"That always sticks in my mind; Timothy Hutton, Mary Tyler Moore. Isn’t it devastating? It was just such an amazing performance by Mary Tyler Moore. I love a great family drama. There’s nothing like it, and Judd Hirsch as the therapist. It was just so beautifully written and sad. I love going to movies and crying and feeling moved and like you’ve changed. It’s one of my favorite things. That’s why I wanted to become an actress. I love dark. I don’t mind sobbing in a theater; I love that stuff. You can grieve parts of yourself and parts of your life through characters in movies. That’s the magic of moviemaking and cinema, seeing yourself in the characters. I loved making Other People too because I felt like people all have different experiences about life and grief, grief and death and family, all these beautiful themes."

"Next, I’ll go with The Tree of Life. Terry Malick – I’ve had the pleasure to work for him on a few things, and that changed the course of my life. But seeing The Tree of Life in a cinema was like one of the most humbling and beautiful experiences I’ve had. It’s cosmic, you know? It’s intimate but cosmic. It’s family but everything bigger. I had a religious experience in the theater watching that. There are shots in it that I worked on, and I know where we were for that, but it was bizarre to be having this religious experience and think, “Oh my God. I was involved, in a small capacity, with making it.” That movie, it’s just one of my favorite movies of all time. I loved working with Terrence Malick. I love his other films in that I don’t even know how to talk about him. Honestly."

"The first one is Paul Thomas Anderson and There Will Be Blood. I had seen that movie at a very crucial point in my life. I had just torn my shoulder in wrestling, and it was like the world had fallen away from me. Like a lot in the movie is autobiographical. So yeah, I was really kind of lost. And then I saw There Will Be Blood in the theater, and it rocked my world. It blew my mind. The first Paul Thomas Anderson movie I saw was Boogie Nights at a really young age, and it was perfect for an adolescent. But it also made me realize there’s a creator behind all this. I was transported and inspired. That was when I started getting back into filmmaking and loving movies again. Because I couldn’t do sports. That movie was really huge for that."

"OK look, I have only seen this film once and I will never watch it again. But the effect it had on me was so profound that it kind of shifted things creatively inside me. I went to the cinema one night in London with two very good friends when I was 24. It blew me away. It’s so raw and so poetic at the same time. Emily Watson was sublime. I came out of the theater in a daze and the three of us wandered around the streets of Soho for hours not quite knowing what to do with ourselves. I literally didn’t sleep all night. I just lay there in my hotel room reliving the story. Even now I can see the bleak color palette, the camera moves, and Emily’s naive face. Lars Von Trier is a genius. Every film he makes is so honest and powerful."

"In January 2007, after a particularly difficult shoot (both physically and emotionally), I found myself back in Chicago with some time on my hands. I didn’t want to edit, because I didn’t have the energy to confront the footage. The Gene Siskel Film Center was showing several of Kieślowski’s films, including all of his later work. Every day, I would make my way to the theater in the evening and sit there eating dark chocolate, letting the work pour over me. It was like a religious experience. I came away from that series feeling revitalized. The Double Life of Véronique and Blue were especially breathtaking. Sławomir Idziak’s photography left an indelible impression on me and changed the way I look at light. One year later, I went back to New York to finish that difficult film, and I finally had an outlet for all the good energy Kieślowski had given me."

"Since Grizzly Man and on through Encounters at the End of the World, festival dispatchers often report that audiences walk out of the theater trying out their Werner Herzog imitations. You do the accent, sure, but that’s only the half of it. The other half is what you say; you have to decry the viciousness of nature, the doomed and dooming insanity of it all. I wonder how many of these amateur impressionists realize that the sensibility they’re mimicking with an odd mix of humor and admiration has been somewhat tempered over the years. Burden of Dreams is an almost frightening portrait of that sensibility when it was manic and raw, no matter how calm Herzog’s exterior may at times appear. And, of course, next to Kinski, he was the sane one! Les Blank’s documentary is also, along with Hearts of Darkness, one of the greatest making-ofs of all time."

"For me, Eraserhead is all about when Henry goes to visit Mary’s family. Those scenes hit the sweet spot of surreal absurdism, which is something I never really see in film, although it happens often in experimental theater. In film, the weirdness is usually either too grounded in narrative, which makes it too normal, or not grounded enough, which makes you stop caring. At Mary’s parents’ house, the squeaking puppies, Mrs. X brushing Mary’s hair when she starts to freak out, Mr. X’s non sequiturs, the catatonic grandmother being made to mix the salad—it all walks the knife-edge between craziness and normalcy in a way that’s both hilarious and disturbing. The scene where Henry starts to cut the chicken and everything goes bonkers is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. I think the dialogue in this film is great—I wish there were more of it."

"Simon of the Desert utilizes austere staging to create a particular mood and feel, and so, too, does Woman in the Dunes. Except here we have traded in the desert for the dune, and it is even bleaker, as a young man literally climbs into an existential nightmare from which there seems to be no escape. Just as contrast plays an important role in Japanese kabuki theater and Butoh dance and is used to great effect by photographers like Daido Moriyama and Eikoh Hosoe, postwar Japanese filmmakers seem to have a heightened sensitivity to the power of darkness and light as well. The role of shadow here really helps convey a feeling of claustrophobia and helplessness, which seems to be a key aim of the film. All of that being said, it is a very beautiful and enigmatic film and well worth an attentive watch."