"Every time I think of Roberto Benigni making sheep sounds, my belly hurts with laughter."

"Off the top of my head I’ll say Down by Law, the Jim Jarmusch movie with Tom Waits and John Lurie and Roberto Benigni. It just has sort of a weird sense of humour and it’s a bit of a road movie itself. It’s original in a really cool way."

"Jim Jarmusch is the finest director at making you feel the energy of different countries. Here, he gets a great opportunity to do that, as he tells the story of five taxi drivers working different night shifts around the world. A young Winona Ryder is dwarfed in her driver’s seat; Roberto Benigni shines."

"One of my favorite films from Jim Jarmusch; I can never get enough of it. Beautifully shot by Robby Müller in Louisiana, a jailbreak with Tom Waits, John Lurie, and the first time many of us were to see the amazing Roberto Benigni. The Defiant Ones meets the Marx Brothers and even better. Jim is one of the last true stylists left in this “sad and beautiful world.”"

"Life is Beautiful was a very big deal for me. Coming from a Jewish intellectual family, and also a family who was in love with the arts — and my sister’s an artist, and I’m an actor. Just mixing your brilliance with your imagination — just blew my mind, and I was fully swept up in the fantasy of Roberto Benigni and what he was able to accomplish in that story. I thought it was beautiful."

"A movie I like very much by Roberto Benigni. It’s a way of talking about a very serious matter through a comic form. A touching form. That was a new way of speaking of a moment in the history of humanity. Very painful. [Having worked with him on The Tiger and the Snow], Benigni is somebody who [writes] the script and he is somebody who [interprets] the script, but he will let you very free. He is not a dictator. Basically, he is a poet. Somebody who sees the world through his own eyes in a poetic way. [The Tiger and the Snow] is a movie I like because he wanted to talk about the war through his eyes, and it is a very honest movie. Very"

"That is such a beautiful picture. I like the acting, I like the premise, I like the genuine honesty about the whole thing. It was one of those joyous things; even when [Roberto Benigni] was riding a bicycle, he was enjoying it, you know? ‘This is life, this is exceptional, this is something good!’ It’s just so beautiful. And it’s from the head and from the heart, and that’s what counts. And to me, Life is Beautiful is a beautiful film."

"I love pretty much everything Jarmusch does, and Down by Law is as good an introduction to his work as any of his many wonderful films. Now that I think about it, be sure to also check out Mystery Train and Night on Earth, probably before watching Down by Law because they’re a bit more accessible. Then come back to Down by Law and watch it again, and see how it gets better each time, and how you want to relive it like a nice dream. The world of Jim Jarmusch is a truly wonderful place, like a little corner café for cinema lovers to spend their days in. Bonus: Roberto Benigni is just incredibly delightful in Jarmusch films. Hey, Criterion, can we get a nice Ghost Dog set?"