"The film that restored grace and poetry to Berlin and the German language after forty years of stereotypical war movies featuring stereotypical German actors playing the parts of stereotypical Germans. The fog of war had settled over Birmingham when I came along in 1960, and there was no moving it for some time. Nothing about Germany was to be trusted, as even its postwar art was tainted by the events surrounding the Holocaust, unsurprisingly. But I was glad when this movie came along, despite the awful history of the twentieth century, as it allowed me to love Germany for what it is now, its language, the sound of its spoken word and all its formidable arts. Wim Wenders must surely be Germany’s greatest living director."

"Sheer terror and sheer poetry, but both stem from distinctive medieval traditions. Häxan is the filmic equivalent of a hellish engraving by Bruegel or a painting by Bosch. It’s a strangely titillating record of sin and perversity that is as full of dread as it is of desire and atheistic conviction, and a condemnation of superstition that is morbidly in love with its subject. Vampyr is, strictly speaking, a memento mori, a stern reminder of death as the threshold of spiritual liberation. Like any memento mori, the film enthrones the right morbid imagery (skull, scythe, white limbo) in order to maximize the impact of the beautiful, almost intangible images that conclude it. If only Criterion had acquired my commentary track—sigh—from the UK edition."

"Sheer terror and sheer poetry, but both stem from distinctive medieval traditions. Häxan is the filmic equivalent of a hellish engraving by Bruegel or a painting by Bosch. It’s a strangely titillating record of sin and perversity that is as full of dread as it is of desire and atheistic conviction, and a condemnation of superstition that is morbidly in love with its subject. Vampyr is, strictly speaking, a memento mori, a stern reminder of death as the threshold of spiritual liberation. Like any memento mori, the film enthrones the right morbid imagery (skull, scythe, white limbo) in order to maximize the impact of the beautiful, almost intangible images that conclude it. If only Criterion had acquired my commentary track—sigh—from the UK edition."

"One of my favorites. It’s my two-year-old daughter’s favorite movie. She’s the green gargantua and my other son is the brown one, and she loves being the bad green gargantua. She’s obsessed with it, as I was. I grew up watching Japanese science fiction movies and I particularly, unlike most hard core film people, like dubbed movies — there’s something about that language and the translation that somehow fits into the movie; it’s like a weird poetry. There’s a beauty to these films, the Japanese character designs — there’s a human kind of quality to these things, which I love. Monsters were always the most soulful characters. I don’t know if it’s because the actors were so bad, but the monsters were always the emotional focal point"

"Mentally, Casablanca connects with my world. It’s very romantic, about giving and testing, and trusting and loving… And there’s the romantic music. Everything is [in line with] my tastes of romance. It’s also about an unfulfilled love, which makes everything more beautiful because you can’t have it. It’s just human nature. If you have it — you see the person, you see the romance — then the story becomes practical, like reality. But because it’s unfulfilled, it’s always a fantasy because we add so much of our own beauty, and romance, and poetry, into it. Also, Casablanca is about the sacrifice of giving love. Real love, I think, is unconditional; you give your love away to love somebody. Otherwise it’s not real love, it’s possessive, it’s ownership."