Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004

You may have noticed by now that I’m a sucker for romance movies, and ones that blend them with sci-fi elements tend to be near the top of that list. I believe Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was my first run-in to that hybrid genre, and to this day, it’s probably still one of the most effective. Boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, everything’s great until it’s not, boy and girl fall apart. In Eternal Sunshine, there’s another step though: boy erases girl from memories via experimental new technology in order to rid himself of the pain of reliving that loss all the time.

Except there are some twists. Eternal Sunshine mostly takes place in Joel’s (Jim Carrey) memories as they are being erased. In a non-linear order, we bounce around his head and the highs and lows of his relationship with Clem, played by the always-astounding Kate Winslet. As his brain is getting toyed with and manipulated, the film adopts a visual style to match the events of the movie. This means there are abrupt cuts, visual noise and fog in certain scenes, and Eternal Sunshine finds fun in playing with perspective too. There’s at least one horrifying jumpscare (you’ll know it when you see it) but my favorite sequence involves the romantic leads speaking plainly to each other as the house around them (and Joel’s memory of their relationship) collapses. Eternal Sunshine has it all and then some. — Moises Taveras