"I can remember the exact theaters I saw Spike Lee movies in since I was in college, which I can’t say for any other director’s films. “BlacKkKlansman” is no exception. The theater was SILENT for the last five minutes, when the film jumps from fiction to nonfiction. It’s a brilliant choice only Spike would have done."

"The amazing, inspiring true story of a young woman raised by a fundamentalist Mormon family in Idaho – she had no birth certificate, never attended school, never saw a doctor – who eventually, through sheer force of will, manages to leave, go to college, and ultimately receive a PhD from Cambridge. A lesson in what people can overcome."

"I’m gonna throw a new one in there, just so I don’t seem like an old fogey. [Laughs] I’m gonna say a movie that I recently rewatched — I saw it for the first time last year — a Korean film called Oldboy. I love it. I think [Chan-wook Park’s] an amazing storyteller. And I thought the actor was great."

"I just saw a phenomenal French film recently called A Prophet. Have you seen that? Got to check it out. It’s amazing, it was an amazing film. Oh oh, No Country for Old Men. Gotta have that in there. This five is expanding to 10, 12! No Country for Old Men. Phenomenal film. Loved that film."

"Juliet of the Spirits was something I also saw at a young age. It spooked me, but also kind of turned me on, and I found it thrilling and psychedelic and colorful, and it had an enormous impact on my childhood because I would have bad dreams about it. That’s also the case with The Wizard of Oz."

"That was the first movie that I saw that I felt really painted the picture of the gritty hardcore realities of the urban drug culture. Done in a way that made it palatable for mainstream audiences. It was glossy and it was like that black version of an Italian mafia film. But I dug it for those reasons."

"Well, the first movie I ever saw was Wizard of Oz, and that was when I kind of realized that movies — almost in a way — existed, that this other world of movies could be my playground too, and that was definitely probably the movie that fascinated me and entranced me with, hence, Hollywood. Not to be cheesy about it."

"Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: “A posh life!” [From the song “Posh!”] “Lullabye Bay.” [From the song “Hushabye Mountain”] Those songs that Dick Van Dyke (as Caractacus Potts) and his father (Lionel Jeffries, as Grandpa Potts) sang blew me away! I saw it as a child, and I watch it as an adult. I love that movie."

"I gotta tell you man, I saw it and I couldn’t believe it. These guys all went to film school together, and they all got together to make this film, and they use their taste and courage. They came up with something that is uniquely its own. I am proud of it. I’m proud of them for doing it."

"There were a number of key films that taught me that great and startling cinema could come from outside Europe and away from Hollywood. I found Touki bouki (with its anarchic, vigorous style, brilliant colors and sounds, and charismatic heroine) completely surprising when I first saw it—and, more generally, it stands for the eye-opening cinema of Senegal."