"There was something odd about how much I loved this book. Looking back I realize it was the precursor to Instagram. It was social sharing pre iPhone. Pour through it today— it’s like a day’s worth of scrolling. It was the beginning of global voyeurism. I love this book for this reason."

"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."

"When Peeping Tom was released in 1960 it was savaged by critics who’d seen the film at a special press screening. Those British critics must have been outraged with Michael Powell, whom they had trusted as a director who would reinforce their British identity and value system. That trust must have been completely broken by this scathing indictment of voyeurism and extreme violence. There are many similarities between this and Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, released the same year, and Hitchcock shrewdly avoided press screening his film after having seen Powell’s fate just a few months before. Powell’s career was over, with the exception of a few obscure projects, but the culture of slasher films was just beginning. And whether people realized it or not, this was ground zero. Critical reappraisal of Peeping Tom has secured the film where it belongs, in the category of crucially important cinema. Personally, I prefer Powell’s film to Hitchcock’s, but both should be regarded as examples of great horror cinema that demands critical thought and analysis."

"One has to love a film that has for its subtitle An Introduction to Anthropology. This hardscrabble tale of two blockheads dedicated to making a yen in the flesh trade is the most congruent homage to Laurel and Hardy one could dream of. Everything falls apart around them, but they keep forging on. The film does, too, ratcheting up craziness along the way: a carp in a fish tank—the reincarnation of a deceased husband—somersaults to show its disapproval of the widow’s sexual antics with her new beau; a depressed middle-aged woman jumps on the windowsill of her hospital room and masturbates, to the great joy of a crowd of workers that seems to have just exited the Lumière factory; a crumpled pornographer indulges in a bit of voyeurism that turns into a lesson in the use of angles in cinema, etc., etc.; and finally an ending in the waters off Osaka’s harbor that leaves one howling with laughter. All of it is filmed with an aggressive, unrelenting elegance that puts the viewer through rigorous ocular gymnastics. If you thought that Ozu was the alpha and the omega of the visual possibilities offered by Japanese home architecture, Imamura’s truculent epic will open your eyes anew."