"Like for many Americans, incest is a rough area for me. I just have a natural aversion to it. That being said, when I saw this film in my Bergman/Polanski seminar sophomore year, I was so taken with the Bergman way that I forgot to be freaked out by the sex between siblings. I couldn’t stop whispering the last line, “Papa spoke to me,” at everyone I came across, and I think I will start again. Bergman is the king of mood, and his actors give it all to him, free of vanity and therefore crazy beautiful."

"An old French film with Simone Signoret, and I think Paul Meurisse is in it. It’s the film that terrified me as child, with this very simple scene where she pulls a curtain back in an upstairs window, and he’s watching from the yard. That was actually probably the first horror film I ever saw. It was a very scary. I was a small child. I just remember the simplicity of that moment when she pulled that curtain back. So there’s that, and they did the remake with Sharon Stone that was not very successful and wasn’t very well made."

"The other Louis Malle I chose, my favorite of his and the first one I saw. I was lucky enough to take a class on Malle in university, and so I was exposed to this great filmmaker at a young age. This is by far the best coming-of-age story I have ever seen. The incestuous mother/son relationship is surprisingly underplayed and comical. In a scenario that would otherwise be shocking, Malle doesn’t judge his characters, he just tells their story. Also notable is the beautiful Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker soundtrack. A wonderful, rare movie."

"I never took any film classes back in college, but these are two that I saw by sneaking into different post-lecture screenings. A fascination with the power of the missing person has stayed with me. The dizzying number of overlapping layers—worlds, eras, sympathies, and attachments—has kept Rebecca one of my all time favorites. Joan Fontaine’s nameless character can seem pathetic at times—overwhelmed by an insane situation in her austere, claustrophobic, itchy wool outfits. But she can also feel as powerful as a five-alarm wake-up call from the present tense. (Yikes, especially if the present tense is 1940.)"

"I never took any film classes back in college, but these are two that I saw by sneaking into different post-lecture screenings. A fascination with the power of the missing person has stayed with me. The dizzying number of overlapping layers—worlds, eras, sympathies, and attachments—has kept Rebecca one of my all time favorites. Joan Fontaine’s nameless character can seem pathetic at times—overwhelmed by an insane situation in her austere, claustrophobic, itchy wool outfits. But she can also feel as powerful as a five-alarm wake-up call from the present tense. (Yikes, especially if the present tense is 1940.)"

"This one. A nostalgia that will never go away. I went back and forth between this, and BIG with Tom Hanks but I ultimately chose this film for sheer entertainment, and for how outlandish the story is, and just how much fun the whole thing is. I saw it recently again, and it just doesn’t date. Michael J Fox, who I loved already from Family Ties, was the coolest thing on two heels for me. I just wanted to be him. The DeLorean. Doc Brown. Time Travel. A bit of young love. All these things played out with such light. A true classic."