"The Lives of Others would go in there. It’s just an amazing movie. And then he went and did The Tourist, which, I think, got a 20 percent rating on your site. We look at your website quite a lot. But, [The Lives of Others] was just a beautiful film. So many great movies coming out of Germany, like… Well, The Reader was a Stephen Daldry film, but it was all about coming to terms with their past. And also, Downfall was as well. God, I could continue forever because I love movies."

"I’m cheating again, because this isn’t a movie at all. It’s an episode of an Adult Swim show, and I’ve watched it more than anything else this year. It’s only ten or twelve minutes and it leaves me feeling like I’m a better person. It is warm and cozy and fills me with compassion and hope for humanity. It is also a celebration of my favorite meal. I look forward to many more viewings in the year to come, whenever I need a pick-me-up, large or small."

"Spike Lee’s finest movie. One of the movies that made me want to get into the movies as well. I knew I was never going to make Do the Right Thing, to do what he did with cinema and tell a story comedically but also dramatically. Very intense. That movie goes from a fun comedy — I don’t know if you can say fun comedy, but it’s a funny comedy — to a dramatic shift in tone. It’s a slow burn. You don’t notice it when it happens. It comes out of left field but it’s keeping in what has come before. You realize how masterfully it’s put together. That movie informed Clerks to a large degree: it takes place all in one day, in one particular block, in one very specific city. So that was the model I used for Clerks. So much so that the original version of Clerks Dante gets killed because I was like, “I want to do something like that.” Then I realized I’m not Spike Lee."