Roger Ebert: Trending quotes (page 11)

“[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.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/uncle-boonmee-who-can-recall-his-past-lives-2011 of Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (14 April 2011)
Reviews, Three-and-a-half star reviews

World

“I have always had my doubts about any form of divine intervention in sports contests. The power of prayer may be remarkable in many other arenas, but why should God want my team to win instead of the other side? Isn't it insulting to request God to even take an interest in baseball?”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/angels-in-the-outfield-1994 of Angels in the Outfield (15 July 1994)
Reviews, Two star reviews

God , Sport

“It was W. C. Fields who hated to appear in the same scene with a child, a dog, or a plunging neckline - because nobody in the audience would be looking at him. Jennifer Aniston has the same problem in this movie even when she's in scenes all by herself.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/picture-perfect-1997 of Picture Perfect (1 August 1997)
Reviews, Two star reviews

Hate , Dogs , Problem , Appearance

“I remember when hard-core first became commonplace, and there were discussions about what it would be like if a serious director ever made a porn movie. The answer, judging by Anatomy of Hell, is that the audience would decide they did not require such a serious director after all.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/anatomy-of-hell-2004 of Anatomy of Hell (12 November 2004)
Reviews, One-star reviews

Hell

“The movie is being revived around the country for midnight cult showings. Midnight is not late enough.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-beyond-1998 of The Beyond (3 July 1998)
Reviews, Half-star reviews

Country

“…If there's one thing I've learned in this life, it's that you never say no to an old gypsy woman with a blind eye and leprous fingernails.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/drag-me-to-hell-2009 of Drag Me to Hell (7 June 2009)
Reviews, Three star reviews

Life , Learning

“The director, whose name is Pitof, was probably issued with two names at birth and would be wise to use the other one on his next project.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/catwoman-2004 of Catwoman (23 July 2004)
Reviews, One-star reviews

Birth

“Wild Things is lurid trash, with a plot so twisted they're still explaining it during the closing titles. It's like a three-way collision between a softcore sex film, a soap opera and a B-grade noir. I liked it. Movies such as this either entertain or offend audiences; there's no neutral ground. Either you're a connoisseur of melodramatic comic vulgarity, or you're not. You know who you are. I don't want to get any postcards telling me this movie is in bad taste. I'm warning you: It is in bad taste. Bad taste elevated to the level of demented sleaze.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/wild-things-1998 of Wild Things (20 March 1998)
Reviews, Three star reviews

Sex , Way

“Guyana-Cult of the Damned has crawled out from under a rock and into local theaters, and will do nicely as this week's example of the depths to which people will plunge in search of a dollar. The movie is a gruesome version of the Jonestown massacre of 1978, so badly written and directed it illustrates a simple rule of movie exhibition: If a film is nauseating and reprehensible enough in the first place, it doesn't matter how badly it's made - people will go anyway.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/guyana-cult-of-the-damned-1980 of Guyana-Cult of the Damned (29 January 1980)
Reviews, Zero star reviews

People , Search

“…it is widely but wrongly believed that Beavis and Butt-Head celebrates its characters, and applauds their sublime lack of values, taste and intelligence. I've never thought so. I believe Mike Judge would rather die than share a taxi ride to the airport with his characters — that for him, B&B function like Dilbert's co-workers in the Scott Adams universe. They are a target for his anger against the rising tide of stupidity.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/beavis-and-butt-head-do-america-1996 of Beavis and Butthead Do America (20 December 1996)
Reviews, Three star reviews

Stupidity , Intelligence , Universe , Anger

“In the upstairs bedroom, old Ann dies very slowly, remembering the events of the long-ago wedding night and the next morning… She is attended by a nurse with an Irish accent (Eileen Atkins), who sometimes prompts her: "Remember a happy time!" Dissolve to Ann's memory of a happy time. It is so mundane that if it qualifies as a high point in her life, it compares with Paris Hilton remembering a good stick of gum.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/evening-2007 of Evening (29 June 2007)
Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

Life , Wedding , Memory , Time

“We'll probably be debating A Clockwork Orange for a long time — a long, weary and pointless time. The New York critical establishment has guaranteed that for us. They missed the boat on 2001, so maybe they were trying to catch up with Kubrick on this one. Or maybe the news weeklies just needed a good movie cover story for Christmas.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/a-clockwork-orange-1972 of A Clockwork Orange (11 February 1972)
Reviews, Two star reviews

Time , Christmas

“They say baseball is popular because everyone thinks they can play it. Similar reasoning may explain the popularity of the Olsen twins: Teenage girls love them because they believe they could be them. What, after all, do Mary-Kate and Ashley do in New York Minute that could not be done by any reasonably presentable female adolescent? Their careers are founded not on what they do, but on the vicarious identification of their fans, who enjoy seeing two girls making millions for doing what just about anybody could do.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/new-york-minute-2004 of New York Minute (7 May 2004)
Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

Love , Girl , Thinking

“Catholicism made me a humanist before I knew the word. When people rail against “secular humanism,” I want to ask them if humanism itself would be okay with them if it wasn’t so secular. Then I want to ask, “Why do you think it is secular?” This would lead to my opinion that their beliefs were not humanist.”

Roger Ebert

Source: Life Itself : A Memoir (2011), Ch. 54 : How I Believe In God

People , Thinking

“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.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/deep-throat-1973 of Deep Throat (6 March 1973)
Reviews, No star rating

Star , Effort , Freedom

“The movie, as everyone knows, is about a man who finds himself living the same day over and over and over again. He is the only person in his world who knows this is happening, and after going through periods of dismay and bitterness, revolt and despair, suicidal self-destruction and cynical recklessness, he begins to do something that is alien to his nature. He begins to learn.”

Roger Ebert

Review https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-groundhog-day-1993 of Groundhog Day
Reviews, Four star reviews

World , Nature , Suicide , Learning

“These aren't nerds. They're a bunch of interesting guys, and that's the problem with Revenge of the Nerds II. The movie doesn't have the nerve to be about real nerds. It hedges its bets. A nerd is not a nerd because he understands computers and wears a plastic pen protector in his shirt pocket. A nerd is a nerd because he brings a special lack of elegance to life. An absence of style. An inability to notice the feelings of other people. A nerd is a nerd from the inside out, which is something the nerds who made this movie will never understand.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/revenge-of-the-nerds-ii-nerds-in-paradise-1987 of Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise (13 July 1987)
Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

Life , People , Guy , Feeling

“Basic Instinct 2 is not good in any rational or defensible way, but not bad in irrational and indefensible ways. I savored the icy abstraction of the modern architecture, which made the people look like they came with the building. I grinned at that absurd phallic skyscraper that really does exist in London. I liked the recklessness of the sex-and-speed sequence that opens the movie (and, curiously, looks to have been shot in Chicago). I could appreciate the plot once I accepted that it was simply jerking my chain. You can wallow in it … Footnote No. 2: My 1-1/2-star rating is like a cold shower, designed to take my mind away from giving it four stars.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/basic-instinct-2-2006 of Basic Instinct 2 (31 March 2006)
Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

People , Sex , Jerk , Way

“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.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/rollerball-2002 of the 2002 film Rollerball (8 February 2002)
Reviews, Half-star reviews

Color , Search , Sense

“Philip Kaufman's Twisted walks like a thriller and talks like a thriller, but it squawks like a turkey.
But back to deus ex machina. This is a phrase you will want to study and master, not merely to amaze friends during long bus journeys but because it so perfectly describes what otherwise might take you thousands of words. Imagine a play on a stage. The hero is in a fix. The dragon is breathing fire, his sword is broken, his leg is broken, his spirit is broken, and the playwright's imagination is broken. Suddenly there is the offstage noise of the grinding of gears, and invisible machinery lowers a god onto the stage, who slays the dragon, heals the hero, and fires the playwright. He is the "god from the machine."”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/twisted-2004 of Twisted (27 February 2004)
Reviews, Two star reviews

God , Imagination , Study