"This is not just because the movie has an ampersand in it like Amira & Sam. Even still, an off-color romantic comedy — it’s a comedy, but off-color because of the older woman and a younger man. It’s still something that movie artists don’t touch on and it’s not an impossible scenario. It’s one of those things that is difficult to get right, and Hal Ashby told such an amazing story of friendship and caring and love and fun and life."

"I love Mona Lisa. Bob Hoskins and Neil Jordan. It’s such an incredible movie. It’s really, really, really good. It was very, stylistically and in the production design, it’s very ’80s, very late ’70s-’80s looking. And it’s one of those movies that has a song that was written for it, you know, like they used to like to do in the ’80s. [laughs] It’s such an incredibly well made film, and it’s so interesting, a really dark, twisted, well acted story."

"The love story is so powerful, the spectacle so grand, that Marcel Carné’s masterpiece (an indispensable Criterion production) isn’t often regarded as a genre piece, though it is inhabited by every kind of criminal and involves an unforgettable murder in a Turkish bath—made particularly ghastly for occurring just off camera. Yet Marcel Herrand’s Lacenaire is one of the cinema’s most fascinating monsters, and his machinations resolve the fate of everyone else, including the muse incarnated by the great Arletty."

"My favorite French film of this century that wasn’t directed by Gasper Noé. Even though it’s mainly infamous for its three very explicit sex scenes, this is really an intense love story—girl meets girl, girl loses girl—and completely heart-wrenching at times. It’s three-hour length flies by. I easily could have watched another three hours of these absolutely incredible performances. I can’t wait to see what Adèle does next. I could not take my eyes off of her."