Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Lola Montes is, in my unhumble opinion, the greatest film of all time, and I am willing to stake my critical reputation, such as it is, on this one proposition above all others.
Often, when Jim Carrey plays it straight, all of the vitality is drained from his face; he looks like a root-canal patient trying out a pleasant expression for his oral surgeon.
For some strange reason we don't go to charming, light movies anymore. People expect a movie to be heavy and turgid, like "American Beauty." We've become a heavy-handed society.
One of the best things Gwyneth Paltrow has done in years was her mesmerized, good-sport cameo in a 'Pootie' sketch, when she was melted over him like butter on an English muffin.
In some European theaters, it's still not uncommon to have a late start and three LONG intermissions, because people actually eat and drink and converse during the intermissions.
To watch THE WAITING ROOM is to wish it would never end. This is human drama at its most intense and universal. The rare film that can change the way you think and see the world.
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.
Good fiction reveals feeling, refines events, locates importance and, though its methods are as mysterious as they are varied, intensifies the experience of living our own lives.
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, probably late, to your editor.
All over the web there are some very good critics and it's become for people who are interested. It's become a very good way to get to reviews and involve yourself in discussions.
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.
It's true that as Mr. Chan makes more American movies - and gets older - we will never again see the kind of fistfight choreography that the star would devote four months to shoot.
The title 'Spirited Away' could refer to what Disney has done on a corporate level to the revered Japanese animation director Hayao Miyazaki's epic and marvelous new anime fantasy.
When a director shifts gears as often as does Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, the man behind the emotionally rich debut film 'Amores Perros,' you may wonder if he knows what he wants.
An acquired taste, this dense Jabberwocky-ish word salad is a political allegory about a populace that's been pharmaceutically duped into believing its wretched world is wonderful.
My lifetime’s memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris.
Pan's Labyrinth works on so many levels that it seems to change shape even as you watch it. It is, at times, a joyless picture, and its pall of sadness can begin to weigh you down.
The Comedy of Emasculation that Judd Apatow and his disciples have made into a separate economy was invented by the Farrelly brothers, 'Kingpin' being the strongest version of that.
In this era of affluence and of permissiveness, we have, in all but cultural areas, bred a nation of overprivileged youngsters, saturated with vitamins, television and plastic toys.
McLuhanism and the media have broken the back of the book business; they've freed people from the shame of not reading. They've rationalized becoming stupid and watching television.
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.
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.
Nicholas Sparks recently went on record as saying he is a greater novelist than Cormac McCarthy. This is true in the same sense that I am a better novelist than William Shakespeare.
The only actor who I think probably might have possibly taken a swing at me if he could have would be Burt Reynolds. He used to call Roger and me the Bruise Brothers, out of Chicago.
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.
(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.
We've moved away from being a culture of people who think about movies to one made up of people who believe that spouting a list of preferences is the same as registering an opinion.
Adapted from the novel by L. Ron Hubbard, who cranked out sci-fi pulp by the cubic ton, 'Battlefield Earth' has the musty feel of the days when the genre's highlight was Flash Gordon.
There's a great deal of echoing going on in 'Old School.' Mr. Piven, who played the upstart outsider in the 1994 campus comedy 'PCU,' has crossed over into playing the stiff martinet.
In period films, it always helps to have someone built to carry a sword, and Channing Tatum clearly hasn't missed a workout for the past two years, so he fits the bill in that regard.
I grew up with Forrest J. Ackerman's 'Famous Monsters of Filmland' along with a plethora of movie tomes and wanted to write about film with a sense of personality, passion, and humor.
Side note to parents: Anyone who thinks 'Dude, Where's My Car' is more appropriate for children than 'American Pie' because it obtained a PG-13 rating needs to stop trusting the MPAA.
I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them.
'Plan Nine From Outer Space' for a new generation, 'Battlefield Earth' is set in the year 3000, after the beings from the planet Psychlo have conquered our planet in only nine minutes.
They know they got the TV ad, they know they got the name recognition, they know that they can do a tie in with McDonald's or some fast food outlet and the money is just gonna flow in.
No movie can be a downer that fills you with pure exhilaration. You leave WALL-E with a feeling of the rarest kind: that you've just enjoyed a close encounter with an enduring classic.
Between the action sequences, the pleasure lies in observing impeccably dressed Brits exchanging barbed witticisms - making it, basically, Downton Abbey with cyber crime and shower sex.
So you shouldn't really flatter yourself that they want to be your buddy. They don't. Generally. They want you for some reason or other, and you just have to fend that off all the time.
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?
There are no guarantees. But there is also nothing to fear. We come from oblivion when we are born. We return to oblivion when we die. The astonishing thing is this period of in-between.
In 'Requiem for a Dream,' the director Darren Aronofsky's adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr.'s lower-depths novel, Jared Leto has lost so much weight, he looks like another person altogether.
Being snarky and smug doesn't equate to providing insight, and there's more than one occasion when the filmmakers lose sight of this in their zeal to spread the Gospel According to Maher.
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.
The result is a picture that represents so much of what I want and rarely get from a movie - a couple of hours filled with characters who are as exciting as the people I know in real life.
Parodies are hard to do well, as is shown by the mediocrity of so many recent attempts. No matter how ripe a genre is for satirizing, unless you know how to do it, there are no guarantees.
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.
[D]oes the real world have any more substance than visions and hallucinations when we're having them? At any given moment, what's happening in our minds is all and everything that happens.
There's nothing terribly wrong with The November Man in a serviceable late-night cable TV sort of way but neither is there anything terribly right about it. It's unnecessary and derivative.
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.
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.