"It’s such a beautiful cinematic poem, I suppose. When I did Push in Hong Kong, it was a great pleasure to be able to shoot the film almost in the style of Wong Kar-Wai — just with him in mind, you know. Beautiful light, reds and greens. I actually stayed in one of the apartments in Hong Kong that he designed, which was nice. Lots of wallpaper. As a movie, you’re just so compelled by these two characters, and he only shows glimpses of them, yet they’re so compelling — which is a feat in itself."

"Terrence Malick is the preeminent practicing metaphysician of the cinema. In his brilliant and haunting first feature, he tells the story of a vicious young serial killer and his impassive underage girlfriend, both perfectly rendered by Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. The violence unfolds in the context of a vastly uncaring natural world and is relayed to us by the girl through a detached narration utterly innocent of emotion. The result is not a moral inquiry into human action but rather a compelling meditation on the nature of being itself."

"Natalie Kusz’s often-overlooked but astonishing memoir follows the story of her family, who jumped in a car in California in 1969 and moved to Alaska to homestead off the land near Fairbanks, where temperatures in the winter regular drop to 40 below. Kusz, who is 6 at the time, is attacked (and almost killed) by a sled dog, but the most compelling parts of the book are her poetic, unflinching reflections on everything from daughterhood to motherhood to what it means to build your own home—literally, out of scrap lumber and visqueen."

"Mark Sandrich was the superlative director of Fred Astaire musicals, strikingly more successful at this demanding (though charming) form than the better known George Stevens. It’s very funny, chock-a-block with great character actors, and with wonderful music (Cole Porter) and choreography (Astaire with Hermes Pan). There’s something about works at the beginning of a form or style of cinema, even if rough and lacking couth, that I find more lovable and compelling than that form perfected (which in this case would be the gorgeous Top Hat made by Sandrich the next year)."

"That movie is spectacular in so many ways. It has everything a documentary should have: unexpected twists, characters that are flawed and complex and crazy. And the story is told in a way that it feels like a compelling — almost fictional — narrative but its obviously as real as it gets. But there are times when you’re watching it and you just go, “Oh my God, did this really happen? Is this real?” I love documentaries and there are a lot of great ones. I’m a big Werner Herzog fan as well, and Errol Morris."

"When I’m thinking about what draws me to some of these films, it’s really my love of watching great characters experiencing some kind of break with reality. And this movie illustrates that. First of all, I love the idea of someone trying to sell their first-born child to the devil for an acting part. Insane! And then the character of Rosemary, embodied beautifully by Mia Farrow, is so compelling. You see how a woman can lose herself in the process of protecting her child. It feels accurate to the experience of being pregnant."

"I was not prepared for the journey this compelling novel took me on. Or so I thought. I knew nothing of the lives of Puerto Rican immigrants to the United States, and certainly very little of the lives of the children. This book changed that. It is a book of such power that it is as if a completely new layer of the American experience has been exposed to our view. And like many a great work of fiction, not one line is wasted and every single word rings true."