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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.

-Roger Ebert

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The Bucket List Is

Roger Ebert

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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.

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Someone Once Said The Fundamental Reason We Get Married Is Because Have A Universal Human Need For A Witness.

It Has Been Said That The Reason We Establish Relationships Is To Assure Ourselves Of A Witness To Our Lives.

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.

Of What Use Is Freedom Of Speech To Those Who Fear To Offend?

Freedom Of Speech

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.

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.

Nobody Looks Perfect. We Have To Find Peace With The Way We Look And Get On With Life.

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

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

I Believe That Young People Wearing Hoods, Unless They Are Very Young, Can Be Frightening. What Are They Hiding? Why Don't They Want To Come Out Into The Light With The Rest Of Us? They May Be Perfectly Nice, But The Hoods Send An Uncertain Statement.

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

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

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.

We Must Try To Contribute Joy To The World. That Is True No Matter What Our Problems, Our Health, Our Circumstances. We Must Try.

Why Are Some People Bullied? Because They Are Different. How? It Doesn't Matter.

If You Find An Occupation You Love And Spend Your Entire Life Working At It, Is That Enough?

Praise Without Merit Is More Harmful Than Unearned Criticism.

To Call It An Anticlimax Would Be An Insult Not Only To Climaxes But To Prefixes. It's A Crummy Secret, About One Step Up The Ladder Of Narrative Originality From It Was All A Dream. It's So Witless, In Fact, That When We Do Discover The Secret, We Want To Rewind The Film So We Don't Know The Secret Anymore. And Then Keep On Rewinding, And Rewinding, Until We're Back At The Beginning, And Can Get Up From Our Seats And Walk Backward Out Of The Theater And Go Down The Up Escalator And Watch The Money Spring From The Cash Register Into Our Pockets.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

We Are Born Into A Box Of Time And Space. We Use Words And Communication To Break Out Of It And To Reach Out To Others.

Dear Bill (o'reilly)...i Am Concerned That You Have Been Losing Touch With Reality Recently. Did You Really Say You Are More Powerful Than Any Politician? That Reminds Me Of The Famous Story About Squeaky The Chicago Mouse. It Seems That Squeaky Was Floating On His Back Along The Chicago River One Day. Approaching The Michigan Avenue Lift Bridge, He Called Out: Raise The Bridge! I Have An Erection!

'abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter' Is Without A Doubt The Best Film We Are Ever Likely To See On The Subject - Unless There Is A Sequel, Which Is Unlikely, Because At The End, The Lincolns Are On Their Way To The Theater.

A Lot Of People Just Go To Movies That Feed Into Their Preexisting And Not So Noble Needs And Desires: They Just Go To Action Pictures, And Things Like That. But If You Go To Foreign Films, If You Go To Documentaries, If You Go To Independent Films, If You Go To Good Films, You Will Become A Better Person Because You Will Understand Human Nature Better. Movies Record Human Nature In A Better Way Than Any Other Art Form, That's For Sure.

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.

I Stopped Taking Notes On My Palm Pilot And Started Playing The Little Chess Game.

The Genius Is Not In How Much Stanley Kubrick Does In “2001: A Space Odyssey,'' But In How Little. This Is The Work Of An Artist So Sublimely Confident That He Doesn't Include A Single Shot Simply To Keep Our Attention. He Reduces Each Scene To Its Essence, And Leaves It On Screen Long Enough For Us To Contemplate It, To Inhabit It In Our Imaginations. Alone Among Science-fiction Movies, “2001'' Is Not Concerned With Thrilling Us, But With Inspiring Our Awe.

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.

A Movie Is Not About What It Is About. It Is About How It Is About It.

Never Marry Anyone You Could Not Sit Next To During A Three-day Bus Trip.

When I Go To The Movies, One Of My Strongest Desires Is To Be Shown Something New. I Want To Go To New Places, Meet New People, Have New Experiences. When I See Hollywood Formulas Mindlessly Repeated, A Little Something Dies Inside Of Me: I Have Lost Two Hours To Boors Who Insist On Telling Me Stories I Have Heard Before.

New Experiences

A Truly Strong Woman Will Choose A Stong Man Who Disagrees With Her Over A Weak One Who Goes Along.

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.

I Don't Think Bush Was Legitimately Elected President.

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.

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

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

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

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.

We Live In A Box Of Space And Time. Movies Are Windows In Its Walls.

[marlon] Brando Was The Only Guy Who Could Step Out Of That Shadow At The End Of That Movie And Be Worth The Wait.

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.

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

Supporting Roles

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

I Have No Fear Of Death. We All Die. I Consider My Remaining Days To Be Like Money In The Bank. When It Is All Gone, I Will Be Repossessed.

I Don't Require Movies To Be About Good People, And I Don't Reject Screen Violence.

To Die Is One Thing. How Much Worse To Know That All The Life That Ever Existed On This Planet, And All It Ever Achieved, Was To Be Obliterated?

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

I Am Informed That 5,000 Cockroaches Were Used In The Filming Of Joe's Apartment. That Depresses Me, But Not As Much As The News That None Of Them Were Harmed During The Production.

The Movie Cheerfully Offends All Civilized Notions Of Taste, Decorum, Manners And Hygiene... The Movie Is Vulgar? Vulgarity Is When We Don't Laugh. When We Laugh, It's Merely Human Nature.

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.

In Thinking About 'depressing Movies,' Many People Don't Realize That All Bad Movies Are Depressing, And No Good Movies Are.

I've Never Found Kicks To The Groin Particularly Funny, Although Recent Work In The Genre Of The Buddy Movie Suggests Audience Research Must Prove Me Wrong.

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.

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.

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

The Last Airbender Is An Agonizing Experience In Every Category I Can Think Of And Others Still Waiting To Be Invented. The Laws Of Chance Suggest That Something Should Have Gone Right. Not Here. It Puts A Nail In The Coffin Of Low-rent 3d, But It Will Need A Lot More Coffins Than That.

The Time In Between My Clapping Is Ma. If You Just Have Non-stop Action With No Breathing Space At All, It's Just Busyness, But If You Take A Moment, Then The Tension Building In The Film Can Grow Into A Wider Dimension. If You Just Have Constant Tension At 80 Degrees All The Time You Just Get Numb.

Breathing Space

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

The Fact Is, Most People Are Not Going To Be Rich Someday. And We've Had A Concerted Policy Of Taking Money Away From The Poor And Giving It To The Rich Wholesale, And At The Same Time, We Have The Runaway Corporations, And The Greed.

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.

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.'

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.

They're Not Trying To Prevent Hollywood From Making Movies. They're Asking That The Most Powerful Image-building Machinery In The World Stop Grinding Out Killer Dykes And Twisted Homo Sex Fiends As If Sexual Orientation Had Anything To Do With Criminal Behavior.

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.

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

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

Steven Spielberg Makes Minority Report With The Newest Digital Technology; Other Directors Seem To Be Trying To Make Their Movies From It.

Time Is What The Depressed And Panicked Lack.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Because We Can Engineer Genetics, Because We Can Telecast Real Lives-of Course We Must, Right? But Are These Good Things To Do? The Irony Is, The People Who Will Finally Answer That Question Will Be The Very Ones Produced By The Process.

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.

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

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.

Your Intellect May Be Confused, But Your Emotions Will Never Lie To You.

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

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

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.

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

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.

How Quickly Do We Grow Accustomed To Wonders. I Am Reminded Of The Isaac Asimov Story Nightfall, About The Planet Where The Stars Were Visible Only Once In A Thousand Years. So Awesome Was The Sight That It Drove Men Mad. We Who Can See The Stars Every Night Glance Up Casually At The Cosmos And Then Quickly Down Again, Searching For A Dairy Queen.

People Send Me E-mails Saying, "you're A Movie Critic. You Don't Know Anything About Politics." Well, You Know What, I'm 60 Years Old, And I've Been Interested In Politics Since I Was On My Daddy's Knee. During The 1948 Election, We Were Praying For Truman. I Know A Lot About Politics.

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

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.

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

Crowds Can Be Frightening. They Have A Way Of Impressing The Low, Base Taste Upon Their Members. Watching The Way Thousands Of People In His Audience Could Not Think For Themselves, Could Not Find The Courage To Allow Their Ordinary Feelings Of Decency And Taste To Prevail, I Understood Better How Demagogues Are Possible.

Class Is Often Invisible In America In The Movies, And Usually Not The Subject Of The Film.

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

The Children Of Birmingham Did Not Really Die In The State Of Alabama, However, Because Alabama Is A State Of Mind, And In The Minds Of The [white] Men Who Rule Alabama, Those Children Had Never Lived [...] Their Blood Is On So Many Hands, That History Will Weep In The Telling...and It Is Not New Blood. It Is Old, So Very Old.

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.

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

In Blue Crush , We Meet Three Hawaiian Surfers Who Work As Hotel Maids, Live In A Grotty Rental, And Are Raising The Kid Sister Of One Of Them. Despite This Near-poverty, They Look Great; There Is Nothing Like A Tan And A Bikini To Overcome Class Distinctions.

(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 Goes To Show You How We In The Press So Often Miss The Big Stories That Are Right Under Our Noses. There Is A Famous Journalistic Legend About The Time A Young Reporter Covered The Johnstown Flood Of 1889. The Kid Wrote: God Sat On A Hillside Overlooking Johnstown Today And Looked At The Destruction He Had Wrought. His Editor Cabled Back: Forget Flood. Interview God.

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.

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.

The Academy Is Paranoid About Its Image.

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

Most Of Us Do Not Consciously Look At Movies.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Vegetarian Diet

What Makes People Interesting Is The Spirit That Shines Through.

Movies Are Like A Machine That Generates Empathy.

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.

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

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

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

It Is Hard Enough To Be Good At All, But To Be Good In Comedy Speaks For Your Character.

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.

What A Terrible Thing It Would Be To Be The Pope! What Unthinkable Responsibilities To Fall On Your Shoulders At An Advanced Age! No Privacy. No Seclusion. No Sin.

We Are Poor Mortals, But It Dreams To Us That We Can Fly.

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.

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

Things You Can Control

Well, You Know What, I'm 60 Years Old, And I've Been Interested In Politics Since I Was On My Daddy's Knee. During The 1948 Election, We Were Praying For Truman. I Know A Lot About Politics.

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'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.

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.

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

We Laugh, That We May Not Cry.

Now I See That All Relationships Are Virtual, Even Those That Take Place In Person. Whether We Use Our Bodies Or A Keyboard, It All Comes Down To Two Minds Crying Out From Their Solitude.

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

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

Straightforward

Many Really Good Films Allow Us To Empathize With Other Lives.

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

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.

One, Don't Wait For Inspiration, Just Start The Damned Thing. Two, Once You Begin, Keep On Until The End. How Do You Know How The Story Should Begin Until You Find Out Where It's Going?

The Last Airbender Is An Agonizing Experience In Every Category I Can Think Of And Others Still Waiting To Be Invented.

Occasionally An Unsuspecting Innocent Will Stumble Into A Movie Like This And Send Me An Anguished Postcard, Asking How I Could Possibly Give A Favorable Review To Such Trash. My Stock Response Is Ebert's Law, Which Reads: A Movie Is Not About What It Is About. It Is About How It Is About It.

You Slide Down In Your Seat And Make Yourself Comfortable. On The Screen In Front Of You, The Movie Image Appears—enormous And Overwhelming. If The Movie Is A Good One, You Allow Yourself To Be Absorbed In Its Fantasy, And Its Dreams Become Part Of Your Memories

Rollerball Is An Incoherent Mess, A Jumble Of Footage In Search Of Plot, Meaning, Rhythm And Sense. There Are Bright Colors And Quick Movement On The Screen, Which We Can Watch As A Visual Pattern That, In Entertainment Value, Falls Somewhere Between A Kaleidoscope And A Lava Lamp.

Exhilarating. Radical Grace Moved Me To Tears With Its Portrayal Of Good People Putting Their Beliefs Into Action In Ways That Transcend All Ideological Boundaries.

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

Grave Of The Fireflies Is An Emotional Experience So Powerful That It Forces A Rethinking Of Animation... It Belongs On Any List Of The Greatest War Films Ever Made.

Start. Don’t Look Back. If At The End It Doesn’t Meet Your Hopes, Start Again. Now You Know More About Your Hopes.

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.

It Is Strange How The Romances Of The Teenage Years Retain A Poignancy All Through Life - How A Girl Who Turns You Down When You're 16 Retains An Aura In Your Memory Even Long After You, And She, Have Ceased To Be Who You Were Then. I Attended My High School Reunion A Couple Of Weeks Ago And Discovered, In The Souvenir Booklet Assembled By The Reunion Committee, That One Of The Girls In My Class Had A Crush On Me All Those Years Ago. I Would Have Given A Great Deal To Have Had That Information At The Time.

"dirty Love" Wasn't Written And Directed, It Was Committed. Here Is A Film So Pitiful, It Doesn't Rise To The Level Of Badness. It Is Hopelessly Incompetent... I Am Not Certain That Anyone Involved Has Ever Seen A Movie, Or Knows What One Is.

I Will One Day Be Thin, But Vincent Gallo Will Always Be The Director Of The Brown Bunny.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

There's Something Depressing About A Young Couple Helplessly In Love. Their State Is So Perfect, It Must Be Doomed. They Project Such Qualities On Their Lover That Only Disappointment Can Follow.

You Can Have A Movie With Hardly Any Cuts, Or Very Few Cuts, That Is Fascinating, You Can't Take Your Eyes Away From It... Look At Some Of The Long Takes In Citizen Kane.

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.

3-d Is A Waste Of A Perfectly Good Dimension. Hollywood's Current Crazy Stampede Toward It Is Suicidal. It Adds Nothing Essential To The Moviegoing Experience. For Some, It Is An Annoying Distraction. For Others, It Creates Nausea And Headaches.

Are Vampires Kinky? I Didn't Know.

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

Film Theory Has Nothing To Do With Film.

Who Was The Real Hitchcock? I Interviewed Him Once And Haven't A Clue.

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

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.

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?

I Wear A Pedometer, A Little Device That Counts Every Step. It Works As A Goad, Because You Walk Additional Distances To Pile Up The Numbers. The Average Person Walks 2,000 To 3,000 Steps A Day. I Walk 10,000 Steps A Day. I Have Lost A Lot Of Weight As A Result.

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.

Growing Up, I Missed The Whole 'three Stooges' Thing. Either They Weren't On The Station In My Hometown, Or We Hadn't Bought A Tv Set Yet, Or They Came To Town Too Late For Me. I'm Pretty Sure That At The Right Age, I Would Have Loved Them.

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.

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.

Gene [siskel] Often Mentioned Something François Truffaut Once Told Him: The Most Beautiful Sight In A Movie Theater Is To Walk Down To The Front, Turn Around, And Look At The Light From The Screen Reflected On The Upturned Faces Of The Members Of The Audience.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

I Do Suspect My Star Ratings Average Too High. But, Of Course, Star Ratings Are Ridiculous. I'm Stuck With Them.

Samurai Films, Like Westerns, Need Not Be Familiar Genre Stories. They Can Expand To Contain Stories Of Ethical Challenges And Human Tragedy.

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

When A Girl Says She Likes You As A Friend, What She Means Is: "rather Than Have Sex With You, I Would Prefer To Lose You As A Friend."

I Think Most People Are More Susceptible To Prejudice Than To Reason. And The Parrots Of Talk Radio Are Just Sending Out The Same Stuff. When I Look At My E-mails, I See The Same Limbaugh Rhetoric; Apparently, People Don't Have Any Ideas Of Their Own. And There's Just This Drumroll Of Anti-progressive Thought.

Beguiled By George S. Bush's Easy Smile And Casual Indifference To The Details, We Are On The Brink Of Electing Him To Office. This Isn't Choosing A President, It's Casting The Lead In A Sitcom About The Presidency.

Life Is Made Up Of Challenges That Cannot Be Solved But Only Accepted.

Open-heart Surgery Is Now Part Of A Typical Life Experience For Many People. Folks Talk Casually About 'having A Stent Put In,' As If They Had Their Tires Rotated.

Socrates Told Us, "the Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living." I Think He's Calling For Curiosity, More Than Knowledge. In Every Human Society At All Times And At All Levels, The Curious Are At The Leading Edge.

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

When I Write A Political Column For The Chicago Sun-times, When Liberals Disagree With Me, They Send In Long, Logical E-mails Explaining All My Errors. I Hardly Ever Get Well-reasoned Articles From The Right. People Just Tell Me To Shut Up. That's The Message: "shut Up. Don't Write Anymore About This. Who Do You Think You Are?"

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

The Idea That A Book Can Advise A Woman How To Capture A Man Is Touchingly Naive. Books Advising Men How To Capture A Woman Are Far Less Common, Perhaps Because Few Men Are Willing To Admit To Such A Difficulty. For Both Sexes, I Recommend A Good Novel, Offering Scenarios You Might Learn From, If Only Because They Reflect A Lot Of Doubt.

I Was Born Inside The Movie Of My Life. The Visuals Were Before Me, The Audio Surrounded Me, The Plot Unfolded Inevitably But Not Necessarily. I Don't Remember How I Got Into The Movie, But It Continues To Entertain Me.

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

The Moment A Man Stops Dreaming Is The Moment He Petrifies Inside.

One Sign Of A Great Actor Is When He Can Be Alone By Himself On The Screen, Doing Almost Nothing, And Producing One Of A Film's Defining Moments.

Defining Moments

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

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

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