"I know it’s a cheat to select three films as if they were one, but it’s almost impossible to consider Rome Open City, Paisan, and Germany Year Zero as anything other than a linked narrative of the ashes of World War II and of the struggle to rise out of that dustbin of history. They are vital, raw, even primitive in style, full of nonactors who are alternately charismatic and arch; there is an aesthetic in these movies that is stripped to the bone. These films, taken together, are immediate godfather to the French New Wave. When Truffaut saw the cinematic journey of the eleven-year-old Edmund Meschke in Germany Year Zero, the seeds of his Antoine Doinel character were planted. The interviews and documentary extras in this set are one of the great treasures of neorealism research."

"I know it’s a cheat to select three films as if they were one, but it’s almost impossible to consider Rome Open City, Paisan, and Germany Year Zero as anything other than a linked narrative of the ashes of World War II and of the struggle to rise out of that dustbin of history. They are vital, raw, even primitive in style, full of nonactors who are alternately charismatic and arch; there is an aesthetic in these movies that is stripped to the bone. These films, taken together, are immediate godfather to the French New Wave. When Truffaut saw the cinematic journey of the eleven-year-old Edmund Meschke in Germany Year Zero, the seeds of his Antoine Doinel character were planted. The interviews and documentary extras in this set are one of the great treasures of neorealism research."

"I know it’s a cheat to select three films as if they were one, but it’s almost impossible to consider Rome Open City, Paisan, and Germany Year Zero as anything other than a linked narrative of the ashes of World War II and of the struggle to rise out of that dustbin of history. They are vital, raw, even primitive in style, full of nonactors who are alternately charismatic and arch; there is an aesthetic in these movies that is stripped to the bone. These films, taken together, are immediate godfather to the French New Wave. When Truffaut saw the cinematic journey of the eleven-year-old Edmund Meschke in Germany Year Zero, the seeds of his Antoine Doinel character were planted. The interviews and documentary extras in this set are one of the great treasures of neorealism research."

"Mr. Scorsese’s stuff — I couldn’t watch Raging Bull Enough. I couldn’t watch Taxi Driver enough — every time it was on, I would just watch it. I couldn’t stop. I think there’s just, you know, being able to capture something that was real and something you just couldn’t tear your eyes away from. I don’t really know how to articulate it so much. These are all things that hit me young, and that’s why I’m talking about them now. Because they’re the things that opened my eye to movies and they are the ones that drew me to want to see more films. Almost like they chose me, and I didn’t really choose them, if you know what I mean. It’s like, they were put in front of me and I didn’t know what hit me. That’s more appropriate, actually."

"The one that, if I’m sitting on the couch and it comes on, I can’t turn away — The Bourne movies. I will watch them a million times, and any time they’re on, which is often [laughs], I gotta watch them. I just loved that character. I thought it was so fascinating and, honestly, that’s the kind of part that I would love to play one day. So, I love watching it and watching the way Matt Damon played it. It’s just so exciting, to me. I don’t know why, but I can’t get enough of it. I think there is a little bit of… just the escapism of it all – running through the streets of Germany or all the different cities that he went to and trying to figure out who you are is really cool. It’s just a cool conceit."

"Then I would have to — and it’s hard to pick just one of his — but I would go with Sidney Lumet’s Serpico. Again, a performance-driven film, but there’s a sort of a reality to Sidney Lumet’s movies. I had the great pleasure of working with him, and there’s a reality, a sort of documentary quality to his films, you know? And it’s hard to pick from the lot of his films, whether it be Network or Dog Day Afternoon or Serpico. But there’s something about Serpico that has an emotional depth to it that was very touching. And also, it’s easy to identify with someone who’s trying to fight against the system and rise above it and do well, and the price that he pays for doing that. And Al Pacino’s performance in that movie is quite extraordinary."

"That’s something I always wanted to do, damn that Keira Knightley! The costumes are phenomenal in that movie, the message is fantastic and there’s just a grandeur and beauty in the scope. We don’t even make movies with that kind of scope anymore; I don’t think anybody would sit there for that long for that movie anymore. It’s about being yourself, and not forgetting yourself really. Even though you move forward or you move up, you still are you. When they’re at that racetrack she’s talking to the horse and she’s going, “Go Clover,” and then she goes crazy shouting, “Move your arse, Clover!” And she’s got that phenomenal hat, fantastic dress on, but she’s Eliza Doolittle you know? I love that movie, and why can’t a woman be more like a man? I love that song; I love his confusion with that."

"I was at Sundance for 36 hours this year and this was one of two movies I wasn’t going to leave without seeing. Lots of friends worked with Lynne Ramsey on this one, and told me tales of the production, and in other cases I can usually see such stories in the finished products. But not this one. This was its own untouchable thing, hovering far above from whatever means it took to make it, barely there and unbearably heavy at the very same time. I went to see it a second time opening weekend, and then listened to the score repeatedly until the movie itself was released on iTunes, at which point I let it become background music, playing on a loop as I drift around the house, hoping to subconsciously siphon off some of that tough magic."

"Over the last thirty years, inspired amateurs and adventurers have become scarce and a lot of cinema tends to be produced by strict industrial norms. So I’m always on the lookout for any spark of life and originality, if only to reassure myself that cinema still has somewhere to go. So of course there are some Charlie Kaufman and Coen brothers films, and Cristi Puiu’s wonderfully grim Death of Mr. Lazarescu. But the film that took me on a ride into the unknown in the most irresistible and disturbing way, and still continues to haunt me, is Mullholland Dr. A similar thing happened to me more recently with Ciro Guerra’s hypnotic Embrace of the Serpent and Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, both road movies of sorts, following an obsessive course through a strange yet familiar territory."

"Bresson is my favorite director. He personifies my values in movies. My fetish film of his is The Devil, Probably, but it’s not available from Criterion. The ones that are offered are all magnificent, but I have to go with the donkey. Above all, Bresson is unconventional; he had the vision and fortitude to penetrate and disintegrate received ideas and habits to make films that start from square one. He’s ultra-intelligent and ultrasensitive, with the eye of a painter; his films are near-noir in their bleak, unblinking presentation of human existence—a large proportion of them include suicide of the protagonist—while they’re also exhilarating and uplifting in their God’s-eye views. Balthazar, of course, stars a saintly donkey, the beauty of whom rivals that of his costar, a mournfully angelic young Anne Wiazemsky."