"A wonder. If I had to choose the best movie ever made, I’d choose 8 1/2. It’s so rich, so free, so influential. It has such a high energy in its form, an energy that never stops. It’s like a strong river that never stops flowing. It also has one of the most wonderful endings in film history. Something extraordinarily surprising, poetic, and reasonable in a way you wouldn’t have expected."

"A rich and complex hypnogogic experience. Just where is this story taking place? In a dream, in memory . . . in the afterlife? Are these even questions that you can ask about a movie like this? Resnais structures the film in an ever looping pattern—everything turning in on itself again and again. The narrative seems to match the very patterns of how memory works. Every viewing reveals new layers of meaning previously unseen. A masterpiece."

"Despite its grand place in the literary canon, “Middlemarch” is really a rich, gossipy boxed set of a novel. I first read this as a teenager in short bursts nightly with a torch after lights-out, and it gripped me like a soap opera. The foolishness of the human condition, the urgency of its whims and fancies, and the often blinding need to find meaning are unsparingly chronicled in this feast of a book."

"The fifteen-minute ballet sequence is so unforgettable. The cinematography is rich in a painterly, reddish-hued Technicolor. I resisted seeing this movie for years, thinking I wouldn’t be into it, but ended up completely absorbed and fascinated. Now I’ve seen it many times and still can’t get over how amazing it is. The ballerina played by Moira Shearer is torn between two men, and strangely, it’s the villain who I find myself rooting for."