"It’s another movie that you run into everywhere because it’s so frequently stolen from. Another reluctant hero, and an unsympathetic, morally ambiguous character… Besides its visual triumph as a movie, there’s a constant juxtaposition of an individual versus the fascist architecture, and the way that politics become very personal, and the way this guy, who doesn’t seem to care about anything, ends up caring about everything. It references Casablanca in many ways, and it also feels like it’s got a great sense of irony about politics because he flips over in the end in a second, and I think a lot of people identify with him and the fact that he’s being forced to do something that he thinks he can do easily and doesn’t have the stomach for. It’s image after image of people either in nature or in the civic environment that are part of fascist architecture and it’s a very memorable, evocative movie. Great music, great cinematography, great acting, and it’s a movie that’s a touchstone for me."

"Next is a documentary called Night and Fog by Alain Resnais, which is a story of then and now, of concentration camps. That had a major influence on me, again, for the poetry, if you can call it that, of the documentary, but also the way he used time, the way he used two time zones, two sets of material, to make his point, and to give the film, which obviously had some astounding, alarming images in it, but without a lot of babble, of explanation, by contrasting what it once was and what it is now. It was very moving to me, and I think that was inspirational, again, in the [Up] films I did with these children, which I’m still doing. But I could see how you could time travel in documentary, and it makes both sets of material more powerful. Of course, the film is incredibly powerful anyway. But nonetheless, he’d found a style of doing it, a way of doing it… It’s just, the power of those images, without endless babble, was, to me, a very strong lesson."

"I was in the studio down in Phoenix doing the first Fight album and someone came down and told me that I had to check this out. They put it on and when I first heard 'Blind' I started asking myself what this album was going to do. It was an extraordinary time in the mid-90s, especially in America because heavy music was becoming really fast-paced. That's why I've also included Alice In Chains. Korn were from Bakersfield but a lot of stuff was filtering down from Seattle, whether it was Pearl Jam or Nirvana. When they came along they completely changed the direction that heavy music was heading. I thought it was great because we suddenly had something that was totally new. They're still pushing the boundaries and getting criticised for it, but really, fuck the critics. I'm still a fan. I was watching Korn the other day and they were absolutely amazing. The material from this record is still brilliant live, 20 years on."

"It's a perfect record. Succinct, sad, melodic, definitely its own thing. The simplicity of it was a big thing for me, that music that simple can also be really moving… I think a lot of the simplicity of it might be to do that he was having a hard time and couldn't get it together to do anything particularly complicated, but it is a wonderful record. Just doing enough and never overblowing anything works so well. Has my music taste changed? I've always listened to quite loud and quite quiet music so I don't think getting older has changed it that much, not that I can think of. I think Belong is the only quite new record on this list, which is a bit fogeyish, but I guess you have to take a long time to know if something really is the best ever. Some of these lists you look down and they say 'best album of all time - number three, The Strokes!' No, wait, something has happened here. There is a disturbance in the force."

"A film soundtrack so good no film is deserving of it. I've been listening to this record for 20 years. Eno's one of the forefathers of using the studio as an instrument. He gets credit for that, but actually maybe he reduced what pop music was – produced, studio pop music into its essence, to create this ambient music. He's definitely someone who I fell in love with as I was getting into a lot of new approaches in music, all of his music I really love. Another Green World, Music For Films, Apollo - those are the ones I really took to. There is an odd parallel between this record and the Morricone record for me – because once you really get into this stuff, you think "What film would be worthy of this kind of music?". You can't really imagine it. I don't know how liberal he is about licensing his music, but I wonder if any film has dared to license this music– because that's a tall order."

"I didn’t play on that one either, and also heard it for the first time while listening to the radio. It just has an indescribable feel about it that involves a lot of yucky things from life. You can watch a movie and it will have horrible bits in it, but it will have nice bits in it too, and if you didn’t get through the horrible part of the movie, then the nice bits wouldn’t be as nice. That was one of those songs like that, where it was nice, but it was horrible as well. For me anyway! I could include more from his career later on that I really liked, of course, but certain ones just hit me as a normal member of the public, so I wasn’t going: “Oh this is a Bowie song, I better hear it,” I just heard it and it caught my attention. That just happens sometime, when something is playing in the background and then it just grabs you, while you might be doing something else."

"I think that it pretty much changed the game. You can say what you want about Waka or whatever. like, ‘Oh he can’t rap.’ He always is like, ‘I’m not a rapper anyway.’ The proof is when this dude drops his album, if 80 percent of It just makes me want to shoot machine guns. that genre of music changes to sound like him, you know you did something right. Everybody is trying to be hype and get Lex Luger beats and all that. Everybody is just all about that energy that I don’t think anyone matches as well as Waka. He just brings this almost punk-rock energy but it’s so hood and hip-hop. I just remember kind of taking a gamble getting the album and it’s just one of those times...I was sitting at Universal Studios about to ride some rides, but I just kicked it in the parking lot because as soon as I turned it on, I was like, ‘Whoa.’ It just makes me want to shoot machine guns. I love Waka, he’s the shit."

"I’ve seen the Herzog one a good many times too, but the Murnau film… Murnau is neck to neck with Bergman as my favorite director. He’s responsible for some of the best images in cinema of all time, from Nosferatu to Faust to Sunset. His work was so influential that filmmakers generations later can be referencing Murnau without knowing it. But Nosferatu is an interesting movie. It was produced by Albin Grau, an occultist who started an independent film studio to make occult-themed movies. Nosferatu was his first endeavor. And he hired the screenwriter, and he hired Murnau, and he was the production designer and did a lot of concept art. Very much part of the authorship of this film. And Max Schreck, as much as he is a folk vampire and a reinterpretation of Stoker’s literary gothic vampire, he’s also influenced by Albin Grau’s early 20th-century occultist views on vampirism. But in many ways — there’s horror movies before it, obviously — Nosferatu invents horror movies. The editing of the parallel story together in some ways invents cinema."

"I would cheat and say the two Godfather movies, The Godfather part I and II, edited in whatever order; I like the way they were sort of edited together in a single movie, but I also like them as they were released separately. And I think that that, for me, is the pinnacle of movies as a popular art form in America. It’s like a great novel, but it’s a super entertaining movie. It’s always funny to think that that was — you know, if you talk to Francis Ford Coppola, that was sort of his commercial movie that he got hired to make, and that was the one he did to make a lot of money. I have nothing original to say about it, but again, a movie that I cannot imagine ever getting tired of watching. When you come across it on TV, you stop and suddenly two hours have gone by, and you’re still with it. If you think about it, the performances in that… Everyone in that movie, just about, is as good as they ever were."