"Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor’s chemistry is a benchmark for me. I first saw this in film school and it changed the way I make movies forever"

"Owns a spot on the Mt. Rushmore of Foundational Westerns (with, oh, let’s say Stagecoach, My Darling Clementine, and Shane). Everybody involved worked at the height of their powers: Borden Chase and Charles Schnee, two of the best screenwriters of their era, wrote challenging, complex characters; John Wayne was at his best when he played a son of a bitch (also, The Searchers); Montgomery Clift, taking the baton from John Garfield, was preparing to pass it to Brando and Dean; Dmitri Tiomkin composed an iconic score; Hawks synthesized all."

"For a myriad of different reasons. It’s the ultimate group of lawless action buddy movies. They have all spawned from this. Every sort of two handed buddy movie as The A-Team and — it all comes from this one film: Seven Samurai. It gave Hollywood a genre. Not only did it influence the western genre very obviously, with Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood, but every genre of outsider, loner, anti-hero. The character played by Toshiro Mifune, that’s the quintessential character in Hollywood. You’ve seen it played by Montgomery Clift. You’ve seen it played by James Dean, Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro. They’ve all been influenced in some way by that one character that appears in the Seven Samurai. The wildness. The gregariousness. The mad genius. The outsider. The survivor. Of course, you know the film is an incredibly, beautifully shot film. Akira Kurosawa is one of the greatest writers of all time. It speaks for itself. I’ve seen it well over a hundred times. But years ago. 20 years ago — possibly the first. Maybe even 25 years ago was the first time I saw it. An extraordinary movie."