"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."

"Made on the wonderful jungle sets of King Kong while that epic’s special effects were being finished, this is one of the great action-horror films and has provided a template for many “rich sicko” melodramas—the entire “torture porn” subgenre springs from the obsessions of its villain, Count Zaroff (Leslie Banks). Adapted from a short story by Richard Connell and codirected by Kong’s Ernest B. Schoedsack and character actor Irving Pichel, it has one of the most perfect plots in horror: a big-game hunter (Joel McCrea) changes his mind about how much fun his preferred sport is when he’s shipwrecked on an island where a mad Russian who’s grown tired of lesser game has opted to hunt human beings. Fay Wray, another Kong holdover, screams on the sidelines, and a pack of baying hounds provides additional menace."

"Let’s tall about Kurosawa‘s Dreams. When Bravo first came on television, they were figuring out who they were as a cable network and would just play random foreign films. This was before the travesty of reality television permeated their station. I was at home alone in high school, I think I was a junior in high school and Dreams comes on by Kurosawa. I could not separate myself from it. I didn’t know who Kurosawa was — I didn’t care. I was just a kid absorbing things that flashed on the screen in front of him. I was immediately captivated by this thing that was at once beautiful — obviously surreal — but at the same time palpable enough to actually hit home emotionally. I think not many people would probably describe scenes in my movies as surreal, but there are some. Kind of this magical realism that exists in that film. Also it feels ancient; it feels like when this boy comes home having witnessed the wedding of foxes and his mother’s there and says he can’t enter the home because he spied on the foxes and then presents a dagger to him and says, “They want you to kill yourself. Run. Run and ask for forgiveness.” It feels like an ancient story, it feels like something — I’m not sure what. It feels like something that kind of bubbled up from our beginning. I was fascinated by that. Just go watch it. It’s all skits, it’s basically short films strewn together. Get’s real weird by the end, but the first three are three of the greatest films I’ve ever seen."