"This is just maddeningly brilliant. At once sweeping and epic, and yet searingly personal, thanks to the incredible work of Peter O’Toole. It’s such a long film, which I love, and yet there’s not a moment in it that seems like it’s played too long. Everything from the rich orchestral score, to the extraordinary photography of F.A Young, and David Lean at the peak of his powers make this a timeless film, and one that remains, sadly, as relevant today as when it was shot. It’s about political and financial power and about the subjugation of a people, the fight for freedom and the power of the individual to make a stand against the imperial. All the performances are fantastic, from Sir Alec Guinness to Omar Sharif and on. Again, this feels like a perfect piece of cinema to me."

"Mike Leigh might be my favorite living filmmaker. Topsy-Turvy is perhaps the most generous period piece I’ve ever seen. It is so funny and so filled with period detail and so clearly a film that doesn’t want to stop. It’s purely anecdotal; there’s no real plot. It’s structured around the writing of The Mikado, but really it’s just about the period, and every scene is so rich. As for Naked, David Thewlis’s performance is my favorite male performance ever. There’s nothing like it. It’s a bleak film, but it’s so filled with life and passion and it’s so funny. Leigh is an inspiration but not an influence. I don’t think anyone can work the way he does—nobody has the resources. He spends six months improvising characters and relationships and histories with the best actors in the world, and then he goes off and writes a script. I go to his films just to remind myself what I want out of movies about people. Ultimately I am a genre filmmaker and he’s not, but I’ve always wanted to make genre films that are rooted in character. I go to his films to pull myself a little bit out of genre and remember what it is that makes us care about any story in the first place—the people at the heart of it. But Leigh gets so much credit for his character work and his work with actors that people forget to mention what a brilliant craftsman he is."

"Mike Leigh might be my favorite living filmmaker. Topsy-Turvy is perhaps the most generous period piece I’ve ever seen. It is so funny and so filled with period detail and so clearly a film that doesn’t want to stop. It’s purely anecdotal; there’s no real plot. It’s structured around the writing of The Mikado, but really it’s just about the period, and every scene is so rich. As for Naked, David Thewlis’s performance is my favorite male performance ever. There’s nothing like it. It’s a bleak film, but it’s so filled with life and passion and it’s so funny. Leigh is an inspiration but not an influence. I don’t think anyone can work the way he does—nobody has the resources. He spends six months improvising characters and relationships and histories with the best actors in the world, and then he goes off and writes a script. I go to his films just to remind myself what I want out of movies about people. Ultimately I am a genre filmmaker and he’s not, but I’ve always wanted to make genre films that are rooted in character. I go to his films to pull myself a little bit out of genre and remember what it is that makes us care about any story in the first place—the people at the heart of it. But Leigh gets so much credit for his character work and his work with actors that people forget to mention what a brilliant craftsman he is."