"This was where I fell in love for the first time. As a boy of maybe nine, or so. Marilyn really nailed my little, tentative heart. Something about her insane beauty, mixed with that self doubt and sensitivity she portrayed, was so effecting. The performances from Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon are hilarious. Again, like most great films, this one has some quotes and moments that just stay in the mind and resonate. It’s a film about love and friendship and second chances, I think. Will never get tired of watching this, as long as I’ve got days on my calendar."

"The first time I saw this film I thought there’s no way Tarantino wasn’t influenced in some way by Repo Man when he was making Pulp Fiction. This type of genre mash-up, a film that has unapologetic fun and is blissfully self-aware, is the kind of vibe I am always pulled to as a filmmaker. It's also insane that he made the film—as a student, for no money. The Criterion packaging for this one, with the comic inside, is one of my favorites. I showed it to the distributors when I was packaging A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night."

"A really good punk song. They had a really great ear for punk. They actually fused punk with metal, but it wasn't 70s Punk, it was kinda new wave punk. That's what I get from it, anyway: The Exploited, and Anti-Pasti. They probably weren't listening to it, but that's what I get. And there's obviously a bit of glam in there from the New York Dolls. "The songs are slightly ruined by the fucking production. It's a bit too much, and sometimes Axl's voice borders on the insane - it's like, 'what the fuck is that?' - but that's rock, isn't it?"

"The most beautiful movie ever made. The face of an aging nun, photographed in an extreme close-up, has the same power and emotional weight as a lush landscape of the matte-painted mountains of India. Powell and Pressburger understand that both the face and the mountains are landscapes, interior and exterior. Erotic tension has never bubbled under the surface of a movie as well as it bubbles here. When it explodes, it is genuinely insane. Only Isabelle Adjani in Possession comes close to matching Kathleen Byron’s portrait of unhinged madness. To watch Black Narcissus is to know the limits of ecstasy."

"I never took any film classes back in college, but these are two that I saw by sneaking into different post-lecture screenings. A fascination with the power of the missing person has stayed with me. The dizzying number of overlapping layers—worlds, eras, sympathies, and attachments—has kept Rebecca one of my all time favorites. Joan Fontaine’s nameless character can seem pathetic at times—overwhelmed by an insane situation in her austere, claustrophobic, itchy wool outfits. But she can also feel as powerful as a five-alarm wake-up call from the present tense. (Yikes, especially if the present tense is 1940.)"

"I never took any film classes back in college, but these are two that I saw by sneaking into different post-lecture screenings. A fascination with the power of the missing person has stayed with me. The dizzying number of overlapping layers—worlds, eras, sympathies, and attachments—has kept Rebecca one of my all time favorites. Joan Fontaine’s nameless character can seem pathetic at times—overwhelmed by an insane situation in her austere, claustrophobic, itchy wool outfits. But she can also feel as powerful as a five-alarm wake-up call from the present tense. (Yikes, especially if the present tense is 1940.)"

"The Celebration, the film by Thomas Vinterberg. It’s an example of innovative filmmaking and great storytelling. It’s just very moving. The subject matter, first of all, is incredible, you have this style of humour, and the acting’s insane. It was the idea of this Dogme-type style that I hadn’t really seen before — you know, you sort of feel it with Cassavetes, but I loved the strict adherence here to the principles of no artificial lighting, no artificial action, you can’t have any dolly tracking or crane shots at all; it’s all hand-held, it’s all video."

"Next up is There Will Be Blood. I gotta say, Paul Thomas Anderson might be the best working director alive. There Will Be Blood was such an interesting balance of showing why Daniel Plainview prospered in the oil rush of California. But it also shows how he’s essentially decrepit as a human being. He’s almost rotting away. He’s losing sight of his own humanity. It’s about dehumanization. Even outside of how gorgeous it looks, especially when the fire ignites the oil derrick and then the camera is rushing in. It’s a low angle tracking shot following Plainview as he’s rushing toward the fire. The colors in that scene are literally just dumbfounding. But the biggest thing is performance, performance, performance, performance, performance! Daniel Day-Lewis is amazing, and Paul Dano as the pastor is freaking insane. Insane! And his dynamic with Daniel Plainview is some of the most compelling s–t I’ve seen on film. The fact that Plainview views Paul Dano’s character as a necessary mechanism to control the people in the town, but he doesn’t give him any bit of respect; Plainview doesn’t believe a lick of what Dano is saying in those church services. But he feels it’s important for the people in the town that are working day in and day out for him to believe it. It’s such an interesting dynamic."