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Roger Ebert: 528 quotes2 likes

“Some of the acting is better than the film deserves. Make that all of the acting. Actually, the film stock itself is better than the film deserves. You know when sometimes a film catches fire inside a projector? If it happened with this one, I suspect the audience might cheer.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/revolver-2007 of Revolver (7 December 2007) Reviews, Half-star reviews

“Many readers have informed me that it is a tragic and dreary business to go into death without faith. I don’t feel that way. “Faith” is neutral. All depends on what is believed in.”

Roger Ebert

Source: Life Itself : A Memoir (2011), Ch. 55 : Go Gently

“I do not often attribute motives to audience members, nor do I try to read their minds, but the people who were sitting around me on Monday morning made it easy for me to know what they were thinking. They talked out loud. And if they seriously believed the things they were saying, they were vicarious sex criminals.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/i-spit-on-your-grave-1980 of I Spit on Your Grave (16 July 1980) Reviews, Zero star reviews

“Now that we know Quentin Tarantino can make a movie like Reservoir Dogs, it's time for him to move on and make a better one.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/reservoir-dogs-1992 of Reservoir Dogs (26 October 1992) Reviews, Two-and-a-half star reviews

“No movie has ever been able to provide a catharsis for the Holocaust, and I suspect none will ever be able to provide one for 9/11.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/extremely-loud-and-incredibly-close-2012 of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (18 January 2012) Reviews, Two-and-a-half star reviews

“Of what use is freedom of speech to those who fear to offend?”

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert's Movie Home Companion (1990 Edition), p. 735

“Art is the closest we can come to understanding how a stranger really feels.”

Roger Ebert

"Living Testament" speech http://video.cpt12.org/video/2364991008 at 11th Hour, Colorado Public Television (1994)

“Saving Silverman is so bad in so many different ways that perhaps you should see it, as an example of the lowest slopes of the bell-shaped curve. This is the kind of movie that gives even its defenders fits of desperation. Consider my friend James Berardinelli, the best of the Web-based critics. No doubt 10 days of oxygen deprivation at the Sundance Film Festival helped inspire his three-star review, in which he reports optimistically, "Saving Silverman" has its share of pratfalls and slapstick moments, but there's almost no flatulence." Here's a critical rule of thumb: You know you're in trouble when you're reduced to praising a movie for its absence of fart jokes, and have to add "almost"… as for Neil Diamond, Saving Silverman is his first appearance in a fiction film since The Jazz Singer, and one can only marvel that he waited 20 years to appear in a second film, and found one even worse than his first one.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/saving-silverman-2001 of Saving Silverman (9 February 2001) Reviews, Half-star reviews

“Consider an opening musical number set in a maternity ward, where Tommy Pickles and his friends Chuckie Finster and Phil and Lil DeVille are hoping for a look at Tommy's new kid brother, Dilbert. (Dil Pickles — get it? For Rugrats fans, this is humor of the highest order.) They wake up the babies, who do a number that seems inspired by Bubsy Berkeley, except that the Berkeley girls never had to supply their own dancing waters, if you get my drift.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-rugrats-movie-1998 of The Rugrats Movie (20 November 1998) Reviews, Two star reviews

“The Spice Girls are easier to tell apart than the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but that is small consolation: What can you say about five women whose principal distinguishing characteristic is that they have different names? They occupy Spice World as if they were watching it: They're so detached they can't even successfully lip-synch their own songs. During a rehearsal scene, their director tells them, with such truth that we may be hearing a secret message from the screenwriter, "That was absolutely perfect — without being actually any good." Spice World is obviously intended as a ripoff of A Hard Day's Night which gave The Beatles to the movies… the huge difference, of course, is that the Beatles were talented — while, let's face it, the Spice Girls could be duplicated by any five women under the age of 30 standing in line at Dunkin' Donuts.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/spice-world-1998 of Spice World (23 January 1998) Reviews, Half-star reviews

“This is a plot, if ever there was one, to illustrate King Lear's complaint, "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport." I am aware this is the second time in two weeks I have been compelled to quote Lear, but there are times when Eminem simply will not do.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-life-of-david-gale-2003 of The Life of David Gale (21 February 2003) Reviews, Zero star reviews

“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.”

Roger Ebert

Review of http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-goodbye-girl-1977 The Goodbye Girl (1 January 1977) Reviews, Three star reviews

“Here is a Civil War movie that Trent Lott might enjoy. Less enlightened than Gone with the Wind, obsessed with military strategy, impartial between South and North, religiously devout, it waits 70 minutes before introducing the first of its two speaking roles for African Americans; "Stonewall" Jackson assures his black cook that the South will free him, and the cook looks cautiously optimistic. If World War II were handled this way, there'd be hell to pay.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/gods-and-generals-2003 of Gods and Generals (21 February 2003) Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

“I saw The Lonely Guy all by myself. It was one of those Saturday afternoons where the snow is coming down gray and mean, and you can't even get a decent recorded message on the answering machines of strangers … "Good luck," an usher told me. "You're going to need it." He was right … The Lonely Guy is the kind of movie that seems to have been made to play in empty theaters on overcast January afternoons … [It] is the kind of movie that inspires you to distract yourself by counting the commercial products visible on the screen, and speculating about whether their manufacturers paid fees to have them worked into the movie. I counted two Diet 7-Ups, two Tabs, and Steve Martin.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-lonely-guy-1984 of The Lonely Guy (1 January 1984) Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

“By the end of this long film, I would have traded any given gladiatorial victory for just one shot of blue skies… Gladiator lacks joy. It employs depression as a substitute for personality, and believes that if the characters are bitter and morose enough, we won't notice how dull they are.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/gladiator-2000 of Gladiator (5 May 2000) Reviews, Two star reviews

“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."”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/solaris-2002 of Solaris (22 November 2002) Reviews, Three-and-a-half star reviews

“This sort of scenario has happened, I imagine, millions of times. It has rarely happened in a nicer, sweeter, more gentle way than in Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise," which I could call a "Love Affair" for Generation X, except that Jesse and Celine stand outside their generation, and especially outside its boring insistence on being bored.
The R rating for this film, based on a few four-letter words, is entirely unjustified. It is an ideal film for teenagers.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/before-sunrise-1995 of Before Sunrise (27 January 1995) Reviews, Three star reviews

“Pixar is the first studio that is a movie star.”

Roger Ebert

Twitter Feed https://twitter.com/ebertchicago/status/16740535371 (21 June 2010)

“I am required to award stars to movies I review. This time, I refuse to do it. The star rating system is unsuited to this film. Is the movie good? Is it bad? Does it matter? It is what it is and occupies a world where the stars don't shine.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-human-centipede-2010 of The Human Centipede (5 May 2010) Reviews, No star rating

“The movie is an exhausted retread of the old campus romance gag where the pretty girl almost believes the lies of the reprehensible schemer, instead of trusting the nice guy who loves her. The only originality the movie brings to this formula is to make it incomprehensible, through the lurching incompetence of its story structure. Details are labored while the big picture remains unpainted… I was appalled by the poverty of its imagination.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/slackers-2002 of Slackers (1 February 2002) Reviews, Zero star reviews