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Magnolia (1999)
An epic mosaic of several interrelated characters in search of happiness, forgiveness, and meaning in the San Fernando Valley.
"Paul Thomas Anderson is perhaps my favourite director at the moment. But even if he had never directed, his writing is so impressive. He writes brilliant dialogue for people, these great speeches, but he's also brilliant on behaviour. All of his film are terrific - I hope he makes at least twenty more."
Zazie dans le Metro (1960)
Twelve-year-old Zazie escapes her uncle's custody and sets out to explore Paris on her own.
"The first film I would watch over and over again. It’s so full of joy and made with such seeming confidence and love. Louis Malle is one of my favorite directors. There's a great print of this film that's just been released by the Criterion Collection. They've also released..."
Contempt (Le mépris) (1963)
A writer is hired to make a script for a new movie about Ulysses more commercial...
"Just peerless. Georges Delerue’s score is my favorite of any film. Raoul Coutard’s photography is dazzling. The film seems to be, among another things, a brilliant analysis of the difficulty of translation. It’s hard to choose one Godard film, but Contempt seems to encapsulate so much of his genius. It's deeply serious and funny at the same time. Jack Palance reading aphorisms from his tiny book is brilliant."
Metropolitan (1990)
A group of young upper-class Manhattanites are blithely passing through the gala debutante season...
"I just love this film. The script is so good. And I think it's been so influential, not just in terms of its writing, but the acting style which feels like it takes the kind of deadpan that Mike Nichols did so well in The Graduate and Catch 22 and pushes it even further. But never, I feel, in way that feels merely mannered. It feels completely earned and appropriate. I love Barcelona and The Last Days of Disco just as much. I'm really looking forward to [Whit Stillman's] new one."
Persona (1966)
A nurse is put in charge of an actress who can't talk and finds that their personas are melding.
"I first watched Bergman films because of Woody Allen. The only real reason for not including a Woody Allen film here is because there are so many it would be impossible to pick, and I sort of feel the same about Bergman. Cries & Whispers, The Silence, Wild Strawberries, Fanny and Alexander, Summer with Monika - there are so many great ones. But Persona is, in many ways, the most exciting and the most distilled. Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson are incredible, and the light is so magical. Sven Nykvist was the best. It's a film that I can remember so vividly - the composition, cutting and camera movement are perfect. And the hats - sunlight through wide brimmed, straw hats - make them look at times like they're in a Sergio Leone western."
We asked director Richard Ayoade - whose comedy-of-age comedy Submarine opens this week - to recommend five of his favourite films...

"I wasn’t one of those people who got into neo-realism at six or anything. For me it was quite a 'thing' going to the cinema. Where I lived you had to get dropped off there or get money for the bus: it was quite tricky. I ended up watching lots of French new wave films, partly because it was a way of learning to speak French without reading textbooks. I liked Louis Malle’s films a lot: his Zazie dans le Metro and Claude Chabrol’s Les Cousins were the first films I can remember watching more than ten times.

"And when you get interested in those directors , you start to find out about who they liked. So, you’d look at Howard Hawks or Ernst Lubitsch. And through liking Woody Allen you’d find out about Ingmar Bergman or Fellini or Kurosawa or the Marx Brothers. If you like Scorsese, then following things he liked just means you end up watching everything. So you go through Nicholas Ray, Satyajit Ray… All the Rays.

"When I was older I went to the arts cimema in Ipswich. There was a bigger screen where they would show things like Bullets Over Broadway, then there was the smaller one where they’d show more obscure stuff like The Passion of Darkly Noon. I remember they had the Three Colours Trilogy there. It was a 50-seater, and about 12 people made it through them.It was about £2 for the lot. My cinema-going was pretty solitary. I also watch a lot of DVDs. I'm obsessed with Criterion collection, who do the best DVDs in the world."

Submarine opens on 24 November. Set in Swansea, Wales, 15-year-old Oliver (Craig Roberts) sees himself as a cool, literary genius. In reality he's socially inept and massively unpopular. Convinced that his father (Noah Taylor) is depressed and his mother (Sally Hawkins) is having an affair with her life coach (Paddy Considine), "a hippy-looking twonk", he embarks on a misguided campaign to bring the family back together. Meanwhile, he is also trying to lose his virginity – before he turns 16 – to his pyromaniac girlfriend Jordana (Yasmin Paige).

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