Old movies acquire a very loveable patina of “look at this wonderful older film that has quality that we don’t see much anymore”. That’s the thing about movies: you can watch them again as anew and appreciate them again from a new aspect. Even if you’ve seen Crimes And Misdemeanors, see it again. But watching it again I was much more forgiving to the. I remember when it came out, the Martin Landau story was startling and fantastic and we’d say to each other, ‘Why does Woody Allen put himself in his films? Just tell a fucking story!”. If you ask a 50 year-old guy what he watches with his family, well, I recently watched Woody Allen’s Crimes And Misdemeanors with my mother. It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film and it’s a wonderful family film.

“If the family is mature and thoughtful, 1987’s Babette’s Feast by the late Gabriel Axel is a supremely beautiful and terribly moving film. But with an open heart, I’m very grateful for the interest in my movies.” Steering dramatically away from the subject, we asked him to recommend six films closely related to his Best Picture nominee as Nebraska heads to DVD and Blu-ray.

“What’s not fun is talking about ‘Why black and white?’,” he reflects when Empire calls him at his home in Omaha, “because I’ve answered that 500,000 times. As commentators are fond of mentioning, Payne’s sensitive direction has helped guide seven of his cast members to acting nods at the Oscars, a fact guaranteed to elicit a warmer response than questions about Nebraska’s monochrome look. Of course, he didn’t write Nebraska, his latest Oscar-nominated road-trip movie, but it’s a Payne film from start to finish, infused with his offbeat comic sensibility, shot through with the wry poignancy that’s become his trademark, and beautifully acted. Six pictures into his filmmaking career, and Alexander Payne is establishing himself as one of Hollywood’s finest writer/directors.

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