Roger Ebert: Trending quotes (page 6)

“Much has been written about Generation X and the films about it. Clerks is so utterly authentic that its heroes have never heard of their generation. When they think of "X," it's on the way to the video store.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/clerks-1994 of Clerks (4 November 1994)
Reviews, Three star reviews

Way , Thinking

“I Am Curious (Yellow) is not merely not erotic. It is anti-erotic. Two hours of this movie will drive thoughts of sex out of your mind for weeks. See the picture and buy twin beds… I think there actually is a director in Sweden who is dull and square enough to seriously consider this an art of moviemaking.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/i-am-curious-yellow-1969 of I Am Curious (Yellow) (23 September 1969)
Reviews, One-star reviews

Art , Sex , Thinking

“Burt and Verona are two characters rarely seen in the movies: thirtysomething, educated, healthy, self-employed, gentle, thoughtful, whimsical, not neurotic and really truly in love. Their great concern is finding the best place and way to raise their child, who is a bun still in the oven. For every character like this I’ve seen in the last 12 months, I’ve seen 20, maybe 30, mass murderers.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/away-we-go-2009 of Away We Go (10 June 2009)
Reviews, Three-and-a-half star reviews

Love , Education , Way

“I could list some Japanese films illustrating this, but the last thing the audience for Memoirs of a Geisha wants to see is a more truthful film with less gorgeous women and shabbier production values.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/memoirs-of-a-geisha-2005 of Memoirs of a Geisha (9 December 2005)
Reviews, Two-and-a-half star reviews

Women , Truth

“Nobody is going to Bolero for the plot anyway. They're going for the Good Parts. There are two Good Parts, not counting her naked ride on horseback, which was the only scene in the movie that had me wondering how she did it. The real future of Bolero is in home cassette rentals, where your fast forward and instant replay controls will supply the editing job the movie so desperately needs.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/bolero-1984 of Bolero (1 January 1984)
Reviews, Half-star reviews

Home , Future , Parting

“Little Indian, Big City is one of the worst movies ever made. I detested every moronic minute of it…if you, under any circumstances, see Little Indian, Big City, I will never let you read one of my reviews again.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/little-indian-big-city-1996 of Little Indian, Big City (22 March 1996)
Reviews, Zero star reviews

Reading

“I lost faith in the Oscars the first year I was a movie critic — the year that Bonnie and Clyde didn't win.”

Roger Ebert

Playboy 20q http://www.playboy.com/magazine/20q_archive/siskel-and-ebert.html

Faith

“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.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/summer-school-1987 of Summer School (22 July 1987)
Reviews, Half-star reviews

Feeling , Reading

“In this business one becomes a connoisseur. I can now see that [Jim] Carrey is a virtuoso, [Chris] Farley is at least hard-working, [Adam] Sandler is hopeless and Pauly Shore bypasses all categories to achieve a kind of transcendent fingernails-on-the-blackboard effect. His appeal must be limited to people whose self-esteem and social skills are so damaged that they find humor, or at least relief, in at last encountering a movie character less successful than themselves.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/jury-duty-1995 of Jury Duty (12 April 1995)
Reviews, One-star reviews

People , Business , Success

“It's in the action scenes that things fall apart. Consider the scene where Spider-Man is given a cruel choice between saving Mary Jane or a cable car full of school kids. He tries to save both, so that everyone dangles from webbing that seems about to pull loose. The visuals here could have given an impression of the enormous weights and tensions involved, but instead the scene seems more like a bloodless storyboard of the idea. In other CGI scenes, Spidey swoops from great heights to street level and soars back up among the skyscrapers again with such dizzying speed that it seems less like a stunt than like a fast-forward version of a stunt.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/spider-man-2002 of Spider-Man (3 May 2002)
Reviews, Two-and-a-half star reviews

School , Cars , Idea , Speed

“They say state-of-the-art special effects can create the illusion of anything on the screen, and now we have proof: It's possible for the Jim Henson folks and Industrial Light and Magic to put their heads together and come up with the most repulsive single creature in the history of special effects, and I am not forgetting the Chucky doll or the desert intestine from Star wars.”

Roger Ebert

To see the snowman is to dislike the snowman. It doesn't look like a snowman, anyway.
Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/jack-frost-1998 of Jack Frost (11 December 1998)
Reviews, One-star reviews

War , Art , History , Star

“It's the kind of movie home video was invented for: Not worth the trip to the theater, but slam it into the VCR and you get your rental's worth.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/my-cousin-vinny-1992 of My Cousin Vinny (13 March 1992)
Reviews, Two-and-a-half star reviews

Home

“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.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/blue-crush-2002 of Blue Crush (16 August 2002)
Reviews, Three star reviews

Sister

“Remember the words George Carlin said could not be said on TV? There's now a kind of movie that cannot be made without using all of them except one. Even the online trailer may startle you. It's one of those adults-only Red Band Trailers which you have to give your age in order to view. I lied about my age. Nobody under 17 would ever do that.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-sitter-2011 of The Sitter (7 December 2011)
Reviews, One-star reviews

Age

“I recently published a book about movies I hated, and people have been asking me which reviews are harder to write — those about great movies, or those about terrible ones. The answer is neither. The most unreviewable movies are those belonging to the spoof genre — movies like Airplane! and The Naked Gun and all the countless spin-offs and retreads of the same basic idea… the bottom line in reviewing a movie like this is, does it work? Is it funny? Yes, it is. Not funny with the shocking impact of Airplane! which had the advantage of breaking new ground. But also not a tired wheeze like some of the lesser and later Leslie Nielsen films. To get your money's worth, you need to be familiar with the various teenage horror franchises, and if you are, Scary Movie delivers the goods.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/scary-movie-2000 of Scary Movie (7 July 2000)
Reviews, Three star reviews

Money , Hate , People , Books

“…in New Year's Eve, we look out over the surging throng of ecstatic celebrants, and the sea of humanity is blue. They're all wearing freebie hats from Nivea skin creme. No hats for the Knicks, Budweiser or I Heart [sic] New York. All Nivea skin creme. Countless hats of Nivea blue. I've heard of product placement, but this is carpet bombing.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/new-years-eve-2011 of New Year's Eve (7 December 2011)
Reviews, One-star reviews

Heart , Sea

“This is a film about — and also for — not only obsessed clerks in record stores, but the video store clerks who have seen all the movies, and the bookstore employees who have read all the books. Also for bartenders, waitresses, greengrocers in health food stores, kitchen slaves at vegetarian restaurants, the people at GNC who know all the herbs, writers for alternative weeklies, disc jockeys on college stations, salespeople in retro clothing shops, tattoo artists and those they tattoo, poets, artists, musicians, novelists, and the hip, the pierced and the lonely. They may not see themselves but they will recognize people they know.”

Roger Ebert

Review of http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/high-fidelity-2000 High Fidelity (31 March 2000)
Reviews, Four star reviews

People , Health , Books , Food

“I know aliens from other worlds are required to arrive in New Mexico, but why stay there?”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/thor-2011 of Thor (10 May 2011)
Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

World

“Let me rule out at once any God who has personally spoken to anyone or issued instructions to men. That some men believe they have been spoken to by God, I am certain. That’s for them to believe. I don’t believe Moses came down from the mountain with any tablets he did not go up with. I believe mankind in general has a need to believe in higher powers and an existence not limited to the physical duration of the body. But these needs are hopes, and believing them doesn’t make them true. I believe mankind feels a need to gather in churches, whether physical or social. I’ve spent hours and hours in churches all over the world. I sit in them not to pray, but to gently nudge my thoughts toward wonder and awe. I am aware of the generations there before me and the reassurance of tradition.”

Roger Ebert

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

Men , God , World , Hope

“"The Lucky One" is at its heart a romance novel, elevated however by Nicholas Sparks' persuasive storytelling. Readers don't read his books because they're true, but because they ought to be true. You can easily imagine how many ways this story would probably go wrong in real life, but who wants to see a movie where a Marine leans over to pick up a photo and is blown up? And a mom trying to raise her son and feed lots of hungry dogs while her abusive ex-husband gets drunk and hangs around? That kind of stuff is too close to life.”

Roger Ebert

Review https://web.archive.org/web/20120505180249/http://rogerebert.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120418/REVIEWS/120419985/1001 of The Lucky One (18 April 2012)
Reviews, Two-and-a-half star reviews

Life , Books , Dogs , Way