"I saw this at Helsinki’s Love and Anarchy Film Festival with Mark Jenkin taking questions from the audience. From the very opening, I was transported to a completely different place even though we’re in contemporary Britain and I haven’t seen anything so singular from my home country in years. I had a sauna with Mark Jenkin the day after its Helsinki premiere and told him how jealous I was. It’s the kind of film I wish I had made. Its success is remarkable and it regally urinates on the perceived industry wisdom regarding so many things: nobody wants grainy black-and-white 16mm, nobody wants unknown actors and so on and so on. Congratulations not only to the truly visionary Mr. Jenkin, but also to the thousands of people adventurous enough to pay to see such a film. Both parties have hopefully made industry heads doubt their opinions. I recently got into an argument with a friend’s salsa partner who told me off for not being an audience-friendly director after he saw “In Fabric” since he regarded filmmaking as being on a par with customer service. I should’ve used “Bait” as a happy example of a film that finds its audience without pandering."

"To live in New York is to live in a place that is both heaven and hell, kept from dissolving into economic and racial chaos only by the maintenance of a minute-by-minute decency, respect, and understanding. Spike Lee spends a good amount of time, early in the film, dousing a Brooklyn neighborhood with gasoline, as we hold our breath to see who will strike a match. Making perhaps one of the twenty-five greatest dramas of the past thirty years, Lee is in Sidney Lumet territory here, by way of Paddy Chayefsky, by way of Huey P. Newton. The acting is, at times, as raw as you see in film. Danny Aiello, in the self-immolating role of the pizza shop owner who strips away decades of spiritual growth in a matter of minutes, gives one of the great performances in contemporary movie history, and both he and Lee, as screenwriter, were nominated for Oscars. Giancarlo Esposito, Ossie Davis, and John Turturro are riveting. Ernest R. Dickerson’s photography is memorable, as is Bill Lee’s music. But it’s Spike Lee, on his way to making films like Malcolm X and Clockers, who knocks you on your ass so hard you have trouble getting up at the closing credits."

"Close Up by Abbas Kiarostami. The way that that film blends fiction and reality, it is a north star for me. He made a movie about a contemporary Iranian filmmaker named Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and he read an article in the paper about a person who went around pretending to be this filmmaker in order to scam a family out of money and resources. And he went and cast the guy who was going around pretending to be Makhmalbaf, and he cast the real family that he scammed. And he recreated each scenario as if it was a script. He used real life as a script, and you’re watching the real players re-enact something that happened recently in their life, and the result is magical. The result is something that only film can give you. It makes you question your own self. It makes you question, what is a personality? It makes you question empathy. Because you start to actually see that this guy is actually a great actor, the main guy. And then you have one of the most complicated moments in all movies, when Makhmalbaf himself picks up the guy from the prison and rides on a motorcycle through Tehran. Masterpiece"