"All this talk about bonus features has made me think we need to talk about extras! I apologize, but I’m gonna deep-dive for a sec. It’s just that the special features are such key ingredients to some of these amazing Criterion titles and have become such an essential part of my own viewing experiences. There are stunning extras in the Criterion Collection that I often think about as important additions to the history of movies. So don’t get me started, or I’m going to start blabbing about the piles of amazing extras on Barry Lyndon (which fill two Blu-rays!). Or the amazing documentaries on 8½ and Seven Samurai and Brazil. Or The Game, with its eight different audio commentaries. Or that concert film in the edition of Inside Llewyn Davis. Or every Andrea Arnold short film on Fish Tank. Or that Cronos supplement where Guillermo del Toro gives a nerdgasm tour of his bonkers house. (I told you: don’t get me started.) But I think my all-time favorite bonus feature is Charles Laughton Directs “The Night of the Hunter,” a two-and-a-half-hour documentary that has to go down as one of the most interesting behind-the-scenes films ever made. I had never even heard of this until I picked up the Night of the Hunter disc. It literally shows something that I’ve never seen before: tons of footage of a director in the midst of working with his actors during takes. While actors are performing, you hear Charles Laughton (a legendary actor directing his only film) guiding the cast through every line in basically every shot, take after take after take. It’s like being on set next to a perfectionist director while he meticulously sculpts the performances in his masterpiece. (And oh, poor Shelley Winters. “Do it again! Do it again! Less air in between! Go ahead Mitch! Look at her! Shelley, look up now and say ‘blessss ussss all.’ Yes, that’s it, Shelley!!”)"

"Second I would say came out roughly around the same time but probably, The Silence of the Lambs. I just loved that movie. That too, me and my buddy Dougie Thornel… We actually were too young to get into that movie, but I remember one time we weren’t allowed in and then we snuck in anyway, and again, it was one where we went back and back and back. I think Ted Levine’s performance as Buffalo Bill is one of the most haunting performances that has ever happened on film. He’s an actor that I admire so deeply and I really love… Especially in the last few years, I’ve gotten to take these parts that are only in a few scenes and really create as rich a back story and history for the character as possible, and I thought he did that so cogently and so beautifully in that movie. Its not just that there are so many quotable lines, but you really see the depths of the torture that’s going through him. It’s such a meditation on serial killing and psychotic murderers, and I love the fact that Hannibal Lecter — obviously one of the great characters of all time — but I just love the fact that you don’t know whether to root for him or against him. I think it’s the ultimate anti-hero character, and the fact that they were able to achieve him being able to… you know, at the end of the movie, you’re actually rooting for him, that he got out and that he’s going to go eat people. I think that’s just so f—ing awesome. And obviously the scene with Levine and Jodie Foster with the night vision. It’s a book that I loved and I think its one of those rare times where I think the movie totally even outshines the book. Wow, what a film. It will always be one of my favorites."

"A perfectly executed movie; flawlessly executed. Incredible movie. And the thing — haha — the aspect of it that I like the best, is that I love the ending. I absolutely adore and love the ending, where you’re left ambiguously hanging and wondering what’s gonna happen. Kurt Russell is so underrated as an actor; he’s such a great anchor in every movie. I love him in just about everything he does. I remember one of my fondest memories of shooting Gremlins. I’ve never really talked about this. Right next door to Gremlins was the movie that Kurt Russell met Goldie Hawn on, a movie called Swing Shift. Their trailers were right next to us, so we were on Stage 16, and Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn were on stage 15, and we were literally 20 feet away from each other. You would exit the stages and walk towards the commissary and you’d have to walk past them. We’d have frequent breaks from Gremlins because the special effects would snap sometimes and there would be fixes that were needed and whatnot, so I would go outside and get some sunshine because it’s LA and it’s beautiful. So I’d go outside and sit on the steps and play with my Calico football or whatever game thing I had, and because I loved Kurt Russell already from The Thing and I loved Goldie Hawn, I was this interloper. Somehow I’ve managed to star in a movie — I don’t know how I did it — and I would watch Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn and their relationship unfold. I’d see them chatting a little the first couple of weeks, and the next couple of weeks they would go to the commissary together. A few weeks after that, they’d walk to the commissary a little slower holding hands. I thought even then, “That’s some chemistry right there.” And they’re still together. You’d see bits and pieces everyday, and if you had any inkling about how to read body language, it was pretty self-evident."

"This is a comedy for you movie nerds (but that’s probably why you’re on Rotten Tomatoes anyway, because you are a film nerd). This movie is called American Movie, and it’s a documentary comedy. Man, oh man, I remember seeing this film with Horatio Sanz: we were in the theater, and we were crying so hard from laughing, we were hugging each other and punching each other because we were laughing too hard. It’s about a man trying to make a horror movie. He calls it Cove–en, and it’s about a coven, but he doesn’t like the way “coven” rhymes with “oven,” that doesn’t make sense, so he calls it, mispronounces the title for his film, and calls it Cove-en. He tries to get his dad to act in the movie, and his dad is going like, “You have something to live for. Jesus told me so.” And he’s like, “All right, Dad, do it again, but your teeth are falling out.” And he goes, “Cole, you have something to live for. Jesus told me so.” And he goes, “Geez, I hear his teeth clickety clacking in the audio, it’s unusable.” I mean it is crying funny. He takes a dentist, a local dentist [who] wants to be an actor, and he’s ramming his head into a closet that he was supposed to have scored so that it easily breaks away, but he forgets to score the wood so he’s actually ramming a human’s head into a wooden cabinet. [The man] is screaming, and he’s ramming this poor man’s head into the thing. So cut, and the guy’s holding his head. He’s like, “Oh, my gosh.” He’s like “Uh, man, I’m sorry, I forgot to cut that board.” It’s one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. It will make you cry laughing. If you love filmmaking, you will appreciate this. The two guys, the two stars of the movie, are true stars."