"A Married Couple is the first Allan King movie I saw, but I think I watched Warrendale right after that, on the same day. Somebody had lent me the Eclipse set. It’s a very frustrating movie; it’s a rollercoaster of emotions. Sometimes you even like these people in a weird way, but then you also sometimes detest them. You know they’re playacting in front of the camera and that they know it’s there, but when you start to realize just how much they’ve been playacting with each other in this marriage, it’s very disturbing. It makes me start to think about how much people playact in life and in relationships."

"Jaws was the first scary movie I ever saw. Even though I did hate it and it made me scared of sharks, it stuck with me. Every time it’s on, I do have to watch it. Especially now that you know the behind the scenes stuff. The shark didn’t work. So then it became a creative choice to just not show the shark until two-thirds in. It was freezing cold and these people had to be in the ocean. Then, the ocean was freezing so these people were freezing cold and raining and all of that kind of stuff. It just made it more movie magic for me."

"Love, love, love it. I just recently saw it again in Palermo, and it was a new experience for me to watch it without Americans. People certainly laughed at different things and found different things fascinating. But the idea of letting a predominantly white audience into this block works. It’s a way of opening doors and being like, this is what it’s like on my block. There are obviously some didactic moments and caricatures, but at the same time the dynamics still feel real today. I still think it’s Spike’s best film, and he knocked it out of the park. It’s probably his best performance as well."

"Trust was one of the first American indies that I ever saw… and it blew my mind. My experience of movies up until that point had taken place in a multiplex. The fare was entertaining, sure, but I never felt like there was a place for me in it. Hartley’s film and the early ’90s changed all of that. It seemed like a whole new art form. I didn’t even realize that you could make a film like this! The characters were smart and seductive, and they hurt and loved in ways I recognized. Martin Donovan, Bill Sage, Adrienne Shelly — they were my Band of Outsiders."

"This is a journey of a film, which ends where we couldn’t have imagined it would. A lesson in complexity, pain, fun, and beauty. Karen Black comes off as a worse actress than she is, and Jack Nicholson comes off as a better actor than he is. I think I saw this on VHS in the mid 1980s and then again at the Cinema Village in New York City in 1989. Throughout both viewings, but more so during the second time, I felt: grateful, grateful. This movie keeps on giving. A month or two ago I remembered the scene between Nicholson’s character and the mute father. I’m grateful for that."

"It’s the first of Haneke’s film I saw. When we were in film school, Sean [Durkin] called me and said, "You've got to see this film." We went to the NYU library and he first showed me two scenes: the one on the train where Juliette Binoche gets spit on and the red room scene where she gets directed off screen by Haneke. It was one of these moments where I had been waiting to see a film language that really spoke to me and this film had it, it made so much sense to me. From there I fell in love with Haneke."

"The most visual of all world events was for so long reduced to television coverage. In Tokyo Olympiad, it was finally handled by an artist of the caliber the event deserved. With our one TV channel, the Olympics were a big deal in my house. For two weeks, bedtimes and TV time limits were thrown out the window, and we youngsters rejoiced. But what I saw then on NBC couldn’t prepare me for the radically elevated portrayal Kon Ichikawa achieves. His film offers the Olympic events as the compositional feasts they were, not just a score tally. (Also, the best movie ever to fold laundry to.)"

"Number three, I don’t know the name of the director [Ed. note: Eliseo Subiela], unfortunately, but it was a movie made in the ’80s called Man Facing Southeast. It’s an Argentine film. I should really find out who the director is, ’cause I saw it a bunch of times in an art theater in the mid ’80s when it was released. I fell in love with it and I dragged all of my friends to go see it, and of course none of them liked it as much as I did, but something about it I just found incredibly powerful and it really resonated with me."

"Easily, without hesitation, the most difficult, and disturbing movie I’ve ever seen. I knew after I watched it a second time (mostly to verify the feelings it instilled in me the night before when I initially watched it) that that would be the last time I ever saw it. In a culture crammed with “shocksploitation” movies that are really pornographic in their violence and depravity but empty of any symbolism or real meaning (Human Centipede anyone?), Salo is as bleak and depressing a movie for it’s “Banality of Evil” truth that permeates every moment. There’s no escape. This is the world we’ve created for ourselves."