"It’s a pleasure to write this particular piece about Rian Johnson as over the last 10 years or so, he’s become one of my best friends in Hollywood; the perfect person to talk to at 8 a.m. over coffee or at 2 a.m. over some other brown liquid. He’s terribly clever (but never annoyingly so), a good listener, and a generous laugher. He’s also always dressed like a cool college professor, which makes him both easy to draw and dress up as for Halloween. In the interest of full disclosure, I did make a cameo in his “Star Wars” episode and my last movie, “Baby Driver,” is alluded to in his new one. So you’d be forgiven for assuming all this chumminess would result in Rian’s movie getting a glowing review from me no matter what. But here’s the thing. Not only do I genuinely LOVE this film, but it’s exactly the type of movie that Hollywood needs and audiences are crying out for. “Knives Out” is superb entertainment that proves you can please a crowd without ever talking down to them. It’s endlessly smart, fiendishly plotted, and populated with a cast clearly loving every acid-soaked line flung their way. So much cinema is divided into just two food categories these days. There’s the empty calories of the bloated green-screen pantomimes that clog up every auditorium at your local multiplex. Then there’s what I call broccoli films; those worthy, good-for-you productions that can be very nourishing, but sometimes (whisper it) a little dull. Rian’s murder mystery straddles the line perfectly; an entertainment for grown-ups that nods to classic studio thrillers but with an invigorating 21st century overhaul. Rian is making the brainy, big screen crowd pleasers we truly deserve. For that alone, give him all the awards."

"This is hard, because it could be many things. I mean, it could be Kubrick, it could be Haneke again. Do I need to mix it up a little bit? I feel like I’ve gone very serious. I think it’s either 2001: A Space Odyssey or Funny Games by Michael Haneke. What I like about Funny Games is a moment, actually, where all of it… OK, I think 2001 is a better movie. However, there’s a moment in Funny Games that’s genius, that I love, which is when he turns to the audience, and suddenly turns the whole movie into this kind of study, where we are accountable as an audience. Because we like the violence that’s happening in the movie, and he’s doing it for us, so suddenly we’re culpable. And I think that’s a really cool moment in film that I haven’t really seen other than that. Yeah, I thought that was really clever. Also, I’m talking the American remake, not the original, because he remade it shot-for-shot for the American audience, which is really interesting, because he made it in German and then it only had so much reach, and then was like, “I want to make this for a society where violence maybe is a little more glamorized.” And I’m not just saying that about Americans; I think we’re the same in the UK, where we really like watching that on-screen. It’s just a really interesting study into that, and so, for that reason, I’m going with that. And one time I hosted a screening where all of our friends came down and watched it, and I have never seen a more depressed group of people in my life, and it was a huge mistake. [laughs] Everyone left immediately. No one hung around after."

"I grew up with a lot of my dad's reggae records. I used to always buy the compilations, the Reggae Hits volumes, Ragga Ragga Ragga! We always listened to music in the car and “Murder She Wrote” really captured everything that was great about ‘90s dancehall music. The melodies were right, the emceeing was just the right tone, and the beat itself was of an era of dancehall that I loved so much, from listening to sound systems like Kilimanjaro and Addis. “What I've really enjoyed, having been in this for a minute now, is to see how styles and trends and music are cyclical. I used to think all that was BS; “Oh yeah, don't worry, this is gonna come back round”, but when I start to think, I guess it was around 2015 that there was this new sound everyone was talking about called 'Afrobeats'. I was like “Let's check this out” and to me it's ‘90s dancehall with a twist. You know what I mean? And now we've got Diadora, Kappa, Fila, all these brands that kind of had a moment, and all of a sudden it's retro, it's vintage. It's like “Wow, this is happening in front of my face.” “So to have that wisdom of what those songs were about is exciting for me. I can go in the studio and I can draw samples from a ‘90s dancehall tune, that, if you didn't grow up during that time might be lost in the vaults, because you wouldn't even know about Jigsy King, Sanchez, Beres Hammond and old school dub reggae. “Now I can pull out my tracksuit and people are like 'Mate, where'd you get that?' and I'm like '1990', this is real vintage coming out my mum's cupboard."

"The mythology is that Jimmy Page played on that, but it's clearly Jeff Beck all the way - that personality. The interesting way they recorded the tracks is that the entire band were in the studio at the same time. And Ronnie Wood on bass. I think Ronnie Wood is actually a better bass player than he is a guitar player. The bass playing on that record is just great! You can hear mistakes, but listen to what the bass does in 'Rock My Plimsoul', it goes completely against the drums, but it gives it like a slinky snake-like feel. From beginning to end you have this kind of jamming, drunken-keyboard-player-in-a-New-Orleans-whorehouse-upright-piano feel. It's the best vocal that Rod Stewart has ever done on that first record, I don't think he's ever equalled it. He ran out of songs to do, so he covered 'Greensleeves' instrumental, he just didn't have any more songs! 'Shapes Of Things' was a cover that he originally did with The Yardbirds and then did a version here, and tore. It. Up. Such a heavy, heavy band. I remember seeing them live in New York City. The rest of the kids didn't understand, but I was just blown away. I remember it well, the opening band was the Crazy [World of] Arthur Brown. He came out in a mask with his head lit on fire. That was actually connected later to by fire-spitting in the band. I just thought, 'Well that's a good idea'. The thing you noticed that while everyone was drinking, flirting, talking or whatever, when Arthur Brown walked onstage with his head on fire, everyone stopped!"

"It’s probably not cool to admit you don’t quite get a cult movie. But it’s probably better than trying to act cool by pretending you really dig a movie that you don’t fully understand. There are several other films on the Criterion label that I could expound on sincerely and endlessly: Life of Brian, Robocop, Straw Dogs, Hard Boiled, and The Red Shoes, for example. Instead, for the eleventh movie in my top ten, I would like to include a film that has become something of an intangible Magic Eye picture for me: Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop. There is no movie that I have watched more often in an attempt to unpeel and unravel it. I have seen the film many times, first on Alex Cox’s BBC2 series Moviedrome, once at the theater, and many times in this very Criterion edition. Hell, I even visited some of the locations on a Route 66 trip. Still, I’ll admit that the movie is an endearing puzzle for me. I may not be the right age or nationality to fully crack the enigma of this movie, but the fact that I haven’t stopped trying in twenty-three years has to stand for something. Ryan O’Neal’s character from The Driver and Kowalski from Vanishing Point I feel I can race alongside, but James Taylor and Dennis Wilson always seem way ahead of me, their Chevy a mirage in a heat haze. But the fact that I’m talking about it now and waxing lyrical over it means that it has got under my skin in a way that other movies haven’t. And I will continue to pursue this film, even if I never quite catch up."

"This was a song that I'd hear on the radio quite a bit when I was growing up. It wasn't a current song, but it was one of those that had legs, and they just kept on playing it. ""The reason it was on my mind is because I pulled it apart the other day. I do that when I'm trying to get into work mode. I might have been hanging with friends, or dealing with business or talking to my mom, so when I want to switch over to the kind of mindset where I need to be receptive to musical ideas, it sometimes helps me to just play a song that I really love - not one of my own - and pick at it. What are the chords doing here? I'm asking that kind of question. ""I heard the Fugees version - which is what brought it to mind - but the Flack one is my favourite. To get to that place in my head when I'm working, I need to do something physical, like sing and strum the guitar on a track that's not mine and just figure out what makes it tick. So in terms of 'Killing Me Softly', there's this cool trick - this cycle of fifths - where you play a chord, and then go a fifth up, and then another fifth up, and it sounds as if it's going down at the same time. You don't hear that very often, but it's on songs like 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road' and 'You Never Give Me Your Money'. ""At first glance, you might say this is a sad song, because of the tone and approach, but it's not. It's just somewhere to go if you're looking for an emotional experience, because it's pure soul"

"I love this movie and always have! And now I get to love it more on this far-out DVD package. Until watching the accompanying doc, I had never really thought of the film as a 1970s American Graffiti—for me, the fun of it is in the ensemble cast of young people, many of whom became huge stars later—it reminds me more of Fast Times at Ridgemont High. But also on this doc is an extraordinarily frank look at the difficulties of making this film. People in the movie business—indie or otherwise—are rarely this honest in discussing what it took to get the film you see on the screen. I really appreciated the honesty of Jim Jacks and Richard Linklater, who, uh, shall we say, didn’t always agree on the set. Also, the interviews with the young actors, like Marissa Ribisi, talking about the approach Linklater took with them, were completely enlightening. I plan to steal his entire approach from now on. :) And the packaging is an artifact to have for keeps: the cover artwork by Marc English, based on the Led Zeppelin III album cover, is supremely inspired, and the booklet is a high school notebook. It’s great pop culture folk art! I own a collection of Memoryware folk art that people used to make with all their leftover trinkets and little pieces of their lives: earrings, coins, buttons, etc. They’d take these mementos and put them in plaster on top of an old jug or jar and call them “memory jugs” or “memory jars.” And this is what this DVD is for me—a keepsake. A memory jar of seventies pop culture. No, of 1976. No, of specifically 1976 Austin, Texas. And yet . . . it’s a memory jug of anyone’s last high school rite."