"A modern classic. So original and exciting to watch. The premise itself is like a science fiction story, except that it is all very human and emotional. I think it’s Jim Carrey‘s best and most relatable performance. Kate [Winslet] is always amazing, but here she gets to do something she’d never done before. She’s so scattered and passionate and real. It’s heartbreaking because it’s about heartbreak and vulnerability and the inability to navigate through it all, which is, of course, an essential part of the human experience. It’s entirely unique, from an original voice, and that, in itself, deserves applause. The music is brilliant also."

"Another maverick reinventor of film procedure, Leigh arrives at his scripts by hiring actors capable of improvising behavior for the characters Leigh conceives, and then he compiles and hones the script from weeks of their recorded improvisations. The characters as filmed are always convincing and multidimensional in the way of real life, something rare in fiction movies. Usually Leigh’s films are ultimately optimistic or at least life-affirming, but Naked is an exception. It’s a study of a brilliant, manipulative, domineering, womanizing, articulate, suicidally provocative, near-Satanic young man, who is finally sympathetic, with a worldview that can’t be dismissed, and who is doomed. That’s the way I remember it, anyway."

"I really, genuinely don’t like favorite lists because you always leave stuff out. So there are a lot of important films I could put in like The Godfather Part II, perhaps, or The Godfather Part I, but I’m going to go with The Empire Strikes Back for number three only because it’s Empire Strikes Back! I don’t think I need to say why. It’s so good. It takes what arguably could be just a simple science fiction movie and really takes it to this other place that is just so engaging and so believable and dramatic as well. Not overly dramatic, but dramatic. I love that film a great deal."

"This was the present I gave everyone I knew for three years. It’s six different stories told in different time periods and genres: One is historical fiction, another is a ’70s thriller mystery, the sixth is a post­apocalyptic story. It’s one of the most beautiful, entertaining, challenging books—something that takes all your attention. I think the stories are meditations on violence, specifically the necessity of violence. The book ends with a beautiful exchange: ‘…only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean! Yet what is an ocean but a multitude of drops."