"Titanic: the world’s second highest grossing film in history. It is really the only love story in the top five that feels epic. I know Casablanca is set against the backdrop of World War II, and yet this one is epic, a giant ship, and we all know what’s going to happen. We don’t really know who was on board, but they came up with a story about a couple that falls in love while they’re on board. To me, that has earned it its place in the top five"

"This is cheating because it’s four books in one. But Liebling wrote so well about so much, a compendium is merited. Two of these are reporting from World War II, where no other writer, in my opinion, could touch him. “The Road Back to Paris” is an epic dispatch full of hard times and the finest lyricism. The other two books are about France, food, wine, memory, boxing. I wouldn’t argue if you insisted that Liebling’s greatest subject was actually New York City, or even Louisiana. It’s too bad there’s not a twelve-pack."

"A living embodiment of Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy, Krishnamurti wrote many books about the need for modern people to wake up. As with Tagore, the horrors of World War II and the existential crisis of the Atomic Age dimmed Krishnamurti’s message, but he enjoyed a resurgence just before his death in 1986. He was sensationally glamorous to Westerners but relentless in confronting people with their lack of inner knowledge. The First and Last Freedom distills his teachings in a forceful, concentrated way. Few have taken such a stark view of the spiritual crisis in modern life."

"Well, England is to my taste a great, great film country. I don’t think any filmmakers have been greater than Hitchcock, fabulously represented in the Criterion Collection by The Lady Vanishes and a great box set, Wrong Men & Notorious Women; Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, represented by many films, including The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (one of their very best, also made during World War II); and of course Mike Leigh. Topsy-Turvy is so fascinating, because Mike Leigh celebrates precisely the approach to acting that he has driven his own actors farther and farther away from in his own films."