"Yes, Cassavetes again, and by now it’s a no-brainer as to who my favorite filmmaker is. This time he takes on the gangster/noir genre but does it in his own inimitable abstract-expressionist style, where time slows down or sometimes speeds up, so we never know exactly where we are in terms of a traditional story arc or act structures. We are in dreamland . . . an opium-induced reverie. This is a portrait of an artist in the guise of a strip club owner, and Ben Gazzara’s Cosmo Vitelli is a career-topping performance. The onstage burlesque routines are worth the price of admission, as is the one and only Mr. Sophistication, played by Meade Roberts."

"I love The Departed. I was only talking about it the other day, in fact. I think it’s Scorsese at his best, in my opinion. I definitely love gangster films generally, like from Casino to the Godfathers. But I think The Departed, being in the modern day and being relatable — I think the cast is just amazing — but there’s something about being in the now that kind of made it a lot more… obviously relevant, but I suppose I connected with it in a much grander scale than I did with the likes of GoodFellas. I love all those films, but I think The Departed sort of resonated more than any of them."

"I love Scarface. First of all, it’s operatic and it’s funny, to me — Scarface is hilarious. It’s got amazing humor in it. I don’t know if everybody really got the humor when it first came out. It’s about the American Dream. I love the fact that it’s like, if they’re not gonna give it to you, you gotta take it. I’ve grown up watching all the gangster movies and that’s really the essence of all of them: if somebody’s not gonna give it to you, you’ve gotta kick the door down. That’s what that movie is really all about. Both of them [De Palma’s and Howard Hawks’ 1932 original] — both of them were about that. So that’s my love for Scarface; that’s the short answer."