Margaret Cho Actress, Bam Bam and Celeste
Velvet Goldmine (Miramax)
“The film is so great. I just love it so much. Great, great, great costumes. Great performances. Wonderful romance and glam. It’s all about Ewan McGregor’s penis, but it’s more about his asshole than it is about his penis.” 

Steve Gaghan
Writer-director, Syriana
Z (Fox Lorber)
“Is L’Uomo Dalla Croce really my most cherished film? Or La Guerre est Finie? I don’t know. I love the line, ‘Maybe it was some other fourteenth floor, some other apartment G,’ but not sure this is enough. Killer of Sheep is a perennial favorite. But one film keeps popping up in my head – at least this week – Z by Costa-Gavras. I never get tired of it; this humane and devastating sense that terrible deeds are precipitated and condoned by such ordinary people, and with one of the great scores and endings of all time. That’s the one I hand out to the most people, and spend the most time haranguing strangers about.” 

Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Actor, Mysterious Skin
OutKast: The Videos (Arista/LeFace)
“These guys are the most exciting thing in the world. On the DVD, I see the evolution of the group from ‘Southern Cadillac’ to ‘Hey Ya!’ They start out doing something typical, then they turn into something the world’s never seen before.”

Bryan Singer
Director, Superman Returns
Maniac (Anchor Bay)
“Because of the documentary on Joe Spinell in the special features section, the documentary contains a piece of footage that I don’t think anyone has ever seen unless they’re familiar with the DVD. Steven Spielberg is in it, and so is Jaws. It’s phenomenal and unique.”

Jeremy Piven
Actor, Entourage
Man Bites Dog (Criterion)
“It’s viciously real and biting and funny and everything you want from a DVD. Extras? When you’ve got great meat, you don’t need any condiments.”

Penn Jillette
Producer, The Aristocrats
Dawn of the Dead (Anchor Bay)
“The original. It’s scary. It’s smart. It’s intellectual. It’s everything a movie should be. It’s my favorite movie ever made. On the DVD, there’s the director’s commentary, but it’s the unrated one that I love. It’s exactly the way George [Romero] wanted it.”

John Davis
Producer, Alien vs. Predator
The Godfather (Paramount)
“No matter how many times I’ve seen it, I can see it again. It’s the first movie I’d grab in case of a fire. It’s masterful in every way: directing, acting, story, cinematography, score, set design. There is no flaw.”

Brett Ratner
Director, X-Men 3
The Kid Stays in the Picture (Warners)
“Every time I watch it, I learn from the mistakes of Bob Evans.”

Sarah Silverman
Actress-Comedian, Jesus is Magic 
Where’s Poppa? (MGM)
“Oh, my God. I just saw Where’s Poppa? George Segal. Ruth Gordon. Carl Reiner directed it. It holds up. It’s more brilliant than anything out there.”

James L. White
Screenwriter, Ray
Lawrence of Arabia (Columbia-TriStar)
“David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia is a great film from beginning to end. [Also], anything [by] Hitchcock, because of the writing and storytelling, the acting and, of course, the brilliant directing of Alfred Hitchcock. I learn something new about my craft every time I watch any of his movies.”

Matt Stone
Creator-writer, South Park
Brass Eye (Video Collection Intl.)
“It’s an obscure British show – the best show of all time. I only watch British comedies. I have a DVD player set to Region 2. Isn’t that lame?”

Terrence Howard
Actor, Four Brothers
Cool Hand Luke (Warners)
“Because of the honesty it showed about Paul Newman’s life at that time. That’s what I’m trying to do in my work.”

David Benioff
Screenwriter, Stay
Nights of Cabiria (Criterion)
“The sequence with Amedeo Nazzari is my favorite twenty minutes from the movies I’ve seen.”

John Dahl
Director, The Great Raid
8 1/2 (Criterion)
“It’s just great filmmaking. I was in college, and I was in the little film group there. We stole a projector and 8 1/2 for the weekend and watched it for 245 hours on 16mm. It’s Fellini. Just amazing images. In the ’80s, you [could] see how music videos and the Chanel commercials ripped him off.”

Lena Headey
Actress, The Brothers Grimm
Harold and Maude (Paramount)
“It was really a brave movie. It made me laugh from my heart, and cry. It’s so unique, a beautiful love story. You believe it, and you’re not repulsed by it. They could remake it, and it would be fucking beautiful, but they wouldn’t release it.”

Matt Damon
Actor, The Brothers Grimm
Chappelle’s Show (Paramount)
“We watched those when we were in Prague [shooting Brothers Grimm]. They’re brilliant. Hell yeah! And those first two seasons of The Office and Da Ali G Show.”

James Gray
Writer-director, The Yards
The Leopard (Criterion)
“A triumph of epic cinema – a picture with astonishing historical and political scope, with tremendous emotional depth and extraordinary attention to detail. Equal parts truth and spectacle, with all the pluses of both, and none of the minuses. The movie has it all, and was made for multiple viewings. The disc is a sumptuous transfer of two versions of the same film (one subtitled, the other dubbed and cut down); great supplemental features, with fantastic documentary stuff on both Visconti and the production; a beautiful booklet and cover. Criterion at its best.”

Heath Ledger
Actor, Casanova
Timothy Leary’s Dead (New Concorde)
“It’s pretty interesting to watch Timothy Leary have his head chopped off in the documentary. Check that out.”

Robin Swicord
Screenwriter, Memoirs of a Geisha
Groundhog Day (Columbia/TriStar)
“I watch Groundhog Day at least once a year. I’ve seen it a minimum of twelve times since it came out in 1993. Its humor holds up under the duress of repeated viewing, even though the film itself is about a man repeating the same day over and over for God knows how many years. It’s like a philosophy course masquerading as a comedy. ‘We want your characters to be more likable’ is the studio note I most dislike hearing – so I love that Groundhog Day gives us a detestable protagonist who makes himself a better man only when he has exhausted every other option.”

Nicholas Kazan
Screenwriter, Reversal of Fortune
Taxi Driver (Columbia/TriStar), Raging Bull (MGM)
“Great scripts, great actors [and] the best and most provocative director [Martin Scorsese] of his generation. Dazzling camerawork and fabulous commentary. Haunting.”

Mark Wahlberg
Actor, Four Brothers
Chopper (Image Ent.)
“Because it’s some gangsta shit like [my Four Brothers character] Bobby Mercer.”

Alexander Payne
Writer-director, Sideways
Umberto D. (Criterion)
“Not only because I admire the film, but also because it contains a wonderful documentary about De Sica. And recently, I’ve been showing everyone I know the film that won this year’s Oscar for Best Animated Short, Ryan, and it is extraordinary, genuinely new. The DVD, loaded with extras, is available from the website of the National Film Board of Canada.”

Steve James
Director, Hoop Dreams
Rules of the Game (Criterion)
“It was one of the films I saw when I was in college when I first got interested in film. I took a class in the English department, a film appreciation course. We studied several directors that semester. The professor wanted to do something personal, and he did this auteur class where we watched films by Renoir and Hitchcock. I hadn’t seen many older films at the time, and I didn’t know much about Renoir, and I fell in love with his work.”

Kip Pardue
Actor, Imaginary Heroes
Fight Club (Fox)
“It’s one of my favorite books, one of my favorite movies. Bang-up special features. They do an outrageous costume storyboard that is fantastic. They do tons of storyboards for the bullet wound in Ed Norton’s head. They do a great featurette of the house. How they built the set. They have great time-lapse photography on it. It’s all behind-the-scenes stuff of this movie that looks so perfect. It’s incredible to see how [David] Fincher’s vision on paper ended up on film.”

Marc Forster
Director, Stay
Annie Hall (MGM/UA)
“I hardly ever watch this movie. Maybe three times a week.”

Tom Arnold
Actor, Happy Endings
Hoosiers (MGM/UA)
“When I am feeling romantic, I watch Hoosiers. It is a great movie that happens to be about sports. But it’s more about hope and second chances. What could be more romantic than that? Aren’t we all billion-to-one underdogs sometimes, if not usually? And don’t we all need to feel that the impossible is possible, occasionally? Doesn’t everyone deserve a second chance, damn it? There’s a humanity and authenticity to this film that is timeless. I don’t even try not to cry when Gene Hackman says, ‘I love you guys’ to his players, or when Jimmy Chitwood says, ‘I’ll make it’ before the big shot, and it really happened! The special twenty-fifth-anniversary edition includes the actual basketball game it was based on.”

James Mangold
Writer-director, Walk the Line
The Verdict (Fox)
“What a gift it is to view the highest levels of acting, direction, camerawork and screenwriting devoted to telling a solid, moving story; a story without any ludicrous built-in twists or overblown style to remind you about the people behind the camera and how badly they want your attention. This film is easily the greatest courtroom film ever, and certainly one of the most underrated; cleanly, beautifully, artfully, sublimely and subtly staged and structured; brilliantly acted by a bold Paul Newman playing an ambulance chaser on his last legs; Jack Warden as his only friend in the world; the brilliant James Mason as Newman’s nemesis representing, of all things, Boston’s Catholic Church; and Charlotte Rampling as a mysterious woman who steps into their lives. This DVD serves as a reminder to me that to make truly great movies, you don’t need scope nearly as much as you need a story, and you don’t need spectacle nearly as much as you need great soul to point your lens at tight and close. In this case, Newman lets it rip. And check out the final scene from the days before test screenings, when studios weren’t afraid to leave the audience a little haunted. Ring. Ring. Ring…”

James Franco
Actor, The Great Raid
Freaks and Geeks (Shout! Factory)
“There’s so many. I like the Criterion Collection. I get all of those. Freaks and Geeks. That’s a good one.”

John Landis
Director, Coming to America
It’s a Gift (Universal)
“There’s a W.C. Fields movie called It’s A Gift, which is genius. I watch it every two months. My wife and I also just watched Chinatown recently, which is great. They wouldn’t make that movie now.”

Kevin Smith
Writer-director, The Green Hornet
The Talented Mr. Ripley (Paramount)
“This is the go-to flick for me and the wife whenever we’re stymied by what to watch. It’s a flick full of insanely good performances and gorgeous shots, but we’ve now watched the DVD so many times, it’s become the perfect comfort film to put on and go to sleep to. Which isn’t to say it’s a snoozer in the least; it’s just a comfortable old robe of a film that’s such a comfort watch that it lulls us to sleep as if we were being lovingly choked to death by Tom Ripley himself.”

Adrian Grenier
Actor, Entourage
Gummo (New Line)
“I used to have anxiety about having to choose my favorite film, or album, or book. The decision seems so permanent. But I’m better now. Now my favorite movie is usually the first one that comes to mind. I just recently watched Gummo again, and it is one of my favorite movies – an elegant film, with an ethereal quality that I really love. Gummo is beautiful to watch, and the soundscape is so lyrical. You can watch it with the sound turned down, or just listen with your eyes closed. It’s a poetic film. It’s an on-rush of emotions and impressions, revealing a certain reality, which, while frightening, you can’t deny exists.”

50 Cent
Rapper-actor, Get Rich Or Die Tryin’
Juice (Paramount)
“The difference between [Juice] and every other film that portrays the lifestyle, the way I grew up, is how much it does actually lean to that film. Like, they went crazy after the Tupac character shoots the store owner, and then everything goes crazy because he actually shot somebody. It was so dramatic to them. That’s a little more realistic than it is in other films. Other films, you see someone walk up, shoot somebody and get in the car like it’s nothing.”

Kevin Bisch
Screenwriter, Hitch
Raiders of the Lost Ark (Paramount)
“While Star Wars may have made me want to be a Jedi, it was Raiders that made me want to tell stories. And I started right away. I talked about Raiders to everyone who would listen. I didn’t just talk about it... I ‘held forth’ on it, frame for frame, punctuating the story with a lot of ‘wait, back up a second’ and ‘I forgot to tell you that the guy burned his hand, see.’ These were, in essence, my first pitch meetings. There is not one thing out of place in this movie: actors, performances, score, villain – it’s all a ten. I watch Raiders every eighteen months just to keep my chops up. It’s like watching the Ali-Foreman fight: the peak of the form, an audacious display of talent. I know Lucas and Spielberg have said this movie was their homage to the cliffhanger serials they grew up on. Well, I grew up on Raiders, and it will inform everything I write, because – regardless of genre – I hope to always tell stories with that much generosity.”

Roger Avary
Writer-director, Rules of Attraction
THX 1138 (Warners)
“I’ve got two. THX 1138 and The Sinister Saga of Making The Stunt Man. Generally, I’m not a fan of revisionist moviemaking like Star Wars and E.T., but George Lucas takes THX 1138 and expands it and really uses digital technology to enhance the movie. It really is as if he made the movie today with Donald Pleasance risen from the dead. It is easily George Lucas’ greatest achievement. There’s a scene with Robert Duvall, and I thought he was on drugs, but Lucas has digitally added an auto-suck machine – he’s getting sucked off! And in the factory they’re actually building more robots – robots for the police force – so it deepens the story. The Stunt Man’s one of my favorite movies. It had a botched release. [Director] Richard Rush never rose to that again, so he makes The Sinister Saga of Making The Stunt Man. It’s the most vain and psychotic self-analysis and self-glorification things I have ever seen, with these cheesy graphic effects. At one point, he morphs into the poster – that devil image of Peter O’Toole. It’s beyond explanation. It has a weird porn/infomercial quality. This is what he’s been doing for the past fifteen years?”

Benjamin Bratt
Actor, The Great Raid
Whale Rider (Columbia/TriStar)
“The film that I’m just crazy about, and will always be crazy about, is Whale Rider. It’s such an emotionally affecting film. It also reminds me of my daughter, so that’s a good thing.”

John Ridley
Screenwriter, Undercover Brother
Missing (Universal)
“There are no extras, no commentary, not even chapter breaks. You have to watch the whole movie in a sitting by itself, the way the director intended.”

Justin Long
Actor, Herbie: Fully Loaded
Back to the Future (Universal)
“Back to the Future or Anal Bang 4. Or Malcolm in the Middle second season. I’ll go with Back to the Future. It’s by far my favorite movie. It’s pure nostalgia. It’s a movie I can watch every day and never get tired of it. The extras actually freak me out because I know the movie so well. It doesn’t seem right that there are scenes that weren’t in the movie. It’s like seeing a long-lost child that you never knew you had, and now he’s in rehab.”

Lauren Ambrose
Actress, Six Feet Under
Hannah and Her Sisters (MGM/UA)
“Choosing a favorite is a veritably impossible task. Could I pick The Office season one and ignore the Christmas special? Or select The Exorcist or You Can Count On Me while leaving off the Boston Red Sox 2004 World Series Collector’s Edition? If it came down to desert-island time, I would have to go with Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters. I don’t know if it is his finest film; most would probably argue for Crimes and Misdemeanors. But this DVD goes on in my house when I need to feel transported to Mr. Allen’s New York, which is often – and I live in New York! Between Sam Waterston’s architectural tour of the city, Max Von Sydow’s ‘Jesus would never stop throwing up,’ the Bach F minor concerto and the performance of the great Dianne Wiest, I, after watching this film – sometimes even through the dentist’s movie goggles – like Michael Caine, ‘am walking on air.’”

David Reynolds
Screenwriter, Finding Nemo
Raiders of the Lost Ark (Paramount)
“Although I’m awfully fond of all of those great Pixar movies (the one about the fish is a favorite), my most cherished DVD would have to be Raiders. This movie made such an impression on me when I saw it in the theatre, I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to make up a story like that?’ It’s also a classic ‘flypaper movie.’ One of those films like The Sting or Groundhog Day, Some Like It Hot, Butch Cassidy, etc., that when you pass it on TV, you stop and watch it to the end no matter where you are in the story. It could be the first five minutes, the last five, or just as Indy’s fighting that big guy next to the spinning propeller blades. You know what’s coming next, and you look forward to seeing it again – and again. And as final proof of this film’s staying power, I can guarantee you that any writer today trying to sell an action movie to a skeptical studio executive will always close his/her pitch with, ‘You know, it’s gonna be just like they did it in Raiders.’ And then, and only then, will you get a nod and smile. Now they like your idea.”

Anthony Rapp
Actor, Rent
The Lord of the Rings (New Line)
“I have to be typically nerdish and say The Lord of the Rings extended versions. The extras capture the scope of the project incredibly well: everyone’s passion, artistry, stamina and vision are on vivid display. And the films themselves are an extraordinary example of what you can do with people who share all of the above qualities.”

Tom DeSanto
Executive Producer, Transformers
Network (Warners)
“Paddy Chayefsky’s scathing satire is perhaps the most under-appreciated film ever made. It is more a prophecy than movie, and foretells the corporatization not only of the American media but of the American soul. When Peter Finch’s Howard Beale begs the American people to get mad as hell and not take it anymore, the thought of rushing over to the window and letting out that primal scream crosses your mind at least for a second, even if you end up just whispering it in your head.”

Jennifer Alden
Actress, Wedding Crashers
Waiting for Guffman (Warners)
“I catch something new every time I watch it. Christopher Guest is a genius who perfected the mockumentary with this film. One of my favorite moments is Ron and Sheila’s prep thing they do before auditioning for the big town musical. I almost broke up with a guy once because he didn’t like this movie.”

John August
Screenwriter, Corpse Bride
Run Lola Run (Columbia/TriStar)
“It’s not my favorite movie – that’s Aliens – but Run Lola Run is sort of my cinematic Red Bull. You crack it open and feel the buzz. I’ve probably watched it more than any DVD in my collection. The fact that it’s short – eighty minutes – is a huge plus.”

Todd Phillips
Director, Starsky & Hutch
Girls Gone Wild: Ultimate Spring Break Vol. 2 (Mantra Films)
“It may not be my favorite film of all time… But it’s definitely my most-watched DVD. Having started in documentaries myself, I can appreciate the work in the entire GGW franchise, but most particularly the early years. There is something so raw and so genuine about this DVD, and having never been to a spring break, I can honestly say that I feel transported every time I watch it. This particular DVD is not only a great way to relax, but the exotic locale [Cancun] is also like having a great beach getaway in my own living room.”

John Singleton
Director, Four Brothers
Seven Samurai (Criterion)
“Because it’s one of the best movies ever made.”

Bill Pullman
Actor, Dear Wendy
The Official Story (Koch Lorber)
“A very strong, Argentinean movie set in the period after the disappearances [in that country] in the early ’80s. They were trying to figure out where these people had gone. It’s great acting, and a great story. And, it’s really troubling.”

Kevin Williamson
Screenwriter, Scream 3
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Warners)
“Because of the writing. I just turn it on in the background and listen to it while I work. Now that they have DVDs in the car, you can put it on in your car and listen to it.”

Victor Salva
Director, Jeepers Creepers
Hellboy (Columbia/TriStar)
“The director’s-cut deluxe edition, with all the juicy bits about the special effects that Guillermo del Toro put on it. One of the best DVDs with special features in a long time.”

Julian Fellowes
Writer-director, Separate Lies
L.A. Confidential (Warners)
“There's something about it that I can watch endlessly. It has this extraordinary arid emotion. There's something very crisp about it. Whenever I haven't anything to watch I watch L.A. Confidential."

Roger Corman
Director, Scorpius Gigantis
Battleship Potemkin (Delta Music)
“It heralded the beginning of modern cinema. D.W. Griffith gets all the attention and a lot of awards, but with [Sergei] Eisenstein's use of the camera and the editing [it] marked the beginning of modern filmmaking."

Don Roos
Writer-director, Happy Endings
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Koch Lorber)
“The production design, the music and the beauty of the two leads, and the sadness of the last scene, and everything set to music, even lines like ‘I need gas for my car’ – I can’t stop watching it once I start. It’s pure romance – until the end, when bourgeois capitalism runs roughshod over everything. Just like real life. Except in real life, we don’t sing so much. Also, The Sound of Music, because I’m gay.”