"It is the greatest film in the english language ever made between the two Godfathers. Almost drove him bankrupt, but there you go. It is the greatest thriller of all time. If ever you’re talking about a character to which — how to get you biting your nails without any slaps or gunshots going off, that movie’s it. It’s just so terrifyingly correct. I’m not really a [Michaelangelo] Antonioni fan or any of those; Blow Up and all that never did it for me. But The Conversation, somehow, whoa. And I kind of find Mamet the same way. I know everybody holds correctly Hitchcock, you know, as high as you can, but I find Mamet delivers more shock and awe to me, and twists in a correct way than I ever found with Hitchcock. But of course we’re watching Hitchcock movies when 20 things have copied his films and they’ve become cliché at a particular point. The Conversation holds up like that for me."

"Rear Window. A little Hitchcock action. It’s just a hell of a good thriller. It’s so simple. It’s such a simple idea. It’s beautifully constructed as a story, and it’s Hitchcock at his best, where it’s kind of scary and building tension, but then also lots of laughs throughout the whole thing, lots of second guessing — Where are we, who’s right, who’s wrong? — and Jimmy Stewart is at his best. He’s wheelchair-bound with a giant cast on his leg, but it’s still one of his great physical performances. I just love how the tension builds and builds, and it’s a real kind of filmmaker’s film because the themes of voyeurism and projecting your own narrative onto things, I think, are baked into filmmaking as a form, and Hitchcock recognizes that and had a lot of fun with it, and I think we can all see ourselves in that a little bit."

"A thriller wrapped inside an enigma, this is my desert island disc, the one I’ve watched
 more than any other on this list. The psychology of the characters is revealed
 slowly and ambiguously. Each time I see the wheelchair (the husband’s fantasy) and hear the sound of the horse-and-carriage bells (the wife’s), and the way
 the two achieve harmony in the final scene, I’m reminded of Luis Buñuel’s ability to
 fuse reality and illusion in his characters and for the viewer. He performs this
 magic in plain view, like the best magicians. This is the film that illustrates that
 Catherine Deneuve is not only one of the world’s most beautiful women but a
 fine actress. Belle de jour is truly subversive in its satiric depiction of middle-
class society, the church, and our social mores. If a ratings board ever understood
 this film, it would receive an NC-17, though there is no sex and little violence."