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My Books Are A Subject Of Much Discussion. They Pour From Shelves Onto Tables, Chairs And The Floor, And Chaz Observes That I Haven't Read Many Of Them And I Never Will. You Just Never Know. One Day I May - Need Is The Word I Use - To Read Finnegans Wake, The Icelandic Sagas, Churchill's History Of The Second World War, The Complete Tintin In French, 47 Novels By Simenon, And By Love Possessed.

-Roger Ebert

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My Books Are A

Roger Ebert

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My Books Are A Subject Of Much Discussion. They Pour From Shelves Onto Tables, Chairs And The Floor, And Chaz Observes That I Haven't Read Many Of Them And I Never Will. You Just Never Know. One Day I May - Need Is The Word I Use - To Read Finnegans Wake, The Icelandic Sagas, Churchill's History Of The Second World War, The Complete Tintin In French, 47 Novels By Simenon, And By Love Possessed.

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Mad Dog Time Is The First Movie I Have Seen That Does Not Improve On The Sight Of A Blank Screen Viewed For The Same Length Of Time. Oh, I've Seen Bad Movies Before. But They Usually Made Me Care About How Bad They Were. Watching Mad Dog Time Is Like Waiting For The Bus In A City Where You're Not Sure They Have A Bus Line.

It Is Not Enough For A Movie To Be Righteous. It Must Also Be Watchable.

I Was Perfectly Content Before I Was Born, And I Think Of Death As The Same State.

A Young Girl Is Possessed By A Devil, And Constantine Shouts, 'i Need A Mirror! Now! At Least Three Feet High!' He Can Capture The Demon In The Mirror And Throw It Out The Window, See, Although You Wonder Why Supernatural Beings Would Have Such Low-tech Security Holes.

Supernatural Beings

My Motto: 'no Good Movie Is Depressing. All Bad Movies Are Depressing.'

What Makes People Interesting Is The Spirit That Shines Through.

Every Great Film Should Seem New Every Time You See It.

If You Pay Attention To The Movies They Will Tell You What People Desire And Fear. Movies Are Hardly Ever About What They Seem To Be About. Look At A Movie That A Lot Of People Love, And You Will Find Something Profound, No Matter How Silly The Film May Be.

What I Believe Is That All Clear-minded People Should Remain Two Things Throughout Their Lifetimes: Curious And Teachable.

If A Movie Is Really Working, You Forget For Two Hours Your Social Security Number And Where Your Car Is Parked. You Are Having A Vicarious Experience. You Are Identifying, In One Way Or Another, With The People On The Screen.

One Of The Weapons Marvel Used In Its Climb To Comic-book Dominance Was A Willingness To Invent New Characters At A Dizzying Speed. There Are So Many Marvel Universes, Indeed, That Some Superheroes Do Not Even Exist In One Another's Worlds, Preventing Gridlock.

Going To A Movie So You Won't Be Offended Is Like Eating Potato Chips Made With Olestra; You Avoid The Dangers Of The Real Thing, But Your Insides Fill Up With Synthetic Runny Stuff.

Film Theory Has Nothing To Do With Film.

There Are Few Lonelier Sights Than A Good Comedian Being Funny In A Movie That Doesn't Know What Funny Is.

In These Days Of High-tech Video Games, It's Remarkable That Kids Once Got Incredibly Thrilled While Pushing Little Metal Racing Cars Around A Cardboard Track: The Toy Car Was Yours, And You Invested It With Importance And Enhanced It With Fantasy And Pitied It Because It Was Small, Like You Were. Such Games Were Weapons Against The Ennui Of Endless Saturdays.

The Bucket List Is A Movie About Two Old Codgers Who Are Nothing Like People, Both Suffering From Cancer That Is Nothing Like Cancer, And Setting Off On Adventures That Are Nothing Like Possible. I Urgently Advise Hospitals: Do Not Make The Dvd Available To Your Patients; There May Be An Outbreak Of Bedpans Thrown At Tv Screens.

Here It Is At Last, The First 150-minute Trailer. Armageddon Is Cut Together Like Its Own Highlights. Take Almost Any 30 Seconds At Random, And You'd Have A Tv Ad. The Movie Is An Assault On The Eyes, The Ears, The Brain, Common Sense, And The Human Desire To Be Entertained. No Matter What They're Charging To Get In, It's Worth More To Get Out.

A Remarkable Documentary That's Also One Of The Most Beautiful Nature Films I've Seen.

We Are Put On This Planet Only Once, And To Limit Ourselves To The Familiar Is A Crime Against Our Minds.

Steve Coogan Picks Up Enough To Lecture An Interviewer: This Is A Postmodern Novel Before There Was Any Modernism To Be Post About. Later It's Claimed That Tristram Shandy Was No. 8 On The Observer's List Of The Greatest Novels, Which Cheers Everyone Until They Discover The List Was Chronological.

I've Been Around A Long Time, And Young Men, If There Is One Thing I Know, It Is That The Only Way To Kiss A Girl For The First Time Is To Look Like You Want To And Intend Do, And Move In Fast Enough To Seem Eager But Slow Enough To Give Her A Chance To Say "so Anyway ..." And Look Up As If She's Trying To Remember Your Name.

Crouching Tiger Is Nevertheless A Gloriously Big Epic, Starring The Hong Kong Action Stars Chow Yun-fat And Michelle Yeoh In A Visionary Adventure Where The Characters Seem Set Free From The Force Of Gravity.

Most People Choose Movies That Provide Exactly What They Expect, And Tell Them Things They Already Know. Others Are More Curious. We Are Put On This Planet Only Once, And To Limit Ourselves To The Familiar Is A Crime Against Our Minds.

We Laugh, That We May Not Cry.

Of All The Purposes Of Education, I Think The Most Useful Is This: It Prepares You To Keep Yourself Entertained. It Gives You A Better Chance Of An Interesting Job.

Aren't You Getting Tired Of People Hating One Another? What Do They Think They Get Out Of It?

I Begin To Feel Like I Was In The Last Generation Of Americans Who Took A Civics Class.

Dogs Remember Every Favor You Ever Do For Them And Store Those Events In A Memory Bank Titled Why My Human Is A God.

Sometimes, It's All About The Casting.

I Find That When I Am Actually Writing, I Enter A Zone Of Concentration Too Small To Admit My Troubles.

Praise Without Merit Is More Harmful Than Unearned Criticism.

What Every Human Being Should Do Is Eat A Vegetarian Diet Based On Whole Foods. Period. That's It. Animal Protein Is Bad For You. Dairy Is Bad For You. Forget The Ads: Milk And Eggs Are Bad For You.

Vegetarian Diet

Pixar Is The First Studio That Is A Movie Star.

I Am Grateful For The Gifts Of Intelligence, Love, Wonder And Laughter. You Can't Say It Wasn't Interesting.

Here's How Much I Know About Hockey. Mike Royko And I Were In A Tiny Bar One Winter Night, And The Radio Kept Reporting Goals By The Blackhawks. I Mentioned How Frequently The Team Was Scoring. 'you're Listening To The Highlights,' Royko Observed.

To Make Others Less Happy Is A Crime. To Make Ourselves Unhappy Is Where All Crime Starts.

There Are Two Things You Can't Argue In Film: Comedy And Eroticism. If Something Doesn't Make You Laugh, No One Can Tell You Why It's Funny, And It's Difficult To Reason Someone Out Of An Erection.

Dice Rules Is One Of The Most Appalling Movies I Have Ever Seen. It Could Not Be More Damaging To The Career Of Andrew Dice Clay If It Had Been Made As A Documentary By Someone Who Hated Him. The Fact That Clay Apparently Thinks This Movie Is Worth Seeing Is Revealing And Sad, Indicating That He Not Only Lacks A Sense Of Humor, But Also Ordinary Human Decency.

There Are Often Lists Of The Great Living Male Movie Stars. How Often Do You See The Name Of Nicolas Cage? He Should Always Be Up There. He's Daring And Fearless In His Choice Of Roles, And Unafraid To Crawl Out On A Limb, Saw It Off And Remain Suspended In Air.

The Screenplay Is So Well-written In A Scruffy, Fanzine Way That You Want To Rub Noses In It - The Noses Of Those Zombie Writers Who Take 'screenwriting' Classes That Teach Them The Formulas For 'hit Films.'

It Is An Interesting Law Of Romance That A Truly Strong Woman Will Choose A Strong Man Who Disagrees With Her Over A Weak One Who Goes Along. Strength Demands Intelligence, Intelligence Demands Stimulation, And Weakness Is Boring. It Is Better To Find A Partner You Can Contend With For A Lifetime Than One Who Accommodates You Because He Doesn't Really Care.

A Few Actresses Have All But Set Up Shop As Women Of A Certain Age Who Attract Younger Lovers. I Think Of Susan Sarandon, Cameron Diaz And Isabelle Huppert.

We Feel The Same Emotions For Our Ideas As We Do For The Real World, Which Is Why We Can Cry While Reading A Book, Or Fall In Love With Movie Stars.

Falling In Love

(guy) Pearce, As The Hero, Makes The Mistake Of Trying To Give A Good And Realistic Performance. (jeremy) Irons At Least Knows What Kind Of Movie He's In, And Hams It Up Accordingly.

It Considers Not Only How We Relate To Others, But How We Relate To Our Ideas Of Others So That A Completely Phony, Non-human Replica Of A Dead Wife Can Inspire The Same Feelings That The Wife Herself Once Did. That Is A Peculiarity Of Humans: We Feel The Same Emotions For Our Ideas As We Do For The Real World, Which Is Why We Can Cry While Reading A Book, Or Fall In Love With Movie Stars. Our Idea Of Humanity Bewitches Us, While Humanity Itself Stays Safely Sealed Away Into Its Billions Of Separate Containers, Or "people.

Falling In Love

There's Nothing Like Impending Death To Rouse You From Existential Boredom.

Impending Death

A Depressing Number Of People Seem To Process Everything Literally. They Are To Wit As A Blind Man Is To A Forest, Able To Find Every Tree, But Each One Coming As A Surprise.

Yes, I Was Fat, But I Dealt With It By Simply Never Thinking About It. It Is Useful, When You Are Fat, To Have A Lot Of Other Things To Think About.

A Movie Isn't Good Or Bad Based On Its Politics. It's Usually Good Or Bad For Other Reasons, Though You Might Agree Or Disagree With Its Politics.

Marlon Brando Is The Most Influential Movie Actor Of The Century.

The Golden Thumb Is Not As Good As The Oscar, But It Is A Lot Of Fun.

Parents And Schools Should Place Great Emphasis On The Idea That It Is All Right To Be Different. Racism And All The Other 'isms' Grow From Primitive Tribalism, The Instinctive Hostility Against Those Of Another Tribe, Race, Religion, Nationality, Class Or Whatever. You Are A Lucky Child If Your Parents Taught You To Accept Diversity.

Sometimes Miraculous Films Come Into Being, Made By People You've Never Heard Of, Starring Unknown Faces, Blindsiding You With Creative Genius.

The Academy Is Paranoid About Its Image.

If There's Anything I Hate More Than A Stupid Action Comedy, It's An Incompetent Stupid Action Comedy. It's Not So Bad It's Good. It's So Bad It's Nothing Else But Bad.

I Think We Have To Get Beyond The Idea That We Have To Categorize People. We Can Now Have Action Movies With Two Stars Where One Might Be African American And One Might Be Asian American. One Of Them Doesn't Have To Be White, And The Other One Doesn't Have To Be The Ethnic Sidekick. We're Way Over That. And I Think It's Happening In Society, Too.

Teaching Prejudice To A Child Is Itself A Form Of Bullying. You've Got To Be Taught To Hate.

To Say That George Lucas Cannot Write A Love Scene Is An Understatement; Greeting Cards Have Expressed More Passion.

And I Think Both The Left And The Right Should Celebrate People Who Have Different Opinions, And Disagree With Them, And Argue With Them, And Differ With Them, But Don't Just Try To Shut Them Up.

A Film Is A Terrible Thing To Waste.

When I Am Writing My Problems Become Invisible And I Am The Same Person I Always Was. All Is Well. I Am As I Should Be.

Here Is A Children's Film Made For The World We Should Live In, Rather Than The One We Occupy. A Film With No Villains. No Fight Scenes. No Evil Adults. No Fighting Between The Two Kids. No Scary Monsters. No Darkness Before The Dawn. A World That Is Benign. A World Where If You Meet A Strange Towering Creature In The Forest, You Curl Up On Its Tummy And Have A Nap.

I Am, Beneath Everything Else, A Fan. I Was Fixed In This Mode As A Young Boy And Am Awed By People Who Take The Risks Of Performance.

The Right Really Wants To Punish You For Having An Opinion. And I Think Both The Left And The Right Should Celebrate People Who Have Different Opinions, And Disagree With Them, And Argue With Them, And Differ With Them, But Don't Just Try To Shut Them Up.

Clint, My Hero, Is Coming Across As Sad And Pathetic. He Didn't Need To Do This To Himself. It's Unworthy Of Him.

When I Had Been A Film Critic For Ten Minutes, I Treated Doris Day As A Target For Cheap Shots. I Have Learned Enough To Say Today That The Woman Was Remarkably Gifted.

When We Go To The Movies, We Identify With The Characters We See. That's Why We Go To The Movies; We Have A Voyeuristic Experience; We Have An Out Of The Body Experience. The Screen Is More Real Than Our Thoughts Are At The Moment We Are Looking At The Film And We Place Ourselves In The Place Of The People On The Screen, And When They Behave Nobly, It Makes Us Feel Noble, When They Are Sad And When They Have Lost Love, We Feel Sad; We Can Identify With That.

Blockbusters Run The Mainstream Industry. We May Never Again Have A Decade Like The 1970s, When Directors Were Able To Find Such Freedom.

Why Is It That English, Drama And Music Teachers Are Most Often Recalled As Our Mentors And Inspirations? Maybe Because Artists Are Rarely Members Of The Popular Crowd.

It Is Reckless To Make Broad Generalizations About Any Group Of People.

I'm Told We Movie Critics Praise Movies That Are Long And Boring.

'marley' Does What Is Probably The Best Possible Job Of Documenting An Important Life.

Film Theory Has Nothing To Do With Film. Students Presumably Hope To Find Out Something About Film, And All They Will Find Out Is An Occult And Arcane Language Designed Only For The Purpose Of Excluding Those Who Have Not Mastered It And Giving Academic Rewards To Those Who Have. No One With Any Literacy, Taste Or Intelligence Would Want To Teach These Courses, So The Bona Fide Definition Of People Teaching Them Are People Who Are Incapable Of Teaching Anything Else.

I Think That Probably The - I Don't Give Quotes To Studios. They Have To Get Those Out Of The Paper Or From Television. So They Wouldn't Have Had My Quote Opening Day.

It Often Strikes Me That The Actors In High School Movies Look Too Old.

In The World Of Bad Movies, 'death To Smoochy' Is A Towering Achievement.

All Good Art Is About Something Deeper Than It Admits.

Oh, Here Comes Mel Blanc, The Voice Of Bugs Bunny And Jimmy Smits!

Art Is The Closest We Can Come To Understanding How A Stranger Really Feels.

I Felt It Would To Add A Great Deal To My Legend For Eccentricity.

Vincent Gallo Has Put A Curse On My Colon And A Hex On My Prostate. He Called Me A 'fat Pig' In The New York Post And Told The New York Observer I Have 'the Physique Of A Slave-trader.' He Is Angry At Me Because I Said His 'the Brown Bunny' Was The Worst Movie In The History Of The Cannes Film Festival... It Is True That I Am Fat, But One Day I Will Be Thin, And He Will Still Be The Director Of 'the Brown Bunny.'

Cannes Film Festival

I'm Kind Of Glad The Web Is Sort Of Totally Anarchic. That's Fine With Me.

And The Sexes Eyeing Each Other Uneasily, For Nothing Is Easier For A Teenager To Imagine Than Rejection.

An Actress Should Never, Ever, Be Asked To Run Beside A Van In Red Disco Boots For More Than About Half A Block, And Then Only If Her Child Is Being Kidnapped.

My Newspaper Job … Is My Identity.

To Know Me Is To Love Me. This Cliche Is Popular For A Reason, Because Most Of Us, I Imagine, Believe Deep In Our Hearts That If Anyone Truly Got To Know Us, They'd Truly Get To Love Us - Or At Least Know Why We're The Way We Are. The Problem In Life, Maybe The Central Problem, Is That So Few People Ever Seem To Have Sufficient Curiosity To Do The Job On Us That We Know We Deserve.

Just Write, Get Better, Keep Writing, Keep Getting Better. It's The Only Thing You Can Control.

Things You Can Control

The Ability Of So Many People To Live Comfortably With The Idea Of Capital Punishment Is Perhaps A Clue To How So Many Europeans Were Able To Live With The Idea Of The Holocaust: Once You Accept The Notion That The State Has The Right To Kill Someone And The Right To Define What Is A Capital Crime, Aren't You Halfway There?

We Must Try To Contribute Joy To The World... I Didn't Always Know This And Am Happy I Lived Long Enough To Find It Out.

There Must Be A Better Reason To Have A Baby Than To Provide A Plot Point In A Rom-com. Don't You Think?

What In The World Is A Leave Of Presence? It Means I Am Not Going Away.

I Began To Realize That I Had Tended To Avoid Some People Because Of My Instant Conclusions About Who They Were And What They Would Have To Say. I Discovered That Everyone, Speaking Honestly And Openly, Had Important Things To Tell Me.

I Believe That If, At The End, According To Our Abilities, We Have Done Something To Make Others A Little Happier, And Something To Make Ourselves A Little Happier, That Is About The Best We Can Do.

From A Dramatic Viewpoint, There Are Few Professions That Grant Their Members Entry Into Other Lives, High Among Them Cops, Doctors, Clergymen, Journalists And Prostitutes. Perhaps That Explains Why They Figure In So Much Television And Cinema. Their Lives Are Lived In The Midst Of Human Drama.

Improvisation Is A Weird Word Because We Often Think It Means That You Make Things Up Out Of Whole Cloth Right There On The Spot, And That's Rarely The Case In Acting. You Have To Know Who The Character Is, What The Situation Is And What Is Needed.

An Honest Bookstore Would Post The Following Sign Above Its 'self-help' Section: 'for True Self-help, Please Visit Our Philosophy, Literature, History And Science Sections, Find Yourself A Good Book, Read It, And Think About It.

No Movie Featuring Either Harry Dean Stanton Or M. Emmet Walsh In A Supporting Role Can Be Altogether Bad.

Supporting Roles

We Live In A Box Of Space And Time. Movies Are Windows In Its Walls. They Allow Us To Enter Other Minds, Not Simply In The Sense Of Identifying With The Characters, Although That Is An Important Part Of It, But By Seeing The World As Another Person Sees It.

I've Been Told That I Am Evil. I've Been Told That I Am Behind The Persecution Of Millions Of Americans. That I Have Encouraged Hate Toward Gays. I've Received Both Very Brief And Obscene Messages, And Very Long And Literate Messages That Tell Me A Vote For Crash Was Vote For Homophobia.

Political Correctness Is The Fascism Of The 90's, It Is This Rigid Feeling That You Have To Keep Your Ideas And Your Way Of Looking At Things Within Very Narrow Boundaries Or Else You'll Offend Someone. Certainly One Of The Purposes Of Journalism Is To Challenge Just That Way Of Thinking, And Certainly One Of The Purposes Of Criticism Is To Break Boundaries, That's Also One Of The Purposes Of Art.

The Movie "ed Wood," About The Worst Director Of All Time, Was Made To Prepare Us For "stargate."

Not Everyone Needs To Be Slammed Into A Category And Locked There.

Doing Research On The Web Is Like Using A Library Assembled Piecemeal By Pack Rats And Vandalized Nightly.

Library Research

No Good Movie Is Too Long And No Bad Movie Is Short Enough.

My Favorite Love Scenes In Movies Don't Involve Passion, They Involve Nobility Or Sacrifice.

Why Has Scandinavia Been Producing Such Good Thrillers? Maybe Because Their Filmmakers Can't Afford Millions For Cgi And Must Rely On Cheaper Elements Like, You Know, Stories And Characters.

Pearl Harbor Is A Two-hour Movie Squeezed Into Three Hours, About How On December 7, 1941, The Japanese Staged A Surprise Attack On An American Love Triangle. Its Centerpiece Is 40 Minutes Of Redundant Special Effects, Surrounded By A Love Story Of Stunning Banality. The Film Has Been Directed Without Grace, Vision, Or Originality, And Although You May Walk Out Quoting Lines Of Dialog, It Will Not Be Because You Admire Them.

Low Self Esteem Involves Imagining The Worst That Other People Can Think About You.

Life Always Has An Unhappy Ending, But You Can Have A Lot Of Fun Along The Way, And Everything Doesn't Have To Be Dripping In Deep Significance.

What We Have Here Is A Rousing Boy's Adventure Story, Adapted From Stories That Edgar Rice Burroughs Cranked Out For Early Pulp Magazines. They Lacked The Visceral Appeal Of His Tarzan Stories, Which Inspired An Estimated 89 Movies; Amazingly, This Is The First John Carter Movie, But It Is Intended To Foster A Franchise And Will Probably Succeed.

Lebanon Was At One Time Known As A Nation That Rose Above Sectarian Hatred; Beirut Was Known As The Paris Of The Middle East. All Of That Was Blown Apart By Senseless Religious Wars, Financed And Exploited In Part By Those Who Sought Power And Wealth. If Women Had Been In Charge, Would They Have Been More Sensible? It's A Theory.

Many Thrillers Follow Such Reliable Formulas That You Can Look At What's Happening And Guess How Much Longer A Film Has To Run.

We Can't Help Identifying With The Protagonist. It's Coded In Our Movie-going Dna.

Horror Fans Are A Particular Breed. They Analyze Films With Such Detail And Expertise That I Am Reminded Of The Canadian Literary Critic Northrup Frye, Who Approached Literature With Similar Archetypal Analysis.

When I Write, I Fall Into The Zone Many Writers, Painters, Musicians, Athletes, And Craftsmen Of All Sorts Seem To Share: In Doing Something I Enjoy And Am Expert At, Deliberate Thought Falls Aside And It Is All Just There. I Think Of The Next Word No More Than The Composer Thinks Of The Next Note.

If You Can Act As If Something Is True, In A Sense That Makes It True.

Ridley Scott's 'prometheus' Is A Magnificent Science-fiction Film, All The More Intriguing Because It Raises Questions About The Origin Of Human Life And Doesn't Have The Answers.

Raises Questions

Reese Witherspoon Is As Cute As A Button On Raggedy Ann's Overalls, But Irresistible Raw Sex Appeal Is Not One Of Her Qualities.

Fight Club Is A Thrill Ride Masquerading As Philosophy - The Kind Of Ride Where Some People Puke And Others Can't Wait To Get On Again.

Most Of Us Do Not Consciously Look At Movies.

Films To The Degree That They Glorify Mindlessness And Short Attention Span They Are Bad, To The Degree That They Encourage Empathy With People Not Like Ourselves And Encourage Us To Think About Life, They Are Good.

In The Vast Majority Of Movies, Everything Is Done For The Audience. We Are Cued To Laugh Or Cry, Be Frightened Or Relieved; Hitchcock Called The Movies A Machine For Causing Emotions In The Audience. Bresson (and Ozu) Take A Different Approach. They Regard, And Ask Us To Regard Along With Them, And To Arrive At Conclusions About Their Characters That Are Our Own. This Is The Cinema Of Empathy.

Matthew Mcconaughey And Kate Hudson Star. I Neglected To Mention That, Maybe Because I Was Trying To Place Them In This Review's Version Of The Witness Protection Program. If I Were Taken Off The Movie Beat And Assigned To Cover The Interior Design Of Bowling Alleys, I Would Have Some Idea Of How They Must Have Felt As They Made This Film.

You Can't Just Tell Actors, Especially Young Ones, To 'act Happy' And Expect Them To Do It. They Must In Some Essential Way Be Happy.

People Never Think Of Themselves As Choosing To Be Politically Correct. They Simply Think In The Way That They Do.

The Film Argues To The Young That The Old Were Young Once, Too, And Contain Within Them All That The Young Know, And More.

It's Not What A Movie Is About, It's How It Is About It.

I Remember When A Coke Came In A Six-ounce Bottle, And Delicious It Was. Now It Comes In Sizes So Big That I Question How The Human Bladder Can Deal With The Intake.

There Is A Movie Called “fargo” Playing Right Now. It Is A Masterpiece. Go See It. If You, Under Any Circumstances, See “little Indian, Big City,” I Will Never Let You Read One Of My Reviews Again.

On This Ancient And Miraculous World, Where Such Beautiful Natural And Living Things Have Evolved, Something Has Gone Wrong When Life Itself Is Used As A Manufacturing Process.

Friends Don't Let Jackasses Drink And Drive.

Drink And Drive

Going To See Godzilla At The Palais Of The Cannes Film Festival Is Like Attending A Satanic Ritual In St. Peter's Basilica.

Cannes Film Festival

A Lot Of First Novels Are Written Long Before They're Actually Put Down On Paper.

One Of The Most Sublime And Hazardous Moments In Human Experience Comes When Two People Lock Eyes And Realize That They Are Sexually Attracted To One Another. They May Not Act On The Knowledge.they May File It Away For Future Reference. They May Deny It. They May Never See Each Other Again. But The Moment Has Happened, And For An Instant All Other Considerations Are Insignificant.

I Urgently Advise Hospitals: Do Not Make The Dvd Available To Your Patients; There May Be An Outbreak Of Bedpans Thrown At Tv Screens.

It Is All Very Well And Good For Linda Lovelace, The Star Of The Movie, To Advocate Sexual Freedom; But The Energy She Brings To Her Role Is Less Awesome Than Discouraging. If You Have To Work This Hard At Sexual Freedom, Maybe It Isn't Worth The Effort.

Movies Are Not About Moving, But About Whether To Move.

This Sucks On So Many Levels." Dialogue From "jason X" Rare For A Movie To So Frankly Describe Itself. "jason X" Sucks On The Levels Of Storytelling, Character Development, Suspense, Special Effects, Originality, Punctuation, Neatness And Aptness Of Thought.

It Amazes Me That Filmmakers Will Still Film, And Audiences Will Still Watch, Relationships So Bankrupt Of Human Feeling That The Characters Could Be Reading Dialogue Written By A Computer.

To Make Others Less Happy Is A Crime. To Make Ourselves Unhappy Is Where All Crime Starts. We Must Try To Contribute Joy To The World. That Is True No Matter What Our Problems, Our Health, Our Circumstances. We Must Try. I Didn't Always Know This And Am Happy I Lived Long Enough To Find It Out.

One Of The Gifts One Movie Lover Can Give Another Is The Title Of A Wonderful Film They Have Not Yet Discovered

Resentment Is Just A Way Of Letting Someone Else Use Your Mind Rent-free.

Cinema, For Me, Has Always Been Something Like Music Composed With Photographic Images.

And Yet, Even So, There Is A Way To Find Happiness. That Is To Be Curious About All Of The Interlocking Events That Add Up To Our Lives. To Notice Connections. To Be Amused Or Perhaps Frightened By The Ways Things Work Out. If The Universe Is Indifferent, What A Consolation That We Are Not.

Catholic Theology Accounts For The Fact That There's Evil In The World. People Say, Well, How Could God Let This Happen. Well, What God Did Was Set The Mechanism In Motion And Then Allow People To Do The Best They Can Under The Circumstances That They're Dealt In Order To Gain Grace And Get Into Heaven.

That's What Fantasies Are For, To Help Us Imagine That Things Are Better Than They Are.

It's Like The High School Production Of Something You Saw At Steppenwolf, With The Most Gifted Students In Drama Class Playing The John Malkovich And Joan Allen Roles.

A Film Like Hoop Dreams Is What The Movies Are For. It Takes Us, Shakes Us, And Makes Us Think In New Ways About The World Around Us. It Gives Us The Impression Of Having Touched Life Itself.

We Think Of First Love As Sweet And Valuable, A Blessed If Hazardous Condition.

All But A Very Few Of Us Are In Debt. We Exist As Entities Who Borrow Money And Spend The Rest Of Our Lives Making Interest Payments On A Debt Tally That Never Seems To Budge. Whatever Wealth We Have, In Labor, Property Or Cash, Is Suctioned To The Top.

I'd Rather Be Called A N*gger Than A Slave.

I Know As A Critic I'm Required To Have A Well-armored Heart. I Must Be A Cynical Wise Guy To Show My Great Sophistication. No Pushover, Me.

We Can Now Have Action Movies With Two Stars Where One Might Be African American And One Might Be Asian American. One Of Them Doesn't Have To Be White, And The Other One Doesn't Have To Be The Ethnic Sidekick. We're Way Over That. And I Think It's Happening In Society, Too.

It's Funny That There Was So Much Disturbance About Having A Catholic In The White House With Kennedy, And When We Finally Get A Religion In The White House That's Causing A Lot Of Conflicts, And Concerns, And Disturbances For A Lot Of People, It's In The Bush Administration.

It Is Human Nature To Look Away From Illness. We Don't Enjoy A Reminder Of Our Own Fragile Mortality.

I Just Assume I'm Right. Partially Out Of Conviction And Partially As A Pose.

All I Know Is, It Is Better To Be The Whale Than The Squid.

When I Go To A Great Movie, I Can Live Somebody Else's Life A Little Bit For A While. I Can Walk In Somebody Else's Shoes. I Can See What It Feels Like To Be A Member Of A Different Gender, A Different Race, A Different Economic Class, To Live In A Different Time, To Have A Different Belief.

I Begin To Feel Like Most Americans Don't Understand The First Amendment, Don't Understand The Idea Of Freedom Of Speech, And Don't Understand That It's The Responsibility Of The Citizen To Speak Out.

Of All The Arts, Movies Are The Most Powerful Aid To Empathy, And Good Ones Make Us Into Better People.

Time Is What The Depressed And Panicked Lack.

We Exist To Have Our Wealth Moved Up The Economic Chain Out Of Our Reach.

We Don't Have A Lot Of Class-conscious Filmmaking.

What Every Human Being Should Do Is Eat A Vegetarian Diet Based On Whole Foods. Period.

Vegetarian Diet

Film Has Become A Marketed Commodity, And The Opportunities And Audiences For Art Cinema Have Grown Smaller. There Is A General Downturn In Cultural Literacy, Perhaps Because Of Television.

Because Of The Rush Of Human Knowledge, Because Of The Digital Revolution, I Have A Voice, And I Do Not Need To Scream.

Digital Revolution

Nothing Ever Seems Straightforward In Venice, Least Of All Its Romances.

Straightforward

What's Sad About Not Eating Is The Experience, Whether At A Family Reunion Or At Midnight By Yourself In A Greasy Spoon Under The L Tracks. The Loss Of Dining, Not The Loss Of Food.

I Am Proudly A Liberal. I Am Also Patriotic, Reasonable, Pro-american, And Stand For Family Values.

Because We Are Human, Because We Are Bound By Gravity And The Limitations Of Our Bodies, Because We Live In A World Where The News Is Often Bad And The Prospects Disturbing, There Is A Need For Another World Somewhere, A World Where Fred Astaire And Ginger Rogers Live.

Because I Don't Give The Studios Advanced Quotes Or An Advanced Look At My Reviews. I Think The Readers Deserve To Read My Reviews Before The Studios Do.

I'll Tell You, I Think That The Internet Has Provided An Enormous Boost To Film Criticism By Giving People An Opportunity To Self Publish Or To Find Sites That Are Friendly.

The Purpose Of Civilization And Growth Is To Be Able To Reach Out And Empathize With Other People... For Me, The Movies Are Like A Machine That Generates Empathy.

Many People Believe The Names Of In 'n Out And Steak 'n Shake Perfectly Describe The Contrast In Bedroom Techniques Between The Coast And The Heartland.

I Value The Kind Of Prayer When You Stand At The Edge Of The Sea, Or Beneath A Tree, Or Smell A Flower, Or Love Someone, Or Do A Good Thing. Those Prayers Validate Existence And Snatch It Away From Meaningless Routine.

In The World Of Acting, Many Are Thin But Few Are Talented.

Absolutists Frighten Me. During All The Endless Discussions On My Blog About Evolution, Intelligent Design, God, And The Afterworld, Numbering Altogether Thousands Of Comments, I Have Never Named My Beliefs, Although Readers Have Freely Informed Me That I Am An Atheist, And Agnostic, Or At The Very Least A Secular Humanist - Which I Am.

It's Rare To Find A Film That Goes For Broke And Says, 'to Hell With The Consequences.'

I Think We Have To Get Beyond The Idea That We Have To Categorize People.

We All Are Born With A Certain Package. We Are Who We Are: Where We Were Born, Who We Were Born As, How We Were Raised. We're Kind Of Stuck Inside That Person, And The Purpose Of Civilization And Growth Is To Be Able To Reach Out And Empathize A Little Bit With Other People. And For Me, The Movies Are Like A Machine That Generates Empathy. It Lets You Understand A Little Bit More About Different Hopes, Aspirations, Dreams And Fears. It Helps Us To Identify With The People Who Are Sharing This Journey With Us.

Teenagers Used To Go To The Movies To See Adults Having Sex. Today Adults Go To The Movies To See Teenagers Having Sex.

I Think Most People Are More Susceptible To Prejudice Than To Reason.

It Is Universally Agreed That Jean Renoir Was One Of The Greatest Of All Directors, And He Was Also One Of The Warmest And Most Entertaining.

One Difference Between Film Noir And More Straightforward Crime Pictures Is That Noir Is More Open To Human Flaws And Likes To Embed Them In Twisty Plot Lines.

Some Movies Run Off The Rails. This One Is Like The Train Crash In The Fugitive. I Watched It In Mounting Gloom, Realizing I Was Witnessing Something Historic, A Film That For Decades To Come Will Be The Punch Line Of Jokes About Bad Movies.

When We're Discussing Who To Invite To A Dinner Party, My Wife Chaz And I Sometimes Use The Shorthand, 'good Value For Money,' Which Indicates Guests Expected To Be Entertaining.

The Buried Code Of Many American Films Has Become: If I Kill You, I Have Won And You Have Lost. The Instinctive Ethical Code Of Traditional Hollywood, The Code By Which Characters Like James Stewart, John Wayne And Henry Fonda Lived, Has Been Lost.

In Hollywood, 'under Development' Means 'all I Have Is The Title.'

All I Require Of A Religion Is That It Be Tolerant Of Those Who Do Not Agree With It.

The Problem With Being Sure That God Is On Your Side Is That You Can't Change Your Mind, Because God Sure Isn't Going To Change His.

People Read The Papers Not In The Hopes Of Learning Something New, But In The Expectation Of Being Told What They Already Know. This Is A Form Of Living Death. Its Apotheosis Is The Daily Poll In Usa Today, Which Informs Us What Percentage Of A Small Number Of Unscientifically Selected People Called A Toll Number To Vote On Questions That Cannot Possibly Be Responded To With A Yes Or No.

Learning Something New

The Layout Was Griping, The Glide Is Awesome. Two Ten-inch Fins Up, Way Up.

Jane Austen Wrote Six Of The Most Beloved Novels In The English Language, We Are Informed At The End Of Becoming Jane, And So She Did. The Key Word Is Beloved. Her Admirers Do Not Analyze Her Books So Much As They Just Plain Love Them To Pieces.

It's Strange: We Leave The Movie Having Enjoyed Its Conclusion So Much That We Almost Forgot Our Earlier Reservations. But They Were There, And They Were Real.

It Is Quite Possible For The Vulgar To Be Funny, But To Succeed, It Must Rise To A Certain Genius.

Nothing Could Be More Boring Than An Absolutely Accurate Movie About The Law.

In My Reviews, I Feel It's Good To Make It Clear That I'm Not Proposing Objective Truth, But Subjective Reactions; A Review Should Reflect The Immediate Experience.

Objective Truth

Anyone Who Reads Advice Books About Romance Has One Problem To Begin With: Bad Taste In Literature.

I Like Smart Movies About Smart People, And Enjoy It When Most Of The Facts Are On The Table And We Can Contemplate Them Together.

To Call "a Lot Like Love" Dead In The Water Is An Insult To Water.

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