"I saw it years ago, when my mom and dad made me watch it. And I was like, “This guy [Paul Newman] is just the coolest dude ever.” He just had such charisma. It just really spoke to me, and it’s one of those films I can watch time and time again. Paul Newman! It was like, Oh my God, look at this guy, he’s so cool! It was pretty much the first time I saw Paul Newman and I’ve been hooked on most of his movies ever since."

"I think this one speaks for itself. I saw this after I saw Poetry. I wish more of Lee Chang-dong’s films were on Criterion. Song Kang-ho in Secret Sunshine is not the central performance, but he’s just so honest and raw and true. He’s this man who wants to be loved so badly. It’s heartbreaking. Director Lee really turns a mirror on you. I was raised very Christian, and somehow this film echoes the things buzzing in the back of my head. It’s nice to have someone make you not feel crazy."

"Psycho is a wonderful, elevated horror film, and it doesn’t necessarily have monsters or ghosts,” Simmons says. “You ever see Psycho? I’m embarrassed to say that there are people out there who don’t have a clue what I’m talking about. Shame on them. It’s interesting to note Psycho had murders and all this kind of wacky stuff but you never saw a knife go into a body. You never saw a body actually bleed. I think that made it even more horrific. Sometimes the scariest things are what human beings are capable of.”

"The second one is that incredibly brilliant movie Betty Blue, which I love because it opens with that incredible lovemaking scene with Béatrice Dalle. There’s just something so vivid and luscious about it. It’s just so beautiful and sensual in every regard and I absolutely love the film. I saw it recently and it’s just as brilliant. And the incredible soundtrack, you know. It’s just as brilliant as when I first saw it. Withnail and I and Betty Blue were both in the same period; they were both seminal cinematic experiences for me."

"I feel like that’s going to be a common one on a lot of these people’s list, but for me it’s just about the coolest movie I ever saw. When I saw it I was like, “That is so cool.” I don’t know if that was Charlie Kaufman’s intention, but I love that it was the real John Malkovich. I think that’s where I started to be kind of excessive with pulling back the fourth wall a little bit. Although, that might be a recurring theme with my movies, now that I’m thinking about it."

"As a former goth chick who went to an all-girls boarding school, Peter Weir’s dreamy 1975 film pushed all my buttons when I first saw it sometime in the mid-eighties. Romantic, mysterious, tragic: check, check, and check!"