Hannah Einbinder

“I will start here with Tampopo. The egg? Crazy.”

“Paper Moon. Peter Bogdanovich, Mr. Swag. Mr. Glasses and Scarf. Kind of an icon. Yeah, I love this movie. It’s incredibly heartwarming, and I feel like I, as sort of a—kind of disgusting phrase to say, but daddy's girl. Sorry. It’s, like, I love my dad, and so this is a movie that is kind of about loving your dad. Shout out to you, Dad.”

“Thelma & Louise. Ever heard of it? Look at this art right here. Is this a Criterion…? Yes. Exclusive art right here. Shout out to Susan Sarandon, the god, by the way. Oh my God, Geena Davis. Schwing! This is, like, a beautiful love story about female friendship, and… Hey, look, I’m familiar with that.”

“The Philadelphia Story. Cary Grant was on my dorm-room wall, and I held up his black-and-white photo with a Bernie Sanders bumper sticker. You want to know about me? There it is. There it is.”

“His Girl Friday, which I didn’t know was here but is here, and it was plucked for me by my friends here at Criterion. “Give it here, Svengali!” I love these Freaks and the way that they talk. Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, comedic geniuses. Two of my absolute—on Mount Rushmore, no question. This is extremely Hacks-coded in that they bond… their love is connected to their work and their work together.”

“Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is, like, really a nightmare. It’s really scary and disorienting and surreal and freaky in a way that is so Eastern European. Watching this movie made me reflect on my experience of being a young girl and being sexualized externally before I in any way identified with my own sexuality... Visually unbelievably dazzling. And I’m so happy to have it.”

“This is Crash by David Cronenberg. I believe that this film should be played on the floor of the US Senate. I think it could help people to expand their minds and understand that they’re wasting so much time trying to tame the untamable, which is the human being and their liberation. Just watch this and don’t feel weird about your shit, basically, I think. Consent, and then you’re rocking.”

“Lost Highway. Something that’s really beautiful about cinema, in my opinion, is it can change the way that you view the world. For instance, David Lynch changed the way I see roses. And I’m a proud Los Angeleno, I’m born and raised in Los Angeles, third generation, and I feel like David Lynch loves LA in a way that I think is so cool. Lost Highway’s scary. My brother Spike showed it to me.”

“Defending Your Life rocks. There’s a scene in a comedy club in that movie, and it’s shot at The Comedy Store, and having started at The Comedy Store as a stand-up comedian before I was ever an actor, yeah, that’s what purgatory’s like, okay? I can tell you it is on the way to hell. This movie makes me laugh and makes me feel really warm. And Meryl Streep is a god, and so is Albert Brooks.”

“High Art, which, if you like Bound and you’re sad and gay or both, you would really love High Art. And so I just want to say honorable mention to High Art.”

“The Before Trilogy. You know sometimes when a film is a poisonous Mirror and you look at it and you’re like, “No!” It is a bisexual text. I don’t feel like I need to elaborate on that. That should be… The reasons why that’s true, I think, are evident if you’ve seen this stuff.”