Roger Ebert: Trending quotes (page 9)

“To call it weird would be a cowardly evasion. It is creepy, eccentric, eerie, flaky, freaky, funky, grotesque, inscrutable, kinky, kooky, magical, oddball, spooky, uncanny, uncouth and unearthly. Especially uncouth. What I did was, I typed the word 'weird' and when that wholly failed to evoke the feelings the film stirred in me, I turned to the thesaurus and it suggested the above substitutes - and none of them do the trick, either.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-triplets-of-belleville-2003 of The Triplets of Belleville (26 December 2003)
Reviews, Three-and-a-half star reviews

Feeling

“Mad Dog Time is the first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time. Oh, I've seen bad movies before. But they usually made me care about how bad they were. Watching Mad Dog Time is like waiting for the bus in a city where you're not sure they have a bus line…Mad Dog Time should be cut into free ukulele picks for the poor.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mad-dog-time-1996 of Mad Dog Time (29 November 1996)
Reviews, Zero star reviews

Dogs , Time , Waiting , Madness

“Mandingo is racist trash, obscene in its manipulation of human beings and feelings, and excruciating to sit through in an audience made up largely of children, as I did last Saturday afternoon. The film has an "R" rating, which didn't keep many kids out, since most came with their parents… if [Chicago] believes Mandingo should be shown to children, then there are no possible standards left and the only thing to do is transfer the censors to the parks department, where they can supervise paper‑plate‑ throwing contests.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mandingo-1975 of Mandingo (25 July 1975)
Reviews, Zero star reviews

Children , Feeling , Parent

“The Man in the Moon is like a great short story, one of those masterpieces of language and mood where not one word is wrong, or unnecessary. It flows so smoothly from start to finish that it hardly even seems like an ordinary film. Usually I am aware of the screenwriter putting in obligatory scenes. I can hear the machinery grinding. Not this time. Although, in retrospect, I can see how carefully the plot was put together, how meticulously each event was prepared for, as I watched the film I was only aware of life passing by.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-man-in-the-moon-1991 of The Man in the Moon (4 October 1991)
Reviews, Four star reviews

Life , Mood , Time

“I read all the movie reviews, especially those of Ebert, a graceful and witty prose stylist with profound erudition, whose reviews are worth reading just for themselves, whether or not I have any intention of viewing the movie … Ebert, the smart and handsome one, gave thumbs up to my first movie Garfield: The Movie], but [Richard] Roeper, the other one, gave thumbs down and was particularly unkind. He went on forever attacking Ebert for liking Garfield. This from a man with enough taste to praise Duma. How very disappointing. One of Roeper's complaints was that I was animated and all of the other characters in the movie were "real." Do you have any idea how a statement like that hurts an actor who has worked all of his life as a media cat? Yes, Richard Roeper, I was animated. Read my lips: I am a character in a comic strip.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/garfield-a-tail-of-two-kitties-2006 of Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties, written in the first person as Garfield. (16 June 2006)
Reviews, Three star reviews

Life , Disappointment , Cats , Idea

“I do not demand that all movies have a story to pull us from beginning to end, and indeed one of the charms of The Big Lebowski, the Coens' previous film, is how its stoned hero loses track of the thread of his own life. But with O Brother, Where Are Thou? I had the sense of invention set adrift; of a series of bright ideas wondering why they had all been invited to the same film.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/o-brother-where-art-thou-2000 of O Brother, Where Art Thou? (29 December 2000)
Reviews, Two-and-a-half star reviews

Life , Idea , Sense

“[W]hat Husbands and Wives argues is that many "rational" relationships are actually not as durable as they seem, because somewhere inside every person is a child crying me! me! me! We say we want the other person to be happy. What we mean is, we want them to be happy with us, just as we are, on our terms… Beneath the urgency of all the older characters - both men, both women, and even the older dating partners they experiment with - is the realization that life is short, that time is running out, that life sells you a romantic illusion and neglects to tell you that you can't have it, because when you take any illusion and make it flesh, its hair begins to fall out, and it has B. O., and it asks you what your sign is. True love involves loving another's imperfections, which are the parts that tend to endure.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/husbands-and-wives-1992 of Husbands and Wives (18 September 1992)
Reviews, Three-and-a-half star reviews

Love , Life , Women , Men

“That the universe, as was once thought, expands and contracts indefinitely, one Big Bang collapsing into another one, seemed reasonable enough. But in both models of the universe, what caused the first Big Bang? Or was there a first Big Bang, any more than a last number? If there was a first cause, was there a first causer? Did Big Bangs just happen to happen? Can we name the first causer “God”? We can name it anything we want. I can name it after myself. It is utterly insignificant what it is called, because we would be giving a name to something that falls outside all categories of thought and must be unknowable and irrelevant to knowledge. So naming it is a futile enterprise. The word “God” is unhelpful because it implies it has a knowable definition.”

Roger Ebert

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

God , Knowledge , Universe

“Life's missed opportunities, at the end, may seem more poignant to us than those we embraced — because in our imagination they have a perfection that reality can never rival.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-sleepy-time-gal-2002 of The Sleepy Time Gal (22 November 2002)
Reviews, Three-and-a-half star reviews

Life , Imagination , Reality , Perfection

“The vast majority of the members of all religions, I believe and would argue, don't want to kill anybody. They want to love and care for their families, find decent work that sustains life and comfort, live in peace and get along with their neighbors. It is a deviant streak in some humans, I suspect, that drives them toward self-righteous violence, and uses religion as a convenient alibi… I am trying as hard as I can to imagine the audience for this movie. Every time I make any progress, it scares me.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/september-dawn-2007 of September Dawn (24 August 2007)
Reviews, Zero star reviews

Love , Life , Family , Peace

“Last year, I reviewed a nine-hour documentary about the lives of Mongolian yak herdsmen, and I would rather see it again than sit through The Frighteners.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-frighteners-1996 of The Frighteners (19 July 1996)
Reviews, One-star reviews

“There have been articles lately asking why the United States is so hated in some parts of the world. As this week's Exhibit A from Hollywood, I offer Zoolander, a comedy about a plot to assassinate the prime minister of Malaysia because of his opposition to child labor. You might want to read that sentence twice. The logic: Child labor is necessary to the economic health of the fashion industry, and so its opponents must be eliminated…if the Malaysians made a comedy about the assassination of the president of the United States because of his opposition to slavery, it would seem approximately as funny to us as Zoolander would seem to them.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/zoolander-2001 of Zoolander (28 September 2001)
Reviews, One-star reviews

Hate , Health , World , Fashion

“Troy is based on the epic poem The Iliad by Homer, according to the credits. Homer's estate should sue.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/troy-2004 of Troy (14 May 2004)
Reviews, Two star reviews

“I was noodling around Rotten Tomatoes, trying to determine who played the bank's security chief, and noticed the movie had not yet been reviewed by anybody. Hold on! In the "Forum" section for this movie, "islandhome" wrote at 7:58 a. m. Jan. 8: "review of this movie … tonight i'll post." At 11:19 a. m. Jan. 10, "islandhome" was finally back with the promised review. It is written without capital letters, flush left like a poem, and I quote it verbatim, spelling and all:
:hello sorry i slept when i got back
:well it was kinda fun
:it could never happen in the way it was portraid
:but what ever its a movie
:for the girls most will like it
:and the men will not mind it much
:i thought it was going to be kinda like how to beat the high cost of living
:kinda the same them but not as much fun
:ill give it a 4 0ut of 10
I read this twice, three times. I had been testing out various first sentences for my own review, but somehow the purity and directness of islandhome's review undercut me. It is so final. "for the girls most will like it/and the men will not mind it much."”

Roger Ebert

How can you improve on that? It's worthy of Charles Bukowski. ...The bottom line is some girls will like it, the men not so much, and I give it 1½ stars out of 4.
Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mad-money-2008 of Mad Money (17 January 2008)
Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

Men , Way , Quotes , Girl

“Terri (Hilary Duff)'s new roommate is Denise (Dana Davis), who plans to work hard for a scholarship, and resents Terri as a distraction. Sizing up Terri's wardrobe and her smile, she tells her: "You're like some kind of retro Brady Buncher."”

Roger Ebert

I hate it when a movie contains its own review.
Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/raise-your-voice-2004 of Raise Your Voice (8 October 2004)
Reviews, One-star reviews

Hate , Smile

“If you plan to miss this movie, better miss it quickly; I doubt if it'll be around to miss for long.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/americathon-1979 of Americathon (1 January 1979)
Reviews, Half-star reviews

“One hopeful sign that the filmmakers can learn and grow is that the sequel does not contain a single pie, if you know what I mean.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/american-pie-2-2001 of American Pie 2 (10 August 2001)
Reviews, Three star reviews

Hope , Learning

“The characters in this movie should be arrested for loitering with intent to moan. Never have teenagers been in greater need of a jump-start. Granted some of them are more than 100 years old, but still: their charisma is by Madame Tussaud. The Twilight Saga: New Moon takes the tepid achievement of Twilight (2008), guts it, and leaves it for undead. You know you're in trouble with a sequel when the word of mouth advises you to see the first movie twice instead. Obviously the characters all have. Long opening stretches of this film make utterly no sense unless you walk in knowing the first film, and hopefully both Stephanie Meyer novels, by heart. Edward and Bella spend murky moments glowering at each other and thinking, So, here we are again.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-twilight-saga-new-moon-2009 of The Twilight Saga: New Moon (18 November 2009)
Reviews, One-star reviews

Thinking , Sense , Heart

“To know me is to love me. This cliche is popular for a reason, because most of us, I imagine, believe deep in our hearts that if anyone truly got to know us, they'd truly get to love us - or at least know why we're the way we are. The problem in life, maybe the central problem, is that so few people ever seem to have sufficient curiosity to do the job on us that we know we deserve.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/tie-me-up-tie-me-down-1990 of Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (25 May 1990)
Reviews, Two-and-a-half star reviews

Love , Life , People , Way

“You should never send an expert to a movie about his specialty. Boxers hate boxing movies. Space buffs said 'Apollo 13' showed the wrong side of the moon. The British believe Mel Gibson's scholarship was faulty in 'Braveheart' merely because some of the key characters hadn't been born at the time of the story. 'Hackers' is, I have no doubt, deeply dubious in the computer science department. While it is no doubt true that in real life no hacker could do what the characters in this movie do, it is no doubt equally true that what hackers can do would not make a very entertaining movie.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/hackers-1995 of Hackers (15 September 1995)
Reviews, Three star reviews

Life , Hate , Science , Time