"I would be embarrassed to begin to talk about Dr. Strangelove, because there has been so much written about it. It’s so bleak. And Peter Sellers is perfect. He’s just perfect. Terry Southern and Stanley Kubrick built this doomsday political satire, in the fists of the Cold War, and made the end of the world hysterical. We’re bumbling idiots, all of us. We’re all walking through dark rooms of our life, bumping into furniture, and it’s shocking. I think we all enjoy watching people who are in authority positions act like bumbling idiots; it satisfies part of our ego, I’m sure, on some level. Sellers’ commitment to those characters… the scene that stands out is when he’s trying to get change to make the phone call to stop the bomb, and that security guard won’t let him break government property to get the change. The frustration of that is as painful as it is hysterical."

"A phenomenal slice-of-life family drama directed by the late Edward Yang from Taiwan that exemplifies some of the great realist cinema that was being made in Asian countries during this time (see Ang Lee). And despite the films having very little to do with each other, I always personally associate this film with In the Mood for Love by Wong Kar-wai. Both films were released here in the U.S. at the same time, and I watched both on the same day. That was a crazy day. I still remember how the air tasted after stepping out of the theater that evening. Also—and I feel I have to mention this—I watched a third film that amazing weekend, After Life by Hirokazu Kore-eda, and it was my favorite of the three (and is one of my all-time favorites). Kore-eda has a nice movie called Still Walking available from Criterion, but I am hoping for a nice edition of After Life someday."

"The opening 18 minutes of that thing, I mean, when the door dropped on the Higgins craft and it all of a sudden was World War Two in color, seeing blood, seeing guys walking around looking for their arm that had been blown off. Weird poignant scenes where the medic was like stopping the bleeding and the bullet would just go right through the guy’s head. Also the story was strong too; there’s a bunch of guys named Ryan spread out all over the place and they think they’re finding him, and his guys kind of going, “Why are we killing ourselves trying to save one guy, and we’ve lost two or three of our own?” That thing that would never go on today. And all the stops along the way, there’s no way an hour into that movie I went, “Nah, I don’t care if they find him or not, I’m moving on.”"