Daniels’

“I just need to be the one to talk about Tampopo just because this is a movie that I feel like is very much like a reflection of my soul. I love food, I love absurdity, I love the way that it's like really sweet and also really horrific sometimes. The sexuality in it is just bizarre and beautiful. One fun fact, one of our good friends Hiro Murai, his father was the composer and he was also at the beginning of the movie, he's the guy who's eating chips really loudly and gets beat up.”

“Malcolm X is one. This is just like such a riveting crime saga, like maybe my favorite crime movie. It just blew my mind when I first saw it like a year ago and I also am a pretty big Spike Lee fan as a writer-director and a very big Spike Lee fan as an actor. He just comes in so hot in this movie and Do the Right Thing obviously, but like the opening scene is just him and Denzel just walking through this long oner, incredible crazy movie.”

“We gotta do a little shout out for Jason Kisvarday, our production designer. This is his favorite movie of all time and every year for his birthday he forces all of us to re-watch it and make dioramas inspired by the film. Anyone who's seen the film knows that they have all these fake products in the background, but they're like the laziest most basic thing where the beer can will just say beer and the cereal will just say cereal. That's a Repo Man chapstick.”

“Literally The Before Trilogy, Richard Linklater. They're just great but I sat down with my partner and watched all three movies with her years ago and we finished them while on vacation in Central America and had like a life-changing discussion about our relationship after watching Before Midnight and just kind of like renegotiating our relationship because like seeing this Mirror in front of us of just like where we were headed and like what it's like to domesticate someone you love.”

“I'll do a quick shout out to Police Story 1 and 2. This is very formative. My dad, his whole family, they speak in the language of old Hong Kong Kung Fu films. We watched a lot of Jackie Chan and Police Story 1 and 2 was like way too brutal for me as a kid but I really loved it. Like the finale in the mall where he's going down the pole and getting electrocuted and then you see in the end credits he literally has like second and third degree burns on his arms.”

“This is like the first movie I ever loved. I actually don't know which Godzilla was the first one I was so young but right as a kid I became obsessed with Godzilla movies and there was something about knowing that it's a man in a suit smashing toys that just like blew my mind. I still sometimes say that's the genre I'm interested in is a monster movie but only if it's costumes and miniatures. I don't want CG monsters. Old school Kaiju, only if I get to be the Kaiju.”