"That parade scene. The parade scene — I celebrate it. But also it, like, tears me up a little bit. It is just such a joyful… I can’t even imagine what it would have been like to shoot that. It was really wonderful. I saw it as a young person, but then, eventually, moving to Chicago it was pretty great. I felt some ownership to it."

"A ghostly sea, a blurry horizon and a dusty sky all form a vaporous orange on the moving screen. Waves clash at midday. The mix of red and yellow is reminiscent of fire, sand, passion and memories of lost ones. The film immerses us in orange, possesses us through this color, and puts the viewer in a trance of longing for physical love and spiritual connection."

"Another film that feels like a documentary. Garrone has managed to take all the sentimental glamour out of the Mafia—which sneaks into a lot of films on the subject—and shows it to be the frightening, feeling-less business that it must be. Paradoxically, the lack of emotion is what gives the film its power, and what ultimately makes it so moving and memorable."

"The apotheosis of the Italian Western. Sergio Leone had been examining themes from the West of a number of pictures and here they coalesced into one poetic fable that is strikingly beautiful to watch and very moving. Again, it was not a success when it came out, and was brutally cut after a number of engagements, but now has belatedly been appreciated and restored."

"The ending takes a concern at the heart of cinema—the relationship between the real world and the director impulse—and turns it into a self-aware narrative climax, which opens the iris of the film dramatically. This is moving, strange, captivating stuff. Like an old friend once told me, in order for an organism to grow, it must be aware that it is alive."

"As a journalist, I was so impressed by how extensively Denise Chong researched this work of nonfiction. This is the story of the young girl who was photographed running naked in horror after her village was napalmed during the war, and who came to symbolize for the world its utter disaster and devastating toll. It is a moving story of love, perseverance and belief."

"Beside Knausgård, Harstad is perhaps the best Norwegian writer right now. It’s about a young boy moving with his family from Norway to the USA, growing up there in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and so it’s an outsider’s look at American society, written with clinical precision and desperate humor. If you like thick, epic books like DeLillos' “Underworld,” this is probably up your alley."