"For years, this fairly obscure Russian movie has probably been my favorite movie. I first had a crummy Russian VHS with blocky Soviet-era lettering (in which the movie title was translated as Unmailed Letter). Then in the early 2000s, my friend somehow found me a bootleg DVD. (Shoutout to Bilge!) Miraculously, in 2012, I saw it listed on Criterion’s “Coming Soon” page. I remember when I saw that, I just couldn’t believe it. This story of survival in the Siberian wilderness is simply the greatest “tough terrain” adventure movie ever made (with apologies to another Criterion fave, The Wages of Fear). Both director Mikhail Kalatozov and his cinematographer, Sergei Urusevsky, seem half-crazed, and my jaw drops repeatedly while watching. Kalatozov is one of cinema’s boldest stylists, and there are a zillion shots in this movie that blow me away. Yet, despite the cinematic fireworks, the most affecting shots might actually be the many meticulous close-ups of the explorers’ faces, which foreground the raw human drama unfolding before your eyes."

"Apocalypse Now. I would ordinarily say The Conversation, because it was so ahead of its time, but Apocalypse Now — another masterpiece. Also, a lot of these movies would never be made today. But — I’m leaving out Scorsese, I’m leaving out David Fincher; you know, I’m leaving out some of the great Europeans. I’m leaving out 100, or a 1000 movies that we could talk about. I’ve been a fan of Chris Nolan’s since I saw his black-and-white film, Following. I saw that movie in Paris years and years ago and I thought, “We’re gonna hear from this guy, this is an amazing talent.” I’m glad people really recognized it early enough to support him. There are so many other movies we could talk about. There are at least five David Leans. There are at least five Fellinis. Five Viscontis. John Ford. John Huston. Minelli. And Kubrick! I didn’t say Kubrick! I should be thrown out of film for that. It’s really hard. I don’t know how you do it."

"I think my second favorite film is Apocalypse Now, partly because I’m 58 years old, and I grew up with Vietnam on the television. That movie is just such an amazing journey, and it was really terrifying to watch. There were just so many elements of that film that just left a big impression on me when I saw it. I think I saw it — when did it come out? In ’78, ’79? It was just an amazing film. For me, not having served, it kind of articulated and revealed the fear I think I would’ve had, had I had to go. There were just so many elements about that film that were terrifying. It was fascinating filmmaking, and I love that film. In my career, I finally got to work with Bobby Duvall, he played my father in the movie I did with Billy Bob Thornton [Jayne Mansfield’s Car], but to talk to Bobby about those sequences and what that was like, and how it was like to shoot… It’s a pretty profound movie."

"I remember going in, this was back when they had VHS, and you go to the movie rental place, and that was probably the last time I saw it, and ET was playing on the TV. I had to finish it there. ET came out and it would stay in the theater for, like nine months. Remember those days, you pay like two dollars, God I’m dating myself, but pay two bucks for an afternoon movie, and go see ET, and it would be there for, like, nine months. I saw it, probably 10, 15 times in the theater. Let alone the rentals afterwards. It’s just one of those things that encapsulates a time period in my childhood, when I had a lot of freedom on my bike and was allowed to go to the theater. It certainly is a throwback to a really good time in my life. Being a young man, coming of age. And, come on, it’s a classic Spielberg movie. It’s beautiful and the music, it’s great. Fantastic."

"I saw the movie as a teenager and I loved it, but I didn’t know why I loved it. I loved it because it just felt like a gargantuan document about time and the history of time, but I didn’t really understand it. Then I saw it again probably in my mid-20s, and the part that I glommed on most to was – and this was pre-AI, basically pre-Siri; you could imagine me thinking about 2001 in the age of Siri. But then I watched it again probably two years ago, and it absolutely transformed itself, and I started to take different meaning from it. And I realized that, ultimately, what it was saying is that we are the aliens, and that curiosity, mankind’s curiosity, is what actually leads to our own demise in a deep, deep way. That we know something is a problem, yet we want to embrace it. I haven’t ever felt that way while watching a film. It’s such a perfect, beautiful document about the universe."