Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
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.
A personal essay often includes some or a lot of personal confession. That makes the reader feel less lonely in their confusion and darkness.
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.
Samurai films, like westerns, need not be familiar genre stories. They can expand to contain stories of ethical challenges and human tragedy.
It's impossible to tell what's going on at any given moment in Tomb of the Dragon Emperor; it's even harder to care about being able to tell.
Berry was a transitional and, to my mind, revolutionary black figure who had to find a place for the rage that the crucible of racism created.
Vores's settings fit Torgove's voice like a knife's sheath; they are alert to the harmony of every poem and to every shift of tonality within.
It's the worst kind of bad film: the kind that gets you all worked up and then lets you down, instead of just being lousy from the first shot.
I've been cheered by the reaction to what I've done with Film Independent at LACMA and the organizational support I've received in pursuing it.
A wise, joyous bookit unfolds the knowledge and the beauty of the two lives it embraces-old wisdom and young discover, intertwining like vines.
Sometimes miraculous films come into being, made by people you've never heard of, starring unknown faces, blindsiding you with creative genius.
The solemnity of the annual Nobel ceremonies in Stockholm with the cheerful bad taste of the grand opening of a shopping center in Los Angeles.
Despite some standout events, 2012 was demoralizing. The Met felt adrift, and New York City Opera couldn't claw its way back to artistic health.
It's more dangerous to be a friend or relative of Jackie Chan in the star's movies than it is to play the third yeoman on a 'Star Trek' episode.
For the most part, however, Lady in the Water comes across as a movie that's too bad to be good, and not bad enough to be so bad that it's good.
The Vores Third Quartet is a terrific piece that brings disparate components into harmony. . . it's celebratory, imaginative, touching, and fun.
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.
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?
Whomever you're going to interview, you have to be interested in what it is you want to know from them. You have to be interested in the subject.
When Tim Allen made The Santa Clause, I thought that was a delightful film. It took a modern sensibility but layered onto it a kind of sentiment.
Dancer, bride, runaway wife, radical filmmaker and pioneer - Shirley Clarke is one of the great undertold stories of American independent cinema.
Robert Redford ... has turned almost alarmingly blond-he's gone past platinum, he must be into plutonium; his hair is coordinated with his teeth.
Dogs notice, they share, they draw conclusions, they like it when they're able to be of service and are touchingly grateful when they're praised.
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.
She was a woman attempting to make some sense of, and get some satisfaction from, a life that seemed to have no more logic than a roulette wheel.
Now that the Harry Potter series is over, maybe the truth can be realized: This has been the dullest franchise in the history of movie franchises.
Los Angeles has the greatest concentration of surviving movie palaces in the United States, yet most residents have never been inside one of them.
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 I learned from this movie, 40 Days and 40 Nights: Abstinence can be a very good thing. Especially from box offices where this film is playing.
The words "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" which I saw on an Italian movie poster, are perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of movies
In the best of all possible worlds, directors would obsess about the quality of their storytelling, and not the details of their technical methods.
For my 50th birthday, I got ahold of a new print of 'Saturday Night Fever.' I see it much more as a tough coming-of-age movie than as a disco story.
Rewriting is a large part of the whole job. And get rid of stuff that's not working. Just pare it down until it's a beautiful thing you can hand in.
Paprika is evidence that Japanese animators are reaching for the moon, while most of their American counterparts remain stuck in the kiddie sandbox.
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.
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.
'Black Hawk Down' wants to be about something, and in the midst of the meticulously staged gunfire, the picture seems to choose futility arbitrarily.
The weave of the personal and the political finally proves as irresistible as it is moving, partly because it has been drawn from extraordinary life.
We may be reaching the end of the era in which individual movies meant something to people. In the new era, movies may just mean a barrage of images.
It bothers me when I can't, for example, remember a name. I don't know if it's pre-senility or whether there are too many names packed in our brains.
A generic vampire tale in the Underworld vein that comes closer to the infamous Van Helsing than a memorable re-interpretation of a legendary monster.
Battlefield Earth is like taking a bus trip with someone who has needed a bath for a long time. It's not merely bad; it's unpleasant in a hostile way.
That Ms. Farahani found Mr. Mohassess and persuaded him to share his story is a terrific coup, even if a great deal of his life's work remains elusive.
I'd put the most money on Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson - and not just because we'll probably still be waiting for the final volume in 2017.
Happiness is too many things these days for anyone to wish it on anyone lightly. So let's just wish each other a bileless New Year and leave it at that.
Rashida Jones is simply glorious. Andy Samberg shines in a grounded performance that digs deep, sharply funny and touching, a breath of fresh comic air!
Clouds do not really look like camels or sailing ships or castles in the sky. They are simply a natural process at work. So too, perhaps, are our lives.
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.
Writers who go to Hollywood still follow the classic pattern: either you get disgusted by 'them' and you leave or you want the money and you become them.
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.