Influential Films Quotes

Seeing 'The Gospel According to St. Matthew' was an extraordinary experience because it made me realise that all the biblical stories and images I'd ignored as a child had sunk in by osmosis. I saw that my childhood was deeply rooted inside me.

Polanski's 'Chinatown' is a film that I have purposefully and consciously imitated, but 'Vertigo' is one that has got into my bloodstream. Every time I reappraise things that I've done, the influence is there, time and time again.

I watched Sly Stallone and the 'Rocky' movies over and over again. They were fantastic.

I love the Zucker brothers' films - 'Airplane!,' 'Top Secret' and 'Police Squad!' - are my formative experiences.

To me, the bones of 'Smokin' Aces' is in the Coen brothers. 'Barton Fink' and 'Raising Arizona.' Those two movies, if you look at them, that's where a lot of that comes from.

The Dracula movies are probably some of the most famous and enduring ones there are and I am very grateful to them, for sure.

I grew up watching his movies; I know everyone did, but I really feel that a lot of my formative years were informed by Woody Allen films.

I think, for sure, 'Saturday Night Fever' and 'Pulp Fiction' were kind of bookends for - or the pillars of - my career.

I remember being very influenced by 'Taxi Driver', and also Tommy Lee Jones in 'Coal Miner's Daughter' a little bit.

The movies I cannot go without and that I watch annually are 'A Clockwork Orange,' 'Scarface' and 'Fantasia.'

Nayakan,' 'Sathya' and 'Thevar Magan' are my biggest influences.

The films that have influenced me most are: 'The Hustler', 'Badlands', 'Hud', 'Tender Mercies', 'Cool Hand Luke', 'A Perfect World', and 'Laurence of Arabia'. I also really like 'Fletch'. I feel like all of these films reached an honest place in regard to the human condition while also stringing together really entertaining stories.

Yeah, my first love was 'The Simpsons,' but in terms of movies and stuff, I loved 'Back To The Future,' I loved 'Jurassic Park,' I loved 'The Truman Show.'

I was a huge fan of 'Blade Runner.' That was a pretty formative film for me growing up. It really got my sci-fi juices flowing, as it were.

I don't find movies interesting. I just want to do the movies that made me interested in getting into movies, and they're few and far between.

I loved Alien, and I loved Carrie, and I loved The Exorcist - those were big movies for me. They were just brilliantly done, and unusual, and they all took horror to some new place.

When I was little it was a great time for film-making, with stuff like Mike Nichols' 'Silkwood.' The films you see in that pre-secondary-school stage stay with you in a very particular way.

I'm a child of that, the 'Bonnie and Clyde' to 'Raging Bull' period, you know. Those are the films that heightened my interest in acting and movies and everything.

The four movies I can remember seeing as a kid were 'The Elephant Man,' 'The Magnificent Seven,' 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly' and 'Mad Max!' Two of those are westerns. So the western genre is emblazoned on my memory from childhood, and those are two great movies.

I hadn't watched any Hitchcock movies when I made 'Tom at the Farm,' except for 'Vertigo' when I was 8 years old. I don't have a sophisticated film knowledge, but I have seen the legacy of classic movies in broader entertainment.

I'm a huge Bob Hope fan, up until about the late '50s. I've seen so many of his movies up until then, and they're a big influence on me and a big influence on Woody Allen, who is basically just ripping off Bob Hope for his first five or six movies.

For me, my mythology growing up was 'Raiders Of The Lost Ark' and 'Star Wars' and 'E.T.' and 'Ghostbusters.' That's what I grew up on, and there aren't many people who can write that kind of scale of story, stories that are that big.

I think Dustin Hoffman has been in at least three of my favorite movies of all time with things like 'Tootsie,' 'Marathon Man.' Getting a bit more arthouse and darker, 'The Graduate' - incredible, barrier-breaking movie, 'The Graduate.'

I was watching Orson Welles and Jean Vigo films at a ridiculously young age.

I was influenced by American movies of the '60s and '70s, especially Don Siegel's 'Dirty Harry' and the films of Sam Peckinpah. And, of course, a lot of the film noir movies of the '40s.