"This is the definitive portrait of conflicted youth struggling toward self-identity. The final tracking shot of Antoine Doinel—running down the beach to the water’s edge, stopping, with no further escape route in front of him, then turning toward camera and freeze-framed with an optical zoom into his young and lost face—always brings me to tears. It is one of the most moving and deeply earned endings to a film ever made. It was Truffaut at the brink of his career, not yet the “Truffaut” to come, still the haughty Cahiers critic who thought that just maybe he could do it better than the films of the French “Tradition of Quality.” And he and his fellow Cahiers writers did do it better. Truffaut and Malle were the two humanist poles of the New Wave, with Truffaut most closely mirroring the mix of emotions that resided in the work of his mentor, Jean Renoir, whose own film"

"The opening 18 minutes of that thing, I mean, when the door dropped on the Higgins craft and it all of a sudden was World War Two in color, seeing blood, seeing guys walking around looking for their arm that had been blown off. Weird poignant scenes where the medic was like stopping the bleeding and the bullet would just go right through the guy’s head. Also the story was strong too; there’s a bunch of guys named Ryan spread out all over the place and they think they’re finding him, and his guys kind of going, “Why are we killing ourselves trying to save one guy, and we’ve lost two or three of our own?” That thing that would never go on today. And all the stops along the way, there’s no way an hour into that movie I went, “Nah, I don’t care if they find him or not, I’m moving on.”"

"Then the films that made me want to become an actor were films that were recommended by my father when I was 16, and I got my first VHS player, and they were very often these French films, Italian films in the ’60s and ’70s, and one of the films that impressed me the most was Rocco and His Brothers. Neo-realism — Rocco and His Brothers with Alain Delon, which is great because it’s told in different chapters. I think five chapters. Telling the story of each of these brothers, of this poor southern Italian family coming to Milan trying to begin a new life, and the authenticity of that neo-realistic Italian filmmaking, is very impressive. Also the drama, the way it is told, and big family issues of rivalry and jealousy and love and hatred are told in a magnificent and very moving way, and with a wonderful young Alain Delon playing Rocco."

"Argh, I'm changing my mind now. Do I pick Scott 3 or Scott 4? Err…oh God, this is hard. Sorry. OK, I'll go for 3, purely because my wife and I were listening to it in the kitchen yesterday. Scott 4's my most-played album on all of my devices at home – it's literally been played three times more than any other record. But Scott 3…there's something especially moving about it right now. The end of 'Sons Of', that final moment. We both in tears at the end of it last night. Blubbing like idiots while making supper.

Among Radiohead, Scott Walker's definitely our unifying artist. First of all, it's his voice: it's just undeniable in its power. Then there's the Wally Stott arrangements, all this extraordinary instrumentation. To think that he was doing jingles and TV adverts at the same time. There's such craft in his albums, and such constant inspiration."

"In general, I’m not a big fan of French New Wave films, and Touki bouki is clearly inspired by their characteristic fragmented, slow-moving, alienating quality. But the world of Touki bouki is so beautiful and engrossing that it sucks you right in. When the cows come toward the camera in the opening shot, you know immediately that these cows have been color-coordinated to within an inch of their lives. I love this kind of super-deliberate film where each frame could stand on its own. Even the piles of garbage are perfectly composed. Mambéty’s visual sense of humor is terrific: the man trying to break up a fight between two women only to get beaten up himself, the taxi driver running away in his yellow socks, Mory in the paddleboat with the lecherous Charlie. The main characters, Mory and Anta, never ask for our sympathy, because they are too cool for us."

"When I first heard Ariel Pink, I was very homesick for LA and was kind of depressed and miserable in the Midwest, which I love, I should add. It had nothing to with the Midwest: it was just the circumstances. This record was one of many things that reminded me that I needed to come back home to LA. There was something about the sound, the love for moving around, both physically and within the music, the sense that you could go wherever you wanted to go in terms of melodies and harmonies. I totally related to the freedom, the crazy characters that are in the songs. I had started recording and I found myself really interested in his passion for building characters in songs. I love his music to this day because he does that so well. Again, it was important for me at a particular time and it continues to be."

"Louis Malle is one of the great, underrated French directors. That’s the best film I’ve ever seen about children. It’s a very, very adult film so of course you have to take the kids very seriously. What is it they say? ‘Kids are father to the man,’ or something like that. What you are is what you were, really. It’s one of the most beautiful films I’ve ever seen; one of the saddest, most moving, genuine films ever. As a director I’ve done kids films — Slumdog has kids, and, I made a film called Millions — and it’s not easy to get kids to be good. You work hard at it. What is really difficult is to get every kid to be in the same film at the same time and I watch that film and every kid — and there’s a lot of kids in it, it takes place at a school — they’re all in the same film at the same time."