"Run Lola Run is a movie that I really love. It’s very much of its time. I watched it recently, and it’s kind of funny; it doesn’t age that well, but I loved it at the time. And I did a movie around the same time called Saving Grace. Run Lola Run won Sundance the year before us, and then we won at Sundance for Saving Grace — we won the Audience Award — and I remember thinking, “Oh my God!” You know, I can’t believe that we would even be in the same league. That’s when Sundance had movies and stuff — before, like, f—ing drink commercials or whatever the f— they do, some kind of Hollywood ski vacation. But I really loved Run Lola Run. It had a really nice feel to it."

"I’m really worried about these five films. It’s such a tough question. I mean, the first one is easy for me, I can do that right off the bat. The first one’s Back to the Future, for so many reasons: sentimental, cinematic; in terms of just a movie that you love, measuring a movie in terms of how often you can see it without getting tired of it — it’s all of those things for me. I think it’s the most perfect movie ever made. It’s like the form of a movie that all other movies, entertainment-wise, should aspire to. It’s something that I’ll always study — just the storytelling, the efficiency of it. The fact that every element works so perfectly in harmony. It’s a thing to behold."

"Okay, how about House of Games as kind of the David Mamet representation? You need him in there if you’re gonna talk about con man movies. It’s a movie I love more and more every time I see it. I just think it’s beautifully constructed, and it also really has something on its mind in terms of this kind of dark, sticky psychology of the con and of our human fascination with the con. It’s just a terrific film, and it’s also a lot of fun. I mean, the opening card game scene. That’s got Ricky Jay in it, Joe Mantegna, you know. “I’m from the United States of kiss my a–.” [laughs] It’s one of the all-time great card table scenes in all of cinema, I think."

"Also based on a book. Coming from a super, super anal place as a filmmaker, the idea that the greatest hands-on auteur [Alfred Hitchcock] in cinema history made a movie with his hand buried in there perfectly–a lot of his movies, his hand is on top, and in this one, his hand was buried perfectly in there. Again, I’m not sure what genre it is and I love it because of that. Is it scary? I’m not sure it is. Is it a drama? For sure. Is it a romance? Yeah. And I love it, so elegantly done, I so fell in love with those characters, the performances were amazing. It was epic and haunting, and it was just its own perfect little gem that will never be re-created."

“This book scared the shit out of me. I picked it up after watching the film adaptation by Tarkovsky, which is one of my favourite movies. Sometimes I feel like the only explanation for human life is that our planet is a terrible god. I like thinking that planets are living, sentient behemoths that we completely misunderstand. I’m horrified to think what it would be like if such an abstract sentience had no regard for us, or enjoying toying with us. The act of repeatedly killing a doppelganger or a loved one seems so horrific; how could anyone think of something so awful? Whenever people pour cream into coffee in a clear glass, it reminds me of this book, because that’s what I imagine the surface of Solaris to look like.”

"If David Thewlis in Naked is my favorite male performance, then Isabelle Huppert in The Piano Teacher must be my favorite female performance. I saw this with my mom at the theater when I was about fourteen or fifteen and we both loved it so much. I remember thinking, I want to make movies like that. I’ve always felt that the first films he made in Austria, especially the trilogy (The Seventh Continent, Benny’s Video, and 71 Fragments), were a little too academic. He really avoided performances. But when he moved over to France with Code Unknown and then The Piano Teacher, something happened where he started making very passionate filmmaking. The actors are giving great performances while still being very clinical and brutal in their rejection of sentimentality."

"""See, my problem is, I don’t have favorites. I’ll tell you movies I like, and after I’ve told you and I read the list, I’ll say to myself, “Gee, you should’ve mentioned these five, or these five.” There are so many that I like, but I’ll mention some. This is the last thing you expect me to say. This is gonna knock you out of your shoes. My Fair Lady. That’s probably my favorite movie of all time. I think it is a perfect story, perfectly produced, perfectly acted, perfectly filmed. The dialogue is impeccable, the acting is sensational, the music — you can’t forget it. The settings, the scenes… It was comedic, it told a great story. I mean, I could watch that thing over and over and over again."""