"In the same [kin] as Ordinary People, I have to throw All the President’s Men in there, which is a completely different film for Redford to do, but probably one of the greatest journalism films of all time. There are so many elements to that film that are unique to it. The relationship between [Bob] Woodward and [Carl] Bernstein, the way those are portrayed, and then just the whole mystery of the Watergate being spilled out for us. When that happened, I was… I don’t remember, I must have been three or four, five. Those were the years — that was the first time I can remember in my lifetime of something going on politically, and so I actually have memory of that time. And I don’t remember what it was, but I remember the words “Watergate” meaning something. Meaning something big, even though I didn’t understand what they were. Just for that film to be so dialogue heavy, and so all about performance, and the written word, it is one of the most on-the-edge-of-your-seat thrillers that I can think of that is pretty powerful… It’s the most riveting film about people who sit down and type, you know what I mean? You can imagine, it’s pretty intense."

"You know, I really get into… I can just throw it out there, because it was a great… it really was really good, but Shut Up, Little Man. It’s a documentary. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s about these two guys that move into an apartment in San Francisco. And their next-door neighbors are the worst neighbors you can possibly imagine. It’s these two older gay gentlemen that have the worst relationship that anyone could ever have. And they spend all hours of the day just screaming at each other. And so these two guys started recording these arguments. I remember in the 1990s, back before the Internet, if you wanted these odd, like, socially passed-around… Remember like Faces of Death? You could get a VHS copy of it? And so this was… You could go to certain independent record stores and they’d have a small collection of these bootlegged cassette tapes of their arguments. And I remember when we were doing Empire Records was the first time I heard these. And it’s the story of the guys that recorded… They track down the two guys that recorded all these things that were passed around through our generation. It’s a pretty amazing documentary. It’s pretty good."

"This 1948 film is a classic Italian neorealist film that takes place in post–World War II Italy. It is a beautifully told and photographed story about a close relationship between a father, Antonio, and his young son, Bruno, who idolizes his father. As the story opens, Antonio is desperately searching for work and finally gets a job posting signs. In order to do this job, he must have a bicycle. His wife, Maria, pawns her wedding sheets to buy him a bicycle, but it is stolen on the first day of his new job. The rest of the film, father and son pursue the thieves to get the bicycle back. They fail. In the end, Antonio is forced to steal a bicycle so he will not lose his job. Bruno witnesses this and Antonio is humiliated in front of his son. For me, the film was about the ultimate and heartbreaking betrayal of trust between a father and his son. I’ve always photographed families and family relationships. This wonderful film encouraged me to look beyond the surface and find the real relationships that exist between family members. The epic quality of the film was a great inspiration for me."

"Yes, there was quite a controversy kicked up last year over the restoration. And while it’s not an uninteresting issue, it doesn’t distract from the gratitude we who hold Fassbinder dear feel when we hold this handsome box in our hands. This is the epic he was racing against destiny to complete; poring over the extras, you can’t help but sense that he knew it too. All of Fassbinder’s period pieces are, of course, about the Germany he lived in, the Germany I would begin visiting regularly just a few years after he’d gone, a Germany at ferocious odds with itself, arguing in the streets and in the papers and in classrooms and over dinner over what sort of country it’d make of itself, even in those later stages of starting all over again—not too long, of course, before starting all over yet again in 1989. An intense love-hate relationship with the German character, with German history and culture, and an ongoing recognition of the inextricability of the personal and the political, for better and for worse, permeate all of Fassbinder’s work; here, all that’s practically on parade. And the fireworks at the end are gruesome and gripping."

"And then, I guess, The Sting is the next one I gotta say. This was for me, and probably for a lot of people, at least of our generation, our first exposure to con men movies was from The Sting. It really holds up. Like a lot of the movies on this list, it holds up because of the central relationship, because of the Newman-Redford thing. Watching those two guys together, even though at this point, plotwise, I would be fairly… Well, I don’t know. I wonder, if someone saw The Sting clean for the first time today, now with all the movies that have imitated it in the years since, whether anyone would actually kind of say “Oh my God” at the end of it. I don’t know, but I don’t know that it would matter, because I think the fun of the film is in the game playing, and specifically in the way that these two guys play off of each other. It seems like something that’s particularly vulnerable, just because of the twist, the nature of the end. But like I said, that’s not really what makes the movie tick, oddly enough. It holds up just as a really fun ride."

"I got into Roachee through the Sith Lord tune with the Prodigy backing and then I started to try and find other stuff but it's hard because he's not really done a lot. He did a bit of time in prison and then came out, so I don't know what his relationship is like with people like Wiley and that, but he seems to be quite an underdog. He's not done anything for a while I don't think. I like the crapness of what he does, when he's like, ""Yeah, I make a pass at your missus, I don't care,"" it doesn't even rhyme. ""I bring animals round your manor,"" all that. It's just not very good some of it, but that's what appeals. Trim is like that too, he trails off a bit, when he's talking about the solar system. It's like, what the fuck is that? That appealed to me as well as the beats. The 'Bad Boy' tune is a classic to be honest, I might be shot down for that. 'Dirty Danger' is on there as well. This album came out in 2012. Grime wasn't really being noticed around that sort of time, it had fallen out of favour. It had come up with Wiley and disappeared really fast."

"The album I got into most from Jeff Buckley was Grace and I listened to that loads. I've listened to that back to front, but more recently I got into Sketches For My Sweetheart which this song is on. I think that this album is all demos and the fact that it still sounds so complete, the message is still so strong, the energy’s still there. Something about that particular song just really felt like church to me I can’t explain it, maybe it’s the chord progression. It was like grunge church, I'm into that. I'd love to go to a sermon where it’s grunge church, that's me. But more so how he kind of created a world in this song where I don't really get what he’s chatting about but I’m with him, I’m on that journey. I love things like that, that I can’t explain, and I think Dark Matter is very much like that, I don't want people to try and explain it. I want people to try and feel it, have that relationship. And then maybe one day find out why it makes you feel this way. I haven't found the answer for this one yet but that's definitely the vibe."