"A corporation struggling to define itself in a fickle and rapidly evolving marketplace is determined to enter a race it has no hope of winning. It turns to a team of passionate, obsessive, hands-on experts in old school methods and, with great trepidation, lets them run. The result is “Ford v Ferrari” — a film that is essentially about the same thing. Director James Mangold demonstrates that a good tale well told, with character and heart and friendship at its core, will never go out of style. That personal stakes can be just as gripping as global ones. That elegant, straight-forward emotional storytelling is a universal language. It’s no small feat to take viewers into a complex and insular world bordering on the religious and, in remarkably short order, invest them in its technical complexities. It isn’t easy to immerse an audience in a story about friends competing more with themselves than anyone else. It’s incredibly hard to create satisfying characters who, by their very nature, can never hope to find satisfaction. And it’s next to impossible to do that in today’s marketplace. Mangold does it. Even a passing glance at his ongoing evolution as a filmmaker gives an indication as to why. James Mangold is, much like his protagonists, determined to grow, evolve, outdo himself and run the perfect lap. He does so knowing he’ll never truly find satisfaction. But his audience always will."

"The last one is Pulp Fiction. Me and my, as he was then, I suppose, eight-year-old, nine-year-old son, thought it was great. I just loved, again, the way [Quentin Tarantino] used time, the way he moved backwards and forwards in time, which I thought was sort of groundbreaking, although it may not have been. But I thought it was. And I saw the energy and the vigor of it all, and just the images of it. I just love that film. I watch it now and again, as it were, and it never palls for me at all, but I just thought he kind of invented a way, or kind of storytelling technique, which is sort of second nature to us all now, but again, that nonlinear business — for me, it was a revelation. I’m sure there have been other films like it, but this seemed to work so well within a very contemporary, very fast-moving, very original piece. To have the courage to play with the structure, and tell things backwards and forwards and all that sort of thing, I thought, was not just cute, or just showmanship. It actually enhanced the drama, trying to figure out where you were and what was going on. I found that a very creative effort, and so did my son, which thrilled me. He wasn’t fazed by it at all."