"This is the single most underrated film of the entire French New Wave. Its near obsessive tracking of Maurice Ronet through the wet Paris streets as he retraces the steps of a wasted life makes for one of the most tightly focused of the era’s film portraits of a desperate man at the end of his rope. Its slow build toward an inexorable end is Louis Malle’s most nuanced work—this from a director who was already noted for his almost classical discipline. Ronet, until then largely thought of as a lightweight romantic film actor, surrenders himself to the downhill yet strangely transcendent fate that awaits him on the mirror of his room."

"I also love 2046 by Wong Kar Wai, a film which I thought was so beautifully shot, with an incredible story. I love that he uses the location as a character. He has a very romantic way, a very sexy way of presenting everything, and the cinematography in that is absolutely stunning. He obviously has a very strong vision for what he wants to do and how he wants to do it. All of his movies, I think they’re very intimate: They don’t always require huge stages, but he always seems to capture something in a very small area. I like the way he presents things. He creates an atmosphere and you get swept into it right away."

"“Is there a better, cleaner, more streamlined, and quintessentially American tale? The scope and scale of Gatsby’s world draws me back again and again. I plant my flag in the hard soil of enduring and impossible love. The American Dream is a form of impossible love, is it not? You grasp at it, you claw your way toward it, you compromise yourself to ascend the steps of the temple, but the treasure inside is made of nothing—a silvery thread of faith, thought, and hope. Seize it and it will disintegrate in your palm. Gatsby is the most vivid and surprising romantic figurehead of our modern age: proof that the wanting IS the having. Fin.”"

"Another favorite of mine was actually filmed during World War II—Brief Encounter. This one deals with love. And of course there are many kinds of love. One, I suppose, the best kind, I think, is to find someone to love who reciprocates your love. I'm really the marrying kind. And I love being married to Cindy, who, incidentally, happens to be a very fine filmmaker. But another kind of love is to love hopelessly, to love someone you can never have, the awful sweetness of longing for the unattainable, that strange and blissful frustration. Brief Encounter, so gorgeously acted, so lovingly directed, is the finest film ever depicting that kind of love. Both heartbreaking and romantic."

"I’m a very bad TV watcher, meaning I rarely watch more than one episode of any given show, and I usually don’t even make it that far. I downloaded all the episodes of this to watch on a flight and had I not been stuck on a plane and forced into finishing the series, I likely would’ve missed out on one of my favorite viewing experiences this year. The moment in the elevator when the two leads first meet overwhelmed me to the point of tears. It so perfectly summed up that feeling of realization you have when you meet your soul mate, romantic or otherwise: “I’m not alone in the world.”"