"I saw Blue for the first time when I was in film school. I checked out a VHS tape from the library and watched it on a twelve-inch TV/VCR. The movie finished and I sat staring at the dark screen while the tape auto-rewound. When it reached the beginning, I pressed “Play” and watched it a second time. When it stopped the second time, I turned everything off, went to bed, and stared at the ceiling. A week or so later, I finished the trilogy and thought, If these are called movies, we need a new name for everything else. I’ve never seen music sewn through film so deeply, as if the actors were thinking the soundtrack while they were acting. However he did it, Kieślowski caught the chaos of being human without the mania (for instance, the elderly woman carefully disposing of recyclables). His films are life-affirming for the jaded—they are the smartest and sexiest of unintentionally philosophical films, never talking down or forgetting to entertain. And the ending of Red—well, isn’t that the ending of everything?"

"I saw Blue for the first time when I was in film school. I checked out a VHS tape from the library and watched it on a twelve-inch TV/VCR. The movie finished and I sat staring at the dark screen while the tape auto-rewound. When it reached the beginning, I pressed “Play” and watched it a second time. When it stopped the second time, I turned everything off, went to bed, and stared at the ceiling. A week or so later, I finished the trilogy and thought, If these are called movies, we need a new name for everything else. I’ve never seen music sewn through film so deeply, as if the actors were thinking the soundtrack while they were acting. However he did it, Kieślowski caught the chaos of being human without the mania (for instance, the elderly woman carefully disposing of recyclables). His films are life-affirming for the jaded—they are the smartest and sexiest of unintentionally philosophical films, never talking down or forgetting to entertain. And the ending of Red—well, isn’t that the ending of everything?"

"I sat next to someone called Arnaud Desplechin at a dinner once in Paris. At home a week later, I saw a movie called A Christmas Tale. It was jaw-dropping, immediately one of the best films I’d ever seen. I got up from the couch thinking, Who in God’s name directed this thing? At the TV, I flipped over the DVD case and shrieked. I’d been sitting right next to him and hadn’t said a thing. I was distraught—like someone who decides not to buy an eight-dollar painting at a thrift shop only to find out later that it was a Picasso. Surely A Christmas Tale is built on one of our sturdiest clichés, that of a dysfunctional family reuniting for the holidays. But that’s where everything you’ve ever seen before ends. There’s not a filmic technique that isn’t employed to its fullest, no trick Desplechin is afraid to pull. Every beat is specific, there’s not a written false note, and it has some of the ballsiest acting on any side of the Atlantic. I only wish I had known all this when I was sitting next to the man. C’est la vie."