"Léon. Or, as it’s known in the United States, The Professional. But in France it’s called Léon. It’s so weird because for years I’d always called it The Professional and then for some reason it switched in my mind. I mean, that movie was an amazing blend of an international eye within the context of an American… That movie still feels extremely international, certainly with its lead actor but also the way that it was shot and made. But at the heart of that film is this incredible relationship between a cold blooded killer and a young girl. And it’s still so effective and so powerful. I think one of my favorite sequences in the film was when the two of them are kind of like, it’s like this beautiful montage of their relationship as they’re, like, cleaning the apartment and these sort of things that they’re doing together, this really adorable, emotional relationship. And it’s all cut to “Venus as a Boy” by Björk. It’s such a great sequence and there’s such whimsy to their connection. And of course the movie goes into a really dark and awfully sort of tragic place, you know, and it’s really about a man whose sole purpose in life is to be cold and calculated, but it’s all about this girl finding his humanity. It’s just such a beautiful film."

"I kind of think Fitzcarraldo. Cinephiles know it, but the new generation don’t really know that picture. It’s a flawed film but if you watch that and the companion making-of [Burden of Dreams]… there’s a great Criterion of it; it’s the one with Mick Jagger in it, when he started the film and had to pull out. What I love about this film is that it represents what I love about film making: The film is about a person who has an insane passion for art, to the extent that they drag a boat over a small isthmus to make money, but he’s making money to bring Caruso, the great Italian Opera singer, to build an opera house. But the backstory, with Klaus [Kinski], and the relationship between Klaus and [director] Werner [Herzog], is so fantastic a backstory. I mean, they try and kill each other. And I think the intense passion between actor and director is in the film. To me it’s kind of a package deal, this film. You have to involve yourself in the movie, but it’s really worth going beneath the film, up the jungle and into the psyche of the drama itself. Its companion film is one of my favorites of all-time, Apocalypse Now — and you can go on the same journey with that film."

"Something actually I watched recently — my girlfriend hadn’t seen it yet — A Streetcar Named Desire. I’m a huge Marlon Brando fan, as a lot of actors are. I know it’s a cliché, but obviously there are many performances of Brando’s that are just exquisite, but there’s something about that performance as Stanley in Streetcar that I think is just so raw and electric, as everybody says. I’m not saying anything that anybody hasn’t said before, so excuse my banter, but you just cannot take your eyes off him. I think as a young male actor at the time, when I first started seeing that film, you just wanted to deliver everything that he could deliver, and of course, none of us can. I certainly can’t, but the envy that I would feel for him, as well as the thrill of watching what he could do, was so mixed up in my head and my body that I just go back to that film every couple of years and watch it again. Obviously, Tennessee Williams is such a wonderful writer, and we all understand, I think, those powerful emotions that exist within families, and those things that seem very subtle at one point that can then be the breakdown of a family. I just think the combination of his writing and Brando’s performance is just exquisite. It’s really exquisite."

"That one was going to be the last track on the album, so we had to leave an emotional impact there. It wasn't hard to think like that, given the subject of the song. With a lot of Bowie's songs, you found you were not only being a musician, but a bit of an actor as well. You had to get in there and use your imagination at the same time as your drumming skills to communicate those lyrics with any sort of conviction. You didn't want to say: 'Go out and commit suicide', of course, so you had to find a way of playing it so it didn't communicate that but rather identified with how someone like that might feel at the end of the world – that whole concept. It's one of my favorite tracks. It doesn't need a lot from the drums, bass and guitar. There are times when it breaks down to just the bass drum, and that bass drum needs to be played with despair. So, it was interesting as an emotional song to play. Everything seemed to leave it hanging on that bass drum, so you couldn't play it flippantly. It was how you emotionally felt and getting that across with just your foot on the drum pedal. You look back on that track and think it was pretty risky – especially on his part!"

"The Raid. Come on, man, THE RAID! It’s insane. I’m a fighter, and I love and grew up on fighting movies. I mean, Jet Li, Donnie Yen, those are my guys; Jean Claude Van-Damme, those are my guys. But this new cat, Iko Uwais, I mean, he’s fantastic. He is a great actor, but at the same time a great martial artist. They had so many great martial artists, so many great athletes, in this film, and what I loved about it was the raw nature in which they shot it. The fight scenes were done so well we believed all of it. You know, there’s not too many high-flying wire tricks. As a fighter I can appreciate when somebody does a scene so perfectly that it looks like a tangible fight, because I know what it’s like to be in the ring with somebody. First of all, fights don’t last that long, and when people fight there’s a lot more getting beat up and weary than we see often times in film. But this one made it so cool. I said, “Wow, here’s something that teaches me how to do this in a new way, something that teaches me how to perfect the idea of action.” I think it’s one of the best action films. Hands down."

"I can’t believe how the genius of Sacha Guitry is misunderstood outside the borders of France. He is actually one of the most important figures in the history of French cinema, on a par with the greatest. I suspect he has this marginal status because when he started making films—the minute you could record sound—he was already a middle-aged ultra-recognized, ultra-successful figure of the stage. His style owes nothing to the silent era; he is the first French filmmaker, in a long line, who relies on language. But he was of course never content to simply record his own plays; he was obsessed with using the specificities of cinema to transcend them, and in doing so he pioneered a whole new language. Inspired by his wives—first Jacqueline Delubac, then Geneviève Guitry, then Lana Marconi, who most often had the lead—Guitry was the first French writer/director, and possibly the greatest. Désiré is a remarkable film. I wish Criterion would release Le comédien, a portrait of his father, the famous actor Lucien Guitry, and my personal favorite. Another misunderstood French director is Georges Franju, who’s mostly known for Eyes Without a Face but actually the author of a very consistent body of work, including Judex, a quietly disturbing poetic adaptation of Louis Feuillade’s serial."

"I can’t believe how the genius of Sacha Guitry is misunderstood outside the borders of France. He is actually one of the most important figures in the history of French cinema, on a par with the greatest. I suspect he has this marginal status because when he started making films—the minute you could record sound—he was already a middle-aged ultra-recognized, ultra-successful figure of the stage. His style owes nothing to the silent era; he is the first French filmmaker, in a long line, who relies on language. But he was of course never content to simply record his own plays; he was obsessed with using the specificities of cinema to transcend them, and in doing so he pioneered a whole new language. Inspired by his wives—first Jacqueline Delubac, then Geneviève Guitry, then Lana Marconi, who most often had the lead—Guitry was the first French writer/director, and possibly the greatest. Désiré is a remarkable film. I wish Criterion would release Le comédien, a portrait of his father, the famous actor Lucien Guitry, and my personal favorite. Another misunderstood French director is Georges Franju, who’s mostly known for Eyes Without a Face but actually the author of a very consistent body of work, including Judex, a quietly disturbing poetic adaptation of Louis Feuillade’s serial."