"It’s about Jen overhearing a conversation between her parents. Her mum had Alzheimer’s and she was asking her husband how they first met. He told this beautiful long story about how they started dating, what they were wearing, how they’d send each other love letters… and then five minutes later she said, “So how did we meet again?” It’s a bittersweet love song and is absolutely brutal on the heartstrings."

"I mean, Jesus Christ, it’s Madame Bovary. This is a novel that I adored when I read it. It was beautiful, scandalous, tortured and sympathetic. Then, while I was researching Guy de Maupassant for my first novel, The Clasp, I wound up reading a good deal about Flaubert as well. It’s impossible not to— the latter was the former’s mentor. So I have found myself revisiting Emma Bovary in recent years."

"[Solanas] wrote a very angry and very precise portrait of what she considered the male to be: something between a human and an ape; an unresponsive blob only concerned with physical sensation and without the capacity for empathy or self-knowledge or intimacy, and at the same time full of hatred and jealousy and shame and guilt. Her description is beautiful and on some level, I think, entirely accurate."

"I’d say Night of the Hunter. It’s an amazing film. That’s where the original “love” and “hate” tattoos on the hand came from. A lot of people don’t know that. You know, the good Christianity, the true Christianity, versus the false prophet thing that plays out in there, and the imagery. It’s an intense and beautiful film. And I love Robert Mitchum. I wish he’d come back to life"

"This movie (like, Badlands a movie that’s not on this particular list) is almost perfect. Not a wasted shot, piece of dialogue, moment, or frame. John Sayles has made some amazing movies but this is my favorite of his. A beautiful, forceful movie that tells a dozen different stories wrapped around one specific, true pivotal moment in American history. And every single actor is perfect and perfectly cast."

"Oh I just love Fantasia. I played that for my nephew when he was two, and I don’t believe in popping children in front of the television as a babysitter, but I feel like, you know what? “I’m introducing you to classical music; I’m introducing you to classic cartoons, so watch it!” It’s a beautiful way to take music and to take your mind to a place of no words."

"The one [film] that made me want to be an actor is [Franco] Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet. I went and saw it and, because there might have been some sex scenes, I had to sit in front of my mom, and any time those beautiful young people took off their clothes, I would feel her hand clamp down on my eyes [laughing]. But that’s when I went, “Yes, that!'"

"Louise Brooks defines screen presence. She is so mesmerizing, vulnerable, beautiful, and strong/silent that I had to seek out every one of her performances. There is no other like her, as there is no other Marcello Mastroianni. Diary of a Lost Girl may be even better. If you need to coax a friend to lose their dramatic silent film virginity, start with these . . . and then move to Greed."

"The most purely beautiful film I can think of and done up in a pristine transfer here; the fact that the film was shot at Shepperton Studios, in England, actually blows the mind. The acting is impeccable, and the fevered colors and close-ups are as close to a cinematic wet dream as I ever need to have. Powell and Pressburger in the throes of a most singular cinematic vision."

"And four… oh, this is tricky. I’m just trying to go through them in my head. It’s probably easier to pick 30 favorite movies as opposed to five. It might seem like an odd choice but I really loved it, the Tim Robbins movie Dead Man Walking. I just thought it was such beautiful, emotional, thoughtful filmmaking, and I’m surprised it hasn’t taken a bigger place in the western film canon."