"The first film is Moulin Rouge! — weird because I’m seeing Nicole Kidman later today, not to brag. I’m pretty stoked about that. I first saw it at a family friend’s house and they put it on for me because they thought I’d like it, they knew that I liked music. But the first 10 minutes of that movie are absolute chaos, like full-fledged chaos. So, I was like, I hate this, I don’t know what this is. I gave it a second try and watched it through the first 10 minutes and then the story started to come together and it became my favorite movie. I love that movie so much. I love the visuals, love the music in it, and just yeah, it spoke to my little gay heart when I was a kid."

"An utter masterpiece from the great Akira Kurosawa. Curiously, a Dashiell Hammet novel provided the inspiration for this film. I love that an American pulp novel from the 1920s was the spark for a staggering work of genius from Japan over three decades later. It demonstrates how art can transcend barriers across time, space, and culture and speak to us in a meaningful way. Yojimbo was remade as Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western classic A Fistful of Dollars, which I saw and loved long before I knew the original even existed. But when I discovered Yojimbo, it was like a gift from the universe. Everything else paled in comparison. Yojimbo is part western, part gangster noir, part samurai story, all awesome. It’s so good. Plus, if Kubo’s dad looks a wee bit like Kurosawa’s resplendent muse Toshiro Mifune, that’s not necessarily a coincidence."

"My friend Al played it to me when we were living together. It's a box set of all four of his releases at that time. It's super bleak and I don't know what it says about my mental state then, but for a long time it was the record I would fall asleep to, particularly on tour. There's something microscopic about the sound, but it's like a musical optical illusion - it can sound vast and oceanic or it can sound quite narrow. He's done something fascinating with the sonics so that it works on two dimensions. It's also just heartbreaking - there's one piece called 'Orgone Donor' with musical saw and violin over granular drones; a matt finish with these aching, twisted sliding harmonies. Like the soundtrack to the end of days. As though you're sliding into a black hole."

"Years ago I was on the Sundance jury and handed an award to a bright young Damien Chazelle for one of his short films, which naturally means I can now take credit for his entire career. Honestly though I don’t know how he keeps topping himself. When I was little, I saw “The Right Stuff” and was enthralled. Even after three hours I wished it didn’t have to end and could continue telling the story of the space race in such amazing fashion all the way to the moon landing. Now, over thirty years later, I finally got my wish. “First Man” crackles with energy and dread – the direction, the sound design, the edit, cinematography, it just felt so sharp and right in every department. It’s Mr. Chazelle’s strongest work to date and maybe my favorite film of the year."

"I think this is one of the best war movies ever made. It covered the heroics of World War 2 which we’re all familiar with from the greatest generation, but it was the first movie to ever capture the absolute terror of being a soldier in the war. It was okay to be absolutely terrified during that world war. Every other movie is mostly about showing bravery in such an unrealistic context, it’s like every soldier that fought there died gracefully. But I know people who fought in that war who saw that movie when it came out, and it brought back a lot of memories and fears and terrors. You weren’t encouraged to get help after the war for the trauma back then. And that movie did more for a lot of those soldiers and veterans, and it is just great filmmaking."

"This movie seemed to come out of nowhere. I didn’t even know it existed until I saw it at BAM, and I remember walking out of the theater thinking this is the best movie ever. I love giant, epic films with incredible black-and-white cinematography. There’s one scene in the film that I literally show to everyone I ever make a movie with. It’s shot through a fence, when Tatiana Samoilova is running, and the camera moves past the fence super quickly, and it speeds up with the pace of her running. It has this effect where it makes your heart race in a way that’s insane. The other thing about that movie is that it’s an epic told from a woman’s point of view, which you rarely see. It’s just one of the greatest movies of all time."

"I know it’s a cheat to select three films as if they were one, but it’s almost impossible to consider Rome Open City, Paisan, and Germany Year Zero as anything other than a linked narrative of the ashes of World War II and of the struggle to rise out of that dustbin of history. They are vital, raw, even primitive in style, full of nonactors who are alternately charismatic and arch; there is an aesthetic in these movies that is stripped to the bone. These films, taken together, are immediate godfather to the French New Wave. When Truffaut saw the cinematic journey of the eleven-year-old Edmund Meschke in Germany Year Zero, the seeds of his Antoine Doinel character were planted. The interviews and documentary extras in this set are one of the great treasures of neorealism research."

"I know it’s a cheat to select three films as if they were one, but it’s almost impossible to consider Rome Open City, Paisan, and Germany Year Zero as anything other than a linked narrative of the ashes of World War II and of the struggle to rise out of that dustbin of history. They are vital, raw, even primitive in style, full of nonactors who are alternately charismatic and arch; there is an aesthetic in these movies that is stripped to the bone. These films, taken together, are immediate godfather to the French New Wave. When Truffaut saw the cinematic journey of the eleven-year-old Edmund Meschke in Germany Year Zero, the seeds of his Antoine Doinel character were planted. The interviews and documentary extras in this set are one of the great treasures of neorealism research."

"I know it’s a cheat to select three films as if they were one, but it’s almost impossible to consider Rome Open City, Paisan, and Germany Year Zero as anything other than a linked narrative of the ashes of World War II and of the struggle to rise out of that dustbin of history. They are vital, raw, even primitive in style, full of nonactors who are alternately charismatic and arch; there is an aesthetic in these movies that is stripped to the bone. These films, taken together, are immediate godfather to the French New Wave. When Truffaut saw the cinematic journey of the eleven-year-old Edmund Meschke in Germany Year Zero, the seeds of his Antoine Doinel character were planted. The interviews and documentary extras in this set are one of the great treasures of neorealism research."