"Okay, my first favorite movie is called Primal Fear. It’s a Richard Gere movie with Edward Norton. It’s Edward Norton’s first movie. It’s a performance that I always have aspired to kind of recreate, you know? Not in a sense of recreate that character, but create a character on a similar sort of level that Edward Norton did. That’s my first one."

"Another classic foundation piece of modern cinema. My personal favorite thing about this film is the relatable dynamic of the two main characters’ somewhat undefined relationship, a dynamic that after fifty years still feels as modern as ever. For different reasons, I’m also a big fan of the widely panned 1983 remake starring Richard Gere, in arguably the coolest role of his career. The remake is no Godard—really it’s a different film—but I challenge anyone to forget that they’ve ever seen the original for ninety minutes, revisit the remake, and not admit its criminally overlooked qualities!"

"Little Linda Manz’s voice-over is enough of a reason to watch this film. Forget the perfect performances by Richard Gere and Sam Shepard, or Brooke Adams’s twisted damsel in distress, or the way the wheat blows at magic hour making you forget the specter of murder that hangs over it all. I’m obsessed with the fact that production designer Jack Fisk built the farmhouse, which is meant to look as old as time and it really does. Also, while shooting Badlands (the previous Malick), Fisk wooed his future wife, Sissy Spacek, by leaving gifts for her in her character’s drawers. Swoon."

"I think my fifth choice will blow you away. At a time in my life when I really wasn’t sure what I wanted to pursue, and I had a feeling I wanted to pursue acting as a career, one of the films that really hit me hard emotionally that made me feel pushed that way was An Officer and a Gentleman, with Richard Gere. There was just something about that film that had such a profound effect on me. The line,”I have no place else to go,” that he yells up at Lou Gossett, Jr. resonated. I love that film for the emotional impact it had on me. It’s an amazing film."