"The masterpiece. I keep an American Cinematheque membership; they do an amazing job of regularly screening classics (including many from the Criterion Collection) at two great theaters in LA. Bronwyn and I had the privilege of attending their screening of Seven Samurai at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica last year. Seeing this on the big screen, among the more talked-about aspects of this film, the unexpected humor really shines. It was the shortest, most engaging three and a half hours I’ve ever spent in a theater."

"I had my cinematic awakening in the late ’90s, and my understanding at the time was David Lynch didn’t want the film commercially released on VHS due to perceived inferior audiovisual quality. As a result, Screen Slate contributor Patrick Dahl and I first saw Eraserhead on an nth generation VHS bootleg with burned-in Japanese subtitles that we purchased at a horror convention in a Holiday Inn near Cleveland. I understood the movie completely differently when I finally saw and heard it in a theater, but this tape has its own vibe."

"I saw this movie in our local Michigan theater when it first came out. I was a teenager, and the only other people in there were a pair of teenage girls who were completely grossed out by the film and vocally disapproved of every scene. But for me, the movie was a revelation. The dark comedy, the amazing performances, and the soundtrack of Cat Stevens songs culminate in one of the most beautiful, emotional film endings ever, making this one of those movies I can and have watched more times than I can count."

"Gena Rowlands is a force of nature and John Cassavetes’s greatest muse. I saw this movie straight out of theater school and it shook me to the core. Her performance is electric. It was everything I love about acting: raw, dangerous, unpredictable, shocking, alive. You can’t keep your eyes off of her. It’s difficult to explain, but I didn’t know that films could do what Cassavetes does with this film. It was the film that made me see the potential that the medium could have. And it seriously made me want to be in one."

"One of my other favorites is Defending Your Life, the Albert Brooks movie. It’s my favorite of his movies. I was kind of at the exact age where… I was graduating high school when that came out, and it spoke directly to me for whatever reason. Also, I don’t think I’ve ever laughed harder in a movie theater than the Past Lives Pavilion. It’s a really, really great movie. I don’t know if it’s my second favorite movie ever, but I would put it in my top five."

"I return to Polanski’s early films to get excited about blocking and also adjusting the camera in relation to blocking. He’s the master of the camera adjustment. I’ve learned so much about directing from watching his films. Cul-de-sac is like his existential Beckett movie, and it draws a lot from absurd theater. Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby play with genre so brilliantly, upending conventions while honoring them. Macbeth always struck me as one of his masterpieces, and it’s clearly haunted by the Manson murders in a very visceral way."

"I return to Polanski’s early films to get excited about blocking and also adjusting the camera in relation to blocking. He’s the master of the camera adjustment. I’ve learned so much about directing from watching his films. Cul-de-sac is like his existential Beckett movie, and it draws a lot from absurd theater. Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby play with genre so brilliantly, upending conventions while honoring them. Macbeth always struck me as one of his masterpieces, and it’s clearly haunted by the Manson murders in a very visceral way."