"A Clockwork Orange. I was absolutely stunned by the entire thing. That’s a Warner Bros movie too, so they’re smiling right now. That’s an amazing movie. Everything about the execution is flawless. I saw that at a revival house when I was about 19 years old. There was a theater on 99th and Broadway called The Metro and all they did was show old movies, so in 1982 I went and I saw something from 1971 and it was 11 whole years old, and it was considered an old movie. Can you imagine seeing something from 2003 and having it being considered an old movie? That movie just blew me away. I couldn’t believe the level of violence at the beginning, then I couldn’t believe the social satire and everything, the execution, the slow motion, the way it was composed. And Malcolm McDowell’s performance? I was just riveted by the whole thing. It blew me away."

"Okay, I’m just gonna try to say both Incredibles and Incredibles 2. I’m just gonna put this as a whole movie together. I grew up watching The Incredibles and it was one of the best animated films I’ve ever seen. And it’s – I don’t know – the humor… it didn’t even feel like a kid’s film. It was the storyline and it was almost like an actual film. But it was more exaggerated, because it was animated. And then, years later, I saw a trailer for Incredibles 2, but it was like a sneak peek – it was Jack-Jack the baby showing his superpowers for a second, like five seconds. It was a five-second trailer and I was like, “No way!” I was so excited. And then I saw Incredibles 2 and it didn’t really have the same plot, it didn’t really relate to the first one. But those, the The Incredibles and Incredibles 2, are my favorite animated films."

"Well The Shining I thought a lot about, because we did Stephen King’s 1408, which was another movie set in a hotel room, and the madness of that. But I think just seeing it in theaters, you know — I think it’s when you saw it. My mom was from Boston, so we used to go to Nantucket, and it was the summer and I remember I snuck away in the afternoon to go see it, at around 4 or 6 o’clock or something, and when I came back out it was dark and I had to walk down this dark street alone. And I remember being really, I mean really scared coming out of that theater; like, I did not want to leave the street lights to walk home. The other experience I remember was I saw Apocalypse Now in the theaters and I remember coming out of that and I almost couldn’t speak. Stunned."

"I’m an absolute lover of The Wizard of Oz. I adore that film from start to finish. It never gets old. I think it has a beautiful, tender tone of both real drama and huge comedy, and I adore it. I don’t remember the first time [I saw it]; it’s part of my brain. I mean, I saw that film along with The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins. I still watch it every couple of years, and it brings me great joy every single time. I love Bert Lahr [as the Cowardly Lion], and his performance really gets me where I live. When they go to meet the Wizard and he’s doing his big speech and he says, “I just want you guys to do one thing….” – I’m butchering this! – and he goes, “Talk me out of it,” because he didn’t want to go in… I adore that moment in the film, as well as countless others."

"The first one is The Gold Rush, by Charlie Chaplin. It’s the apogee of his genius. I saw that film when I was 11 or 12 years old in a cinema in Ramsgate, Kensington, and there were three people in there with me. Nothing has ever made me laugh as much as that. I remember, literally — in those days they used to have a velvet kind of cover over the balcony — and I remember hanging over and laughing at the sheer f–king brilliance of the comedy in that film. The one I saw was just black-and-white, too; this was before Chaplin put a voice-over on it, which I don’t enjoy — I don’t think it serves the film well. There are certain things in there, you know — around cooking and survival and stuff — that kind of are in my soul now, as someone who tries to tell stories too."

"This one is on the list for nostalgic reasons, plain and simple. I saw it on TV as a child (on my mom’s recommendation, if memory serves) and knew I was watching something completely different than the rest of the brainless fare to which most kids are exposed. One vivid memory I have is of being scared by the film, but in that really great way kids are scared by things like the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz or the Pleasure Island sequence in Pinocchio. Though I’m sure I saw it in a pan-and-scan version, I was struck by the vivid colors of the film, and the scenes with little to no dialogue must have been as foreign to me as the beginning of Wall-E was for most kids this past summer. I’ve seen it a couple of times as an adult, and thankfully it stands up very nicely."