"I wish I could choose something cool and artsy. I’ll tell you what I saw, which I think kind of shot into my list, and I only watched it recently — I’m ashamed that I didn’t see it earlier — was The Squid and the Whale. It was absolutely fantastic. Again, I guess, similar in tone to the other films I’ve mentioned. A sort of, you know, domestic comedy-drama, but very, very truthful, and brilliant performances again. Is it Jesse Eisenberg who’s in that movie? Yeah, I just thought that was tremendous. Luckily, my parents never got divorced, I never went through that, but it really takes you into the experience of watching your parents split up. And I think cinema’s at its best when it makes you feel an experience that you’ve never had yourself, and sort of understand the emotions of it. I was really impressed by that movie. Just a great, kind of… shot through with this black spine of humor."

"Okay, I’m just gonna try to say both Incredibles and Incredibles 2. I’m just gonna put this as a whole movie together. I grew up watching The Incredibles and it was one of the best animated films I’ve ever seen. And it’s – I don’t know – the humor… it didn’t even feel like a kid’s film. It was the storyline and it was almost like an actual film. But it was more exaggerated, because it was animated. And then, years later, I saw a trailer for Incredibles 2, but it was like a sneak peek – it was Jack-Jack the baby showing his superpowers for a second, like five seconds. It was a five-second trailer and I was like, “No way!” I was so excited. And then I saw Incredibles 2 and it didn’t really have the same plot, it didn’t really relate to the first one. But those, the The Incredibles and Incredibles 2, are my favorite animated films."

"What I love about Tati is that the things that are funny are always secondary, not on the surface. In American comedy, you build up to the summit of the joke, and the joke is the central element. But Tati has a unique type of humor that always leaves a place for the viewer. If something isn’t funny for you, you don’t have to laugh, and that’s all right. You might even pass without noticing. The antipode of this attitude for life is American stand-up comedy. Here you are permanently directed—there’s no way out; you have to laugh and there might even exist recorded laughter in case you didn’t get it. Tati is the exact opposite. His comedy just unfolds as things actually happen in life. His situations are so direct and clear, you don’t have to be witty or have a sense of irony or sarcasm to get them; you just have to have a sense of observation."

"Jim Jarmusch film. So wonderfully done in black and white. John Lurie stars and does the music. It’s weird because there are no close ups in the film, it’s an objective viewing experience, and yet it’s subjective in the way that Jarmusch points you. You’re given anything to look at, but you’re always looking at the right things. And the idea that it began as a short, just called The New World, but they raised money to make the other two or three acts, is really interesting to me. Great performances, a lot of humor, really slow pace. These were things I wasn’t really used to — the European pace, even though I love The 400 Blows, it was a revelation at the time in 1984. And I saw it when it came out in Austin, and just I think it opened up a new world of storytelling and filmmaking to me on some level."

"Sunset Boulevard is the ultimate film noir for me. It has this incredibly unpleasant main character, who is played with a lot of charm by William Holden, and he thinks he’s really smart, and it turns out that he’s kind of in over his head. I love the environment. I love the way the story is told in flashbacks. I love the sense of Los Angeles. I love the humor in it — it’s a really funny movie — and it’s just one of those iconic things that, if you know the movie, you run into it once a month in some way, especially living in L.A. It’s got great lines in it. There’s incredible dialogue, incredible visual moments. Surprises. It’s a horror movie and a comedy at the same time; it’s all over the place in terms of genre. When I first saw it, I just couldn’t believe that it was a big Hollywood movie made by a studio because it’s so peculiar."

"The lack of interest in Fassbinder’s work depresses the hell out of me. For me, he is the birth of the new. His high-concept stories, told in bold dramatic strokes and with vibrant colors, teach us about everything from class and racial politics to family responsibility and true love. His theatricality comes out of the Brecht mold, but it is new, it is melodramatic and involving and funny, often bitter and ironic, always with good humor, but, for me anyway, never cynical. He wears his heart and soul on his sleeve. He traverses the taboo, attacks intolerance, and loves his characters so much, even if at first they appear totally unappealing. Fassbinder is an original, and Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is one of his best films, made on the run like so many of his others. The world would be a better place if more people embraced movies like this one."

"I don’t really understand Ozu, and I probably never will, but if this is what not understanding feels like, I’m okay with that. It’s hard to single out a movie, because so much of the impact of Ozu’s films has to do with their cumulative relationship with each other, so I chose three by gut: Late Spring, because the shot of Chishu Ryu peeling the apple is the peak of all of Ozu and maybe all of movies. There Was a Father struck me as (deceptively) subversive for a film made during the war, and its central father-son relationship is especially tender. Good Morning, a sort-of remake of Ozu’s own I Was Born, But . . ., is very funny, and a good reminder of his wonderful schoolboy sense of humor. (I remember reading or hearing someone observe that the farts in Good Morning don’t really sound like farts but more like the refined Platonic ideal of farts."

"I don’t really understand Ozu, and I probably never will, but if this is what not understanding feels like, I’m okay with that. It’s hard to single out a movie, because so much of the impact of Ozu’s films has to do with their cumulative relationship with each other, so I chose three by gut: Late Spring, because the shot of Chishu Ryu peeling the apple is the peak of all of Ozu and maybe all of movies. There Was a Father struck me as (deceptively) subversive for a film made during the war, and its central father-son relationship is especially tender. Good Morning, a sort-of remake of Ozu’s own I Was Born, But . . ., is very funny, and a good reminder of his wonderful schoolboy sense of humor. (I remember reading or hearing someone observe that the farts in Good Morning don’t really sound like farts but more like the refined Platonic ideal of farts."

"I don’t really understand Ozu, and I probably never will, but if this is what not understanding feels like, I’m okay with that. It’s hard to single out a movie, because so much of the impact of Ozu’s films has to do with their cumulative relationship with each other, so I chose three by gut: Late Spring, because the shot of Chishu Ryu peeling the apple is the peak of all of Ozu and maybe all of movies. There Was a Father struck me as (deceptively) subversive for a film made during the war, and its central father-son relationship is especially tender. Good Morning, a sort-of remake of Ozu’s own I Was Born, But . . ., is very funny, and a good reminder of his wonderful schoolboy sense of humor. (I remember reading or hearing someone observe that the farts in Good Morning don’t really sound like farts but more like the refined Platonic ideal of farts."

"In general, I’m not a big fan of French New Wave films, and Touki bouki is clearly inspired by their characteristic fragmented, slow-moving, alienating quality. But the world of Touki bouki is so beautiful and engrossing that it sucks you right in. When the cows come toward the camera in the opening shot, you know immediately that these cows have been color-coordinated to within an inch of their lives. I love this kind of super-deliberate film where each frame could stand on its own. Even the piles of garbage are perfectly composed. Mambéty’s visual sense of humor is terrific: the man trying to break up a fight between two women only to get beaten up himself, the taxi driver running away in his yellow socks, Mory in the paddleboat with the lecherous Charlie. The main characters, Mory and Anta, never ask for our sympathy, because they are too cool for us."