"Yes, Cassavetes again, and by now it’s a no-brainer as to who my favorite filmmaker is. This time he takes on the gangster/noir genre but does it in his own inimitable abstract-expressionist style, where time slows down or sometimes speeds up, so we never know exactly where we are in terms of a traditional story arc or act structures. We are in dreamland . . . an opium-induced reverie. This is a portrait of an artist in the guise of a strip club owner, and Ben Gazzara’s Cosmo Vitelli is a career-topping performance. The onstage burlesque routines are worth the price of admission, as is the one and only Mr. Sophistication, played by Meade Roberts."

"In a year filled with epochal films—Sunset Boulevard, All About Eve, the great In a Lonely Place—this 1950 noir may have secretly had the greatest impact. Every heist film or let’s-get-a-team-together caper of the last seventy years owes a huge debt to Huston’s twisting and intense thriller, whose delightful ensemble cast features a bright-eyed Marilyn Monroe (then just about to take over Hollywood) and a grizzled Sterling Hayden (who was already looking to leave the industry altogether). The final moment is a genuine heartbreaker—as is the documentary about Hayden on the Criterion edition, which finds the great actor living on a boat, seemingly set adrift from society."

"Again, I think chronologically, is Blade Runner. It was the movie right after Raiders. And Harrison Ford is, you know, my favorite actor. He just has this… He’s just such a likeable guy. He’s obviously been one of the biggest stars in the last 20, 30 years. But he’s really been underappreciated now. And Blade Runner, to me, was such a cool film. And I know it didn’t do well at the box office, but I saw it opening night. People were expecting a lot because Raiders was the film that had just come out before. I just thought it was so ballsy, you know, especially for Harrison Ford to do this, because it wasn’t an action film, it was more of a noir/science fiction movie. And just that opening sequence of going over Los Angeles and those big fire plumes, and the spinners and the angelic soundtrack, it was just, it was religious. It was like a religious experience. Again, I really got into how they made it. I had already been a fan of Ridley Scott but this really solidified him as one of my favorite directors. Just the mood of that movie, it’s just beautiful. It’s one of those weird movies where I’ve seen all the versions and I actually like the original studio version better. I really love Harrison Ford’s narration. To me it was just kind of classic noir, crime/mystery film, you know? But it was set in this frickin’ crazy science-fiction future and I just loved it."

"I’m still trying to learn the pickpocket techniques demonstrated in this Sam Fuller classic. It was my introduction to film noir—a late-night-TV memory that wouldn’t let me go back to sleep. I am still trying to be as brave and cocky as Thelma Ritter, or as wanton as Jean Peters in the clutch—“Sometimes you look for oil, you hit a gusher.” And if I ever have as satisfying a bowl of chow fun as they do in South Street’s Chinatown . . . I’ll die happy. This is supposed to be a little McCarthy-era rant against the Reds, but it’s really about “civilians” versus the lumpenproletariat, artists on the game, loyal to a code that the squares will never understand."