"“He was in Luther and Nobody Loves an Albatross.” “Ectopic pregnancy.” “Chalky under-taste.” “Tannis root.” “All of them witches.” “What have done to his eyes?” “He has his father’s eyes!” “The Year is One!” And that’s just off the top of my head. Movies are rarely as quotable as Rosemary’s Baby, and no other horror movie comes close. Of course, those quotes come from a screenplay, written by Roman Polanski, who was faithful to the novel by Ira Levin. The whole enterprise is both hilarious and unnerving, a combination that is hard to pull off. It’s one of those movies, should you stumble upon it while flipping channels, you just can’t turn off."

"This is one of my favorite science fiction films ever. It feels like everything in Solaris is transcendent and so deep. It’s hypnotic. It has so many sequences that are unique and unforgettable, like the part where the characters float in the library or when the wife comes back to life and then breaks apart as if she were made of glass. And there’s the idea of this spaceship floating on top of a strange ocean that seems to have some form of consciousness. All of those ideas are so strange and beautiful. It’s remarkable that Tarkovsky was able to make a film this spiritual in the Communist era. I don’t know how he did it."

"The other one in the comedy genre is an all-time classic, Coming to America. Like Harlem Nights, Coming to America, the rawness of it, Eddie and Arsenio’s relationship, just all the different characters Eddie was able to play and pull off — not a shabby job, Arsenio played a lot of characters himself — but the brilliance of Eddie Murphy. If they gave Oscars for comedies back then, that would have been the top of the list. You know, Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor turned in some incredible ones, too, but I tend to love what Coming to America was all about. Just the fact that it was New York, and how it started and where it went."

"Weird Sex. Obsession. Comic Books.” is how this film was billed. Each category alone is enough to put this on a top ten list. Crumb falls into a rare group of documentaries. A hero like R. Crumb is so reclusive and so fickle about who he allows to get close to him, but close they get. He’s a Slob over Snob for life. This film is more about Charles Crumb, the hidden master in the family, then it is about Robert. The art alone, like with many Criterions, is a reason to own this and present it on a shelf. Though here, there’s something very appropriate about having a DVD among your old issues of Weirdo or Zap. "

"My five favorite films change all the time. Well, no — the top three never change, but the last two are kind of up for grabs constantly. 12 Angry Men is, I think, a feat of writing. It’s brilliant. The fact that it all takes place in one room — I think there’s maybe two minutes, three minutes of screen time that is not in the one room in that film — and yet it is one of the most compelling things I’ve ever seen. I mean, you can’t look away. You’re gripped by the dynamics between the people, by what’s gonna happen, and by the fact that it’s a whodunit, based in one room, which is brilliant."