"There was a really good film, and a film I really liked called Time After Time. With Mary Steenburgen, and she wound up marrying the British actor from Clockwork Orange, Malcolm McDowell. My wife and I both really loved the film. It was a great film, and then the fact that they got married in real life. They didn’t stay married, but they had a couple kids together, and I’d like to think that at least for that period, that was real… where life imitated art. Because it’s such a beautiful movie, a love story. Two people from very divergent, different worlds, and I know them both, Mary and Malcolm, and they are two people from very divergent worlds. That’s probably why the marriage didn’t work out. Yet, there’s something about that that I thought was kind of sweet. It was a really good movie, too."

"Alright, my next one on my list is Stardust Memories, Woody Allen. It’s really amazing, and it didn’t do very well at the time. It wasn’t a huge film for him, but it’s loosely autobiographical and arguably super self-indulgent. I f—ing love it and there’s just something about the cage of celebrity that he put together in this film which is pretty on the money. To a degree, I identify with the character in the film. I feel like it’s a really great blend of story-telling and film-making and avant-garde, self-indulgent artsy-ness — without being too far in that direction. And it’s conscious of its own attempts at being incredibly avant-garde and almost pokes fun of itself for that. To me, it’s one of my favorite films of his, and he’s one of my favorite filmmakers, period. That one … It’s f—ing good."

"My five favorite films would change from, you know, day to day, but if you want five of my favorite films, one would have to be The Rules of the Game, by Renoir. A fabulous upstairs-downstairs look at French society in a very particular period. It’s both unbelievably sad and tragic, and moving and funny. And a delightfully humanist film. In fact, a lot of my favorite films are like that."

"It’s everything! This film also captures an exciting time in American classical ballet. It’s like it’s frozen in time, this magical period in the late ’70s and early ’80s when ballet dancers were rock stars. I loved it even more later in life because, once I moved to New York, I ended up living with Isabel Brown, whose life the story it’s loosely based on. Her daughter, Leslie, stars in the movie opposite Mikhail Baryshnikov."

"I remember the impact Lucrecia Martel’s debut feature had on film students, critics, and fellow filmmakers. It was released on one single 35 mm print in Brazil, and that was shredded over a period of a year after playing in just about all noncommercial movie theaters around the country. I love everything about this film: the obliqueness of it, the fresh and bold take on sexuality, the use of sound, the faces and bodies. It was also quite a reference for a filmmaker like me, who like Martel believed films could be about people interacting with a certain feeling of space and time, mediated by cinema itself."

"This came out right around the time that a new wave of Mexican filmmakers were making a splash on the global cinema market. It was a very exciting time, I think. And no film exemplifies that period to me more than Alfonso Cuarón’s beautifully intimate Y tu mamá también. It felt like he really captured Mexico, and the complexities of male friendship and intimacy. And those moments in our lives that change us forever. I just saw Roma at the Savannah Film Festival and was blown away. It feels like he’s come full circle. I see an artist really contemplating life, and it’s very inspiring."

"Oh man, is there a funnier and more poignant film that captures the anarchic irreverence of that period? It’s just perfect, from start to finish, in my book. Ridiculously quotable with mad, perfect performances across the board. Richard E Grant is pure genius, but everyone in the film gives amazing and hilarious and heartbreaking performances. Again, I think loneliness and isolation, and a desire to belong play big parts in this one. The story is as much a love story between the two leads as anything, with a very sad break-up of sorts taking place at the very end; with Withnail left out in the rain."