"Repo Man was one of the most important formative films of my teenage years. Later, when I moved to LA for a summer, I couldn’t stop thinking that I was actually living it out, because the city is such an extraordinarily strange place full of people who seem like their brains are being microwaved by the sun. Repo Man is a great movie about blue-collar weirdos in a wasteland of people living off defaulted loans, forming their identities through various “codes,” and searching for a sense of community in male fraternity, punk rock, religion, work, government, conspiracy theories, and/or outer space. And as time passes, the more jetting off the planet in a radioactive Chevy Malibu seems like a good idea."

"To look at Mick Jagger’s creative output today, working hard to suggest the dynamism of his early career, you may wonder what it is he is straining to return to. This film offers an answer. Rock and roll, particularly British rock of the late sixties and early seventies, featured pioneering, Dionysian front men who lured their fans, male and female, into a bacchanal of sex, drugs, and blistering music. Those gatherings were often combustible. In this case, tragic. The remarkable Maysles brothers and Ms. Zwerin fashion a kind of cinematic, pop Warren Commission of the Altamont Speedway concert/crime scene. You don’t need drugs to get high watching the Stones at their peak. The band, and especially Jagger, are a drug."

"Ripe with tenor and trouble. The former film aggressively male, the latter aggressively female. I’ve paired them because after viewing each I felt as though I had been placed under a spell. I’ve seen both more than twenty times, and every time I see something new. I don’t know how they did it, but have you ever watched something and felt like you were stuffed with drugs? This is Johnny Depp’s best performance, and Benicio Del Toro is a revelation. The physical embodiment of both these men . . . Bravo! And let’s not forget the always magic Giulietta Masina in one of her last collaborations with Fellini. She is absorbing and taut. Each of these films is a feat and a feast. An exercise in the grotesque."