"One of the best of the past decade. I love that Criterion has already championed this, as it truly deserves to be among many of the classics in the collection. This is one of those rare movies that have the power to make you forget you’re even watching a movie in the first place, instead making you feel you’re witnessing someone’s life unfold. The main character (played by an actress who is so underrated for this sole role of hers) reminds me a lot of a cousin of mine when she was at that age, enough so that for me, watching it almost seems like personal insight into where her head was at in those years. Fish Tank also contains one of the most real, unique, and effective uses of classic hip-hop in a film that I’ve ever seen."

"I actually first discovered a lot of the films on this list, like News from Home, when I lived in New York, next to Kim’s Video, a time when I went a lot to Anthology Film Archives and Lincoln Center. Chantal Akerman has always been a big inspiration for me, and News from Home was the first film of hers that I saw. Watching it was so inspiring and made me feel like I could make movies myself, because it’s so simply done yet so affecting—just letters and an empty city. I have a very strong relationship with my mother, and she also used to send me letters when I lived in New York. I discovered Jeanne Dielman later, and a lot of the screen tests I did for Invisible Life were taken from frames from that film."

"I was excited that I had the chance to sing something in [happythankyoumoreplease]. I did a lot when I was younger and I haven’t in such a long time, but I grew up doing musicals and musical theater. That was my real passion and I soon as I started doing films, when I was 14, I did less. I would love to do movie musicals or Broadway. [A music biopic] would be a dream of mine… that leads into my favorite movies. Coal Miner’s Daughter is my all-time favorite movie. A lot of that has to do with that’s just a dream sort of ideal role for me. I love country music. I love the idea of playing a country singer and the whole thing, I love it. And I love Sissy Spacek. So yeah, that’s one of my favorites."

"Granted, it’s a little shameless for the guy who wrote a book on 1999 movies to include a pair of entries from that year on his list. But whenever I made a top ten for that year, these are the two films that constantly duked it out for the number one and number two slots. One’s a tightly structured, egalitarian high-school-set comedy that’s as wise about the nightmares of adolescence as it is about the doldrums of middle age; the other’s a happily absurd fable of reinvention that’s part sci-fi, part broad comedy, part media satire. But both are remarkably kind to their flawed heroes, and each one wrestles with the kinds of social and cultural dilemmas—from identity theft to burn-it-all-down political posturing—we’d be dealing with two decades later."

"I need to get something with Meryl Streep, but there’s so many movies. But then I started thinking about Manhattan, and then I came to Woody Allen. The funniest bit I’ve ever seen in a movie is in Play It Again, Sam. There’s a scene early on where he’s — you know, he’s playing another version of himself, this guy who’s just a mess — and he’s trying to go on dates. Of course, his friends are trying to set him up, and they set him up with this beautiful girl. Basically, they’re going to pick him up at his place, and he’s getting ready, and there’s this scene where he’s got the sports medals he’s been out buying. I mean, it’s the funniest scene; it’s slapstick, you know, physical comedy at its best. It’s a very funny movie."

"The funniest human being in my lifetime, in any medium – whether it's stand-up, television, theatre, prose, or movies – is SJ Perelman. The early stuff was a little wild, not nearly as subtle or as good. As he developed over the years, his stuff became relentlessly sensational. There are many collections of Perelman that are filled with great things. This one, which I wrote the foreword to, has a number of spectacular pieces. Because the editors did it chronologically, my own opinion is that the first four essays are weaker. Once you hit the fifth casual, as the New Yorker called them, he hits his stride and the rest of them are absolute comic genius. As funny as you can get. Those of us who grew up with Perelman found it impossible to avoid his influence. He had such a strong, inventive style."

"When Wes Anderson asked me to provide incidental narration to his film about the Tenenbaum tribe, I honestly could not make out what the film was about. It turned out to be a Wes Anderson film, which, in my mind, is the New Yorker magazine’s cartoon staff meets Jules Feiffer meets Preston Sturges. Or, perhaps, none of that. The Royal Tenenbaums, at the time of its release, was arguably one of the most original movies, in tone and style, since Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H. The cast is pitch-perfect, and the film features Gene Hackman’s greatest work. (I know. That’s saying a lot. But it’s true.) Anderson and Owen Wilson were nominated for best original screenplay at the Oscars in 2002. With cinematography by the remarkable Robert Yeoman (Drugstore Cowboy, The Squid and the Whale)."

"The first movie I ever saw in my life, interestingly enough, was The Gods Must Be Crazy. It was a South African movie. It’s ironic that years later, the next most commercially successful film from South Africa after The Gods Must Be Crazy is District 9. The effect was kind of an early imprint that South Africa belonged in motion pictures. Because there was nothing else for years, as I became an adult — or even a young man — I kind of realized it didn’t. Everything that South Africa made was terrible that I subsequently saw. Usually I was just ashamed of it. I was like, “Oh God, we make terrible television, we make terrible movies.” And even with Marius Weyers doing the South African accent — something that was uniquely South African and African could be commercial was just imprinted in my brain."

"This is the movie, above all others, that I can watch time and time again and have the same fun as the first time. It’s the sense of wonder and heightened stakes that make this work so well. Michael J. Fox, of course, makes this work: I as a viewer can see the struggle, fun, joy, and pain Marty experiences without doing anything; [Fox] fully embraces and embodies the journey. I like movies that save the day…go figure, and this one delivers. Also, my parents didn’t let me see this in the theaters when it first came out. My older sister got to go see it with my older brother and I was forced to watch Cocoon with my parents. I had nightmares for months of the the cocoons opening and the old people crawling out of them."