"Roger Ross William’s extraordinary, immersive chronicle of the Apollo Theater affirms that cultural expressions can be and are political action. In a film full of amazing performances, the moment of Billie Holiday singing and performing “Strange Fruit” is so alive, so emotionally open, at once ferocious and calm. Her serenity is profoundly unsettling, and we see not just a genius, but a freedom fighter using her voice as a weapon."

"Roger Ross William’s extraordinary, immersive chronicle of the Apollo Theater affirms that cultural expressions can be and are political action. In a film full of amazing performances, the moment of Billie Holiday singing and performing “Strange Fruit” is so alive, so emotionally open, at once ferocious and calm. Her serenity is profoundly unsettling, and we see not just a genius, but a freedom fighter using her voice as a weapon."

"My grandfather brought me to see this movie on a Saturday afternoon in a theater in the suburbs of Paris. I was 11 and it was PG-13. I was petrified when the film started, feeling as though I was in a forbidden place. Since the heroine was a little girl my age, I totally identified with her and felt that I was also possessed by the devil."

"David Lynch’s movie infuriated me when I first watched it in an empty theater during its initial run in October of 2001 in New York. But with each subsequent viewing it grows richer, more complex, and more mysterious. It surpasses Contempt as the most tragic, agonizing film about movies and Hollywood subsuming souls with promises impossible to keep. Naomi Watts as the actress who never made it has never been better."

"My favorite part of this novel is how the main character is so fixated on re-creating a very specific scene from his past, and he's not even sure why. It's an act of theater, and memory, and something powerfully unconscious — and we are witness to the process. He is a kind of inverted Proust, making the madeleine from scratch to evoke the thing you didn't know needed evoking."

"My second favorite film right now… This is also a film that hit me pretty hard. The Theory of Everything. I like what it says about life. It made me appreciative of life, about everything. Ultimately, I think those are some of my favorite movies, where you leave the theater, you sit up and you want to be a better person, or you want to enjoy life more."

"In terms of mind-blowing experiences, I would say the first film was Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, just because I think — I’m pretty sure — that’s the first time I ever saw a live action movie in a movie theater as a kid. My dad took me and my brother to see it. I think up till then I’d only seen one animated movie in a movie theater. I think it was Robin Hood, which, for some reason, was really boring to me. But we went to see Willy Wonka, and I was so blown away, and it so freaked me out, that I couldn’t stop thinking about it for years. I had watched movies on TV and stuff, but that was the first time I think I was old enough to go to the movies, and be able to sit through a movie without wanting to get up and run around the theater. Just seeing it that big and getting sucked into it. I don’t even think I realized those were actors and that anything was fake. I think I just thought it was all real, that Charlie was a real kid, and Willy Wonka was a real person. I really think I thought it was real. I really thought the whole family lived in that one room. I was probably in second grade or something… So I probably didn’t actually think it was real, but I responded to it like it was real."