"It would just be dumb not to include this. I have been once accused of being irreverent above all, and I am in danger of proving that here when I say that I find most Malick 2.0 movies to be ridiculous. I do like To the Wonder because it’s pulpy. When I heard that Malick was making The Thin Red Line, I checked James Jones’s book out of the library and sat in my attic sublet poring over it in anticipation of what was to come, and when it came . . . gee whiz but what an overblown lint ball of homoerotic bluster and worthlessness. And: there’s nothing wrong with Badlands. Beautiful, great music, magical pace, great, great acting. An ultimate movie, so good that it’s understandable how the momentum from Badlands alone can propel boatloads of people to believe that The New World has content. Springsteen appropriated Badlands, using its power to artificially light his Nebraska. Tarantino and Tony Scott used it to make the best screwball romantic comedy of modern times, True Romance. Badlands is as close to a perfect movie as I can think of (though I don’t hold perfection as the most desirable of qualities in anything), one that holds something to draw in almost any audience. Even the brutality that might otherwise repel is balanced enough with gentleness and charisma that I wouldn’t squirm watching the movie with a grandparent. Well: children probably shouldn’t see it. Maybe probably."

"I’ve started writing a lot of songs recently; I’ve always written but I put my writing on hiatus because Tim’s such a great songwriter for Keane and I think I felt a bit deflated by how good he was, but recently I’ve got back into it. Carole King, I don’t know why, but something about the way that she talks about her emotional world, I find really engaging. It’s romantic, in a way, in a broader sense, and just beautifully crafted. Every time I sit down and try and write a song, I have her somewhere in the back of my mind. The great songs have a real sense of precision, there’s no dead space, you know every bit’s there for a reason. I like 'So Far Away'; I grew up in a small town and I always found it annoying, even though I did this myself, that people would leave! Because they felt that’s what they had to do - I’m not annoyed with them, I’m annoyed that that’s the way of the world, you have to leave your roots. I suppose I did the same thing, it’s a necessity of modern society, but it frustrates me. I used to sit around thinking, "Where are all my old mates who used to live down the road?" And that song, its wistful longing for people to stay put in a world that’s growing so fast. It’s a timeless record"

"I hadn’t seen Sideways in a number of years, and recently saw it again, and sat down with it and was overwhelmed at how much more meaningful it had become in the years since I had seen it. I don’t know why – I guess it’s just really cheesy: Like wine, it had aged for me. (I’d take that out, that was so cheesy!). But it had matured for me as a story, or perhaps I had grownup to meet the story – it was so lyrical and so authentic in every moment. Stories about failure, to me, are more meaningful as I get older. That movie also swings big, and that’s another thing that I like about it. That monologue, Virginia Madsen’s monologue… it’s just achingly romantic. [And] the end, where he drives up, sort of mirroring The Graduate, but it’s Dustin Hoffman, the loser version, which is way closer to me than the heroic version in The Graduate. [The movie] just keeps curving into itself, and out of itself, and it’s just an incredibly satisfying, enjoyable, meditative movie. It’s got some incredible performances – everyone is a delight, everyone is just incredibly fun, and each scene has something interesting happening in it. [Sandra Oh] was another inspired bit of casting. Her mother, and the kid, and she’s amazing, and the motorcycle helmet rage was one of the most terrifying things I’ve seen on film – and a flopping penis, that’s always good."