"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."

"There is something so beautifully slippery about this film. The narrative skips, slides, and loops; you're forced to hold on to the characters as you’re propelled through the film. Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung circle around each other, so vulnerable and captivating. You yearn to get closer to them, to stay longer with them, but the film slips through your fingers the way their love slips through theirs. All that’s left is for Leung to whisper his love into ears of ancient stone, hoping it stays on this earth. I watched a print of the film a few years ago in Los Angeles. When the credits began to roll, something within me broke, and I cried and cried and cried."

"Growing up, I had a poster of the mid-nineties Tony Todd remake of Night of the Living Dead hanging on my bedroom wall that I had gotten it from the local video store when they were planning on tossing it. I love the remake, but it was the original George Romero black-and-white film that made me want to be a storyteller. It made me want to be a horror movie makeup artist. Making movies looked like fun! And looking back, aside from all that, the film has a racial and social component that I think elevated it beyond the typical horror film. And it was cool to see a Latino last name in the credits, quite frankly."