"This is the first film I purchased on DVD, and it’s the film I recommend most often. Though I consider Todd Haynes a feminist filmmaker, he has a tendency to leave his female protagonists much worse off than they were before as the end credits roll. His character arcs are vicious downward spirals, and they’re utterly compelling. When I teach this film in my class at the University of Illinois, I pair it with “The Yellow Wallpaper,” a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman that is also about a wife and mother slowly unraveling under the pressure of her own femininity. At the end of a hard day, I often find comfort knowing that at least I am not Carol White."

"I definitely have films that, for whatever reason, had an impact on me. One of the first ones is The Goonies, which I watched when I was a little kid growing up in South Africa. I actually came home from watching The Goonies and planned a whole movie that I recorded on the tape recorder. It was about some kids in a gang. They stumble upon a stolen piece of art. It’s actually not such a bad idea now that I think about it. [The Goonies] was definitely one of those films that I distinctly remember pushing me into, “This is what I’m going to do.” I’d been playing around with the camera, but that was like the turning point for me, The Goonies."