the film, and it feels like it opens so many doors. When I was making A Fantastic Woman, I was trying to get a little bit closer to the elegant approach that Malle used to capture Moreau’s presence."

"Frank Zappa's glorious Straight label gave us Captain Beefheart, Alice Cooper, the GTO's and this absurdly eclectic 1969 album by sardonic folk-blues-comedy-rock-cabaret belter Judy Henske and hubby Jerry Yester of the New Christy Minstrels and the Modern Folk Quartet. No two tracks sound like the same band (or even singer), thanks to Henske's radical versatility and Yester playing ten different instruments; but unlike the Turtles' equally perversely wide-ranging The Turtles Present The Battle Of The Bands, no track sounds much like anyone else either. "

"When I became a film academic in the 1980s, I was allocated a class through which I discovered silent (or rather non-sync-sound) films. I had never appreciated the extraordinary beauty of this cinema and, most of all, I loved films of the very late twenties, made on the cusp of the transition—for instance, Josef von Sternberg’s Underworld and The Docks of New York. People on Sunday is an amazing film document of Berlin just before the Nazis came to power, and is also a “young modern woman” film."

"A perfect horror film and, except for one bloody mess glimpsed early on and a few sexy scratches from Satan himself, no blood spilled. The movie builds dread with its narrative, but amplified by Polanski’s masterful technique, it becomes effortlessly menacing. The movie is still riveting and suspenseful after multiple viewings, maybe because it’s anchored in reality and so beautifully simple—the horror is played out within the realities of a modern marriage in late-’60s Manhattan and the “God is dead” movement. Second only to Chinatown in Polanski’s oeuvre."

"Cronenberg is a genius. He reinvented genre filmmaking, giving it the depth of the most ambitious fiction. This truly visionary work must be one of his masterpieces. When it was released, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I couldn’t believe a filmmaker could have not just captured the very soul of our present, or its hidden meaning, but also found its poetry, the mysterious beauty of it. eXistenZ, shot fifteen years later in a very different world, echoes it in fascinating ways. I consider David Cronenberg to be one of the great modern artists."