"""Next, I’ll go Die Hard. You have to understand, my son, who’s nine years old, is constantly asking me, “What’s your favorite movie? What’s your favorite action movie?” Every day. So, it’s hard to say to your nine-year-old, “Well, son, actually, I love watching The Magnificent Seven.” And I do, I love The Magnificent Seven. But he wants a movie that he can look forward to and see, something he can relate to, and I think, ultimately when I start talking about great action movies, you know, it’s Die Hard. Die Hard is a top five favorite film. Great villain, the right amount of humor and strength and, you know, sadism. [laughs] And Bruce Willis is fantastic. And again, the scenes with Bonnie Bedelia, you really get it. The estranged husband, conflicted home, and yet he really cares about her. It’s not just some cookie-cutter thing, like, “This is my wife; I’m doing this for you, baby!” They have major marital problems, but he’s there, and all of a sudden, he’s in the midst of it. It’s certainly the best out of the ‘80s, I think, one of the best action movies."""

"This isn’t so much a movie as it is a galvanizing force. So rarely is there such unambiguous demarcation between good and evil, and all the more so in a documentary. There’s so much here that you can’t believe you’re seeing so close: pickup trucks crunching into strikers’ feet away from the camera, billy-club cracks you can hear. The characters couldn’t be painted with brighter colors, as if they were drawn with Truman Capote’s pen. The baddies are cartoonishly bad: the emotionless Duke Power executives, their burned and disfigured power attorney, and the henchman Basil Collins, more grinning snake than man (greatest villain in film history?). The hero miners shine, still covered in coal dust. Black and white folks fighting together—if ever a movie could get you up out of your seat cheering on the protagonists . . . And for sure these are country people, but they’re canny too. That they know the danger they face is confirmed when one of the miners’ wives reaches into her ample bosom to pull a pistol out from her brassiere. If this weren’t a documentary, it wouldn’t be believed."

"The thing that makes The Vanishing so chilling is its unorthodox structure. It starts with a girl being kidnapped at a service station while her boyfriend waits in the car. Then the story picks up three years later with the boyfriend still searching for her while her killer monitors his movements. From very early on we know who the killer is, and we’re fairly sure that the girl is long dead. What makes the film special is that it retains its tension despite giving so much away so early on. There’s an incredible balance of likability and abject coldness in Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu’s performance as the villain; the character is a seemingly respectable family man who, unbeknownst to his wife and children, is in fact a textbook sociopath. Watching him as he patiently plans out the crime makes us feel like we are watching a car crash in slow motion. We know there’s nothing we can do to stop what’s going to happen; in fact it’s already happened. Stanley Kubrick cited this as the most terrifying film he had ever seen. And I can see why."