Tim Blake Nelson

“Allen Baron's Blast of Silence and what I love about the Criterion Channel is that you can discover movies on it and I love Noir. I'd never heard of this movie. It is one of the best hardboiled unsentimental detective movies shot with mostly an objective camera... But what the best aspect of it is the voiceover. It's some of the best voiceover I've ever encountered in a film. This one is not to be missed.”

“And then a movie that could not be more different, Topsy-Turvy by one of my favorite filmmakers, Mike Leigh. This movie is exquisitely acted, which is true about all Mike Leigh's films because he develops his movies with actors. It's a long, long meticulous involved research oriented process. This is a rare period movie made by Mike Leigh... But what's amazing in addition to the acting and the writing in this movie is the production design. It is as good as it gets in any movie.”

“I'm just going to be completely cliché here and I'm going to pick a Cassavetes. Here is my favorite Cassavetes film, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. You have everything that one comes to love in a Cassavetes movie. Incredible extras casting but then also incredible casting in the actors around Ben Gazzara. Seymour Cassel of course is in it... And an exquisite, exquisite portrait of a small-time loser who gets in way over his head.”

“I'm going to do not one but two Coen Brothers movies. The first one I want to talk about is Inside Llewyn Davis and it tells the story of a guy named Llewyn Davis, a fictional character inspired by Dave Van Ronk, who just misses the boat. He's a down on his luck talented singer-songwriter who makes bad choices personally and is always like many Coen Brothers characters just a step behind the inimical forces in life and he's trying to catch up and impose some measure of control.”

“So another Coen Brothers film that's here, absolutely one of my favorites is Miller's Crossing. This is a movie, I'm just going to tell you, you need to watch it not twice, but you need to watch it three times at the very least, because the story is so intentionally, almost willfully, convoluted. And Gabriel Byrne is incredible. Marcia Gay Harden is phenomenal playing the character of Verna. Albert Finney, extraordinary Performance. But it's Turturro, John Turturro plays a character named Ber...”

“I've been presented with the option of just picking something randomly off the shelf, probably I'm not going to know what the movie is and here we go. Okay well already I want to see this, it's Ozu's Tokyo Story but look at this cover. There you go. Bye for now.”