"This is my favorite novel of the past decade. It’s so sexy, scandalous and hysterically depressing. It follows two conniving brothers as they pull of jewelry scams, take a ton of cocaine, sleep with hookers, and generally make questionable life decisions. It’s largely based on the writer’s own experiences, and after I read it I became sort of sexually obsessed with him, and would fantasize about him constantly. I eventually started sending him erotic messages on Facebook, but he never replied."

"Few films have ever satiated my appetite for an experience of pure cinema the way Cul-de-sac did the first night I watched it. It’s a film that doesn’t strictly belong to any one genre but dances between thriller, psychological horror, and comedy. One of my favorite actors, the hugely undervalued Donald Pleasence, turns in a career-best performance as a highly pedantic, sexually frustrated, oddball English husband, while his fiery young French wife is played with dangerous irresistibility by Françoise Dorléac."