"Thanks to Criterion, I could finally see the Max Ophuls movies I’d been reading about for years. The story of Madame de . . . on paper doesn’t really interest me, but in the hands of Ophuls, Danielle Darrieux, Charles Boyer, and the great Vittorio De Sica (who’s not only a fantastic director and one of the fathers of neorealism, he’s also damn suave), it’s a movie that truly amazed me. I could watch those dancing scenes for hours."

"Powell and Pressburger’s ballet-oriented film of Offenbach’s opera of Hoffmann’s tales . . . as rich and strange a confection as the cinema ever produced, with astonishing work from Moira Shearer as the dancing automaton Olympia (whose absurd demise,with broken springs coiling out of her severed head, I always find shocking and sad) and Robert Helpmann as Hoffmann’s multifaced archenemy. With effects technique that could have been used by Méliès and gorgeous color art direction, costuming, and cinematography."

"The music is so beautiful, and the people are so beautiful. I first saw this as a very young kid, and I just remember being captivated by the sensuality of the story and those moments with everyone dancing in the street. This movie opened up my world—I’d never seen black people’s lives portrayed in such an artistic, almost New Wave-y style. And I don’t know if I’d ever seen a film about black people that was this romantic."

"House Party is a favorite of mine because Kevin and I, when we first started hanging out actually, we started watching that movie. I watched it with him, he sort of introduced me to it. It has Martin Lawrence who’s amazing, and some of my favorite quotes are from that movie. That whole house party dance with Kid n Play where they do the kicking and dancing, me and my buddies used to go to parties and try to do that and it’s obnoxious."

"I saw Rust And Bone. It’s about a woman who is a whale trainer, and she loves to go dancing: she loves to go to the club. And the other main character is really into boxing, and he has a son that he doesn’t take care of, but then he has to. It’s hard to feel empathy for either character in the beginning. There are some really intense plot twists. She eventually loses her legs. They become good friends. I won’t say anymore, but it was amazing."