"I saw this film when I was a teenager, and it had a lasting impact on me, having been a fan of hip-hop but being largely unaware of the social conditions in France that made hip-hop culture so powerful there. There’s a scene in particular I have fond memories of in which Cut Killer is deejaying above the streets of his banlieue. So good."

"I saw Mulholland Dr. when it came out, and I was already into Lynch. God, what do you say? On a first viewing it’s so confusing, but it’s also so thrilling to watch. It’s sensual, and it turns you on in all the right ways and confuses you in all the right ways. It’s a pinnacle of moviemaking and probably my favorite Lynch, aside from Inland Empire."

"That parade scene. The parade scene — I celebrate it. But also it, like, tears me up a little bit. It is just such a joyful… I can’t even imagine what it would have been like to shoot that. It was really wonderful. I saw it as a young person, but then, eventually, moving to Chicago it was pretty great. I felt some ownership to it."

"I had been thinking of this book of essays since I saw the Baldwin documentary I Am Not Your Negro last year, and dipped back into it recently—I hadn’t read it since high school. Back then, it hit me hard. I realized there was a counter-narrative to all the history I had been taught, and I learned that lesson through Baldwin’s beautiful anger."

"Scanners is another film I remember from childhood. The ad for it in the newspaper horrified me, but I couldn’t stop looking at it. I was too young to go see it back then, but I saw it as soon as I could. It’s an amazing combination of score and story. Of course the scene is one of the most memorable and fantastic in horror movie history."

"My admiration for Melville was propelled to a new level when I saw Army of Shadows for the first time in 2006. The level of suspense and paranoia that Melville is able to sustain throughout is astonishing, as is the performance by Lino Ventura. Thank you to Rialto Pictures and Criterion for making this available to us on the big screen and the small."

"I remember Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid being one of the first movies I saw as a kid. So I’ll also always equate it with discovering what a movie was. Being a young boy, and here’s my introduction to movies — it still feels like the most gigantic movie in terms of how big and beautiful it was, and the cool factor. Two amazing guys to watch."

"When I first saw this at university, in 1960, I found it boring. Yet something made me watch it a second time that same term, and I fell under the spell of Antonioni’s mesmeric camera movements, his grasp of love and its heartaches, and above all the impassioned beauty of Monica Vitti. The film looks as freshly minted as if it had just been released."

"The Thin Red Line is my favorite film, and that’s probably the film that had the most impact on me as a human being. I feel like it really rescued me from a depression and gave me a lot of faith in people. I just thought it was beautiful. I saw it when I was nineteen or twenty. I’m a huge fan of Terrence Malick’s work."

"Let’s start with Love Jones, which is just a classic. One of the first times I saw myself reflected on screen in a way – just a beautiful story, a love story that felt textured and layered and interesting and beautifully shot, with Black people in the lead positions. The music, all of it, just touched a deep place in my soul and was fantastic."