"Probably my absolute favourite. It's very influenced by American Graffiti - It's all in one day, it's the end of school, you've got all the teen cliques – but it's not a standard Hollywood feel good-fest, it's tough and quite sharp. You've got those first experiences of drugs and sex and fights and drinking, all to that great soundtrack. And I love all the stoner stuff, it's just really funny. Again, it's that extraordinary seventies American super liberal moment, which is a completely lost age. It recaptures that: 'Lets all hang out. Politics is over, disco is just around the corner."

"I recently picked up Jean Vigo's dreamy 1934 story of a honeymoon couple heading to Paris on a barge. It's still startling and would have been way out on its own in 1934. Also included on the Artificial Eye DVD is his earlier short Zéro de conduite which was banned for years in France. An anarchic tale of kids taking over a boarding school. You can see how much Truffaut picked up from here and it was a direct influence on the 60s Lindsay Anderson film If. Vigo died young and L'Atalante was his only complete feature."

"Number four would be Dazed and Confused. That was the movie that you saw and you wished it were your life. [laughs] That was a movie that I would watch all the time. I had it on VHS and whenever I was lonely, I’d throw it on. Whenever I wished I was out and about with friends from school, I would just throw that on and felt like I knew [the characters]. That was just one of those films that I just related to at that time. It was incredibly important and it’s another quotable film. I love it."

"May I cheat and add "The Odyssey" and count them as one? I had an invaluable and inspiring high school teacher, Robert Cooley, who introduced me to both “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” during my senior year. It was my first experience with the power of drama and poetry combined. Little did I know that I would spend the rest of my life (especially professionally) searching for experiences that would be as satisfying. The fact that I fell in love for the first time with the guy sitting next to me didn’t hurt my journey through those books either."

"A great mockumentary about a reunion of three folk bands that’s gently observed but also spot-on. I love how it quietly gets behind the scenes into the backbiting and the jealousy that leads up to their reunion concert, and I especially love the attitudes towards the shiny sellouts. The characters are so well done, too – the troubled former couple, the old-school trio, the Folksmen – but not every moment is mined for gags, which is what makes it work. You can tell everyone taking part genuinely loves music, and that’s why Christopher Guest always gets it right."

"I saw both of these for the first time in film school, then I moved to Paris in my twenties and lived there for many years, always kind of romanticizing the Paris of the late 1950s that I saw in these two films but never quite finding it. You can still find a few little streets and alleyways in Ménilmontant where The Red Balloon was filmed, and a few years ago I found myself on the same beach in Normandy where Jean-Pierre Léaud runs in those beautiful long tracking shots that end The 400 Blows. Landscapes are just as important as story."

"I saw both of these for the first time in film school, then I moved to Paris in my twenties and lived there for many years, always kind of romanticizing the Paris of the late 1950s that I saw in these two films but never quite finding it. You can still find a few little streets and alleyways in Ménilmontant where The Red Balloon was filmed, and a few years ago I found myself on the same beach in Normandy where Jean-Pierre Léaud runs in those beautiful long tracking shots that end The 400 Blows. Landscapes are just as important as story."

"This movie and Criterion’s other Edward Yang release, Yi Yi, really show what a master he was at creating incredibly personal and nuanced character studies that are both sprawling and multifaceted. A Brighter Summer Day is so immensely heartbreaking to me for how it depicts Si’r, an awkward, withdrawn kid who is under siege from all sides—at school, at home, with his friends and rival gangs, and with his first crush—battling his way through it all as best he can but spiraling inexorably toward tragedy. Also, the restoration of this film is seriously amazing—so thankful for this release."