"A relatively new film that went straight into my top five, I adore Punch Drunk Love, and I can almost recite it to you. It was on TV on a loop for a while, and it's like The Godfather, you hit that film on TV and you stay there. There aren't many, but you just stay there, thinking, 'I could keep flipping, but there's not actually going to be anything better than this,' and it doesn't matter that you've seen it sixteen times - you just dig it because it's such high quality.
I think Adam Sandler and Emily Watson are completely marvellous in it, and I didn't know anything about Adam Sandler, I've never seen any of his other films, so I've only seen him in this. I love Paul Thomas Anderson, and I think it's my favourite of his films. Possibly a controversial thing to say, as his other films are, perhaps, hipper, but I love the fact that it's this fucked up love story. I love it stylistically, the jokes, the visual attitude of it and those funky links that he does. I love the apparent arbitrariness of the plot, which hinges on upon the fact that you get free air-miles with a particular brand of chocolate pudding, and I love the way it dovetails at the end.
Everyone in it is magnificent, including Philip Seymour Hoffman, who's in The Boat that Rocked and who is beautiful in Punch Drunk Love. Adam Sandler gives one of the greatest light entertainment performances I've ever seen. It's a submerged light entertainment, it's so integrated, so authentic in terms of naturalism, that you surprise yourself by laughing, because it's so deadpan, so undercover in terms of comedy, and that's my favourite thing of all time, the highest level. For the first twenty minutes you think you're in art movie hell, but you're not, so don't panic."
