Roger Ebert Quotes (264 quotes, page 4)

Roger Ebert: 264 quotes2 likes

Roger Ebert Quotes

“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

“[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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“It's the kind of movie where you ask people how they liked it, and they say, "Well, it was well made," and then they wince.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/dead-ringers-1988 of Dead Ringers (23 September 1988) Reviews, Two-and-a-half star reviews

“Attending this new version, I felt oddly as if I were watching a provincial stock company doing the best it could without the Broadway cast. I was reminded of the child prodigy who was summoned to perform for a famous pianist. The child climbed onto the piano stool and played something by Chopin with great speed and accuracy. The great musician then patted the child on the head and said, 'You can play the notes. Someday, you may be able to play the music.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/psycho-1998 of Psycho (6 December 1998) Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

“Call me hardhearted, call me cynical, but please don't call me if they make Home Alone 3.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/home-alone-2-lost-in-new-york-1992 of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (20 November 1992) Reviews, Two star reviews

“Showgirls is the first big-budget "adults only" movie in a few years and, to be sure, it contains so much nudity that the sexy parts are when the girls put on their clothes. It contains no true eroticism, however, and that's why I think it reflects a grounding in sexual fantasy: Eroticism requires a mental connection between two people, while masturbation requires only the other person's image.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/showgirls-1995 of Showgirls (22 September 1995) Reviews, Two star reviews

“A depressing number of people seem to process everything literally. They are to wit as a blind man is to a forest, able to find every tree, but each one coming as a surprise.”

Roger Ebert

First published in the "Movie Answer Man" column (18 September 2005) http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050918/ANSWERMAN/509180304/1023

“But now here is the director's cut, which is 20 minutes shorter, lops off a couple of characters and a few of the infinite subplots, and is even more of a mess. I recommend that Kelly keep right on cutting until he whittles it down to a ukulele pick.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/southland-tales-2007 of Southland Tales (16 November 2007) Reviews, One-star reviews

“"This sucks on so many levels." — Dialogue from "Jason X" Rare for a movie to so frankly describe itself. "Jason X" sucks on the levels of storytelling, character development, suspense, special effects, originality, punctuation, neatness and aptness of thought.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/jason-x-2002 of Jason X (26 April 2002) Reviews, Half-star reviews

“Battlefield Earth is like taking a bus trip with someone who has needed a bath for a long time. It's not merely bad; it's unpleasant in a hostile way. The visuals are grubby and drab. The characters are unkempt and have rotten teeth. Breathing tubes hang from their noses like ropes of snot. The soundtrack sounds like the boom mike is being slammed against the inside of a 55-gallon drum. The plot. … Some movies run off the rails. This one is like the train crash in The Fugitive. I watched it in mounting gloom, realizing I was witnessing something historic, a film that for decades to come will be the punch line of jokes about bad movies.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/battlefield-earth-2000 of Battlefield Earth (12 May 2000) Reviews, Half-star reviews

“You want loud, dumb, skillful, escapist entertainment? Twister works. You want to think? Think twice about seeing it.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/twister-1996 of Twister (10 May 1996) Reviews, Two-and-a-half star reviews

“I wonder who will find the film more uncomfortable - men or women? Both will recoil from the brutality of the scenes of the assault. But for some men, the movie will reveal a truth that most women already know. It is that verbal sexual harassment, whether crudely in a saloon back room or subtly in an everyday situation, is a form of violence - one that leaves no visible marks but can make its victims feel unable to move freely and casually in society.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-accused-1988 of The Accused (14 October 1988) Reviews, Three star reviews

“I wear a pedometer, a little device that counts every step. It works as a goad, because you walk additional distances to pile up the numbers. The average person walks 2,000 to 3,000 steps a day. I walk 10,000 steps a day. I have lost a lot of weight as a result.”

Roger Ebert

"A Film Critic's Windy City Home' in The New York Times (13 February 2005) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/magazine/13DOMAINS.html?ex=1266987600&en=ee5831db9aa9dafb&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt

“The Golden Thumb is not as good as the Oscar, but it is a lot of fun.”

Roger Ebert

"A Film Critic's Windy City Home' in The New York Times (13 February 2005)

“Once is the kind of film I've been pestered about ever since I started reviewing again. People couldn't quite describe it, but they said I had to see it. I had to. Well, I did. They were right.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/once-2007 of Once (24 December 2007) Reviews, Four star reviews

“I had a hard time watching Wolf Creek. It is a film with one clear purpose: To establish the commercial credentials of its director by showing his skill at depicting the brutal tracking, torture and mutilation of screaming young women. When the killer severs the spine of one of his victims and calls her "a head on a stick," I wanted to walk out of the theater and keep on walking.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/wolf-creek-2005 of Wolf Creek (23 December 2005) Reviews, Zero star reviews

“Sour Grapes is a comedy about things that aren't funny. It reminded me of Crash, an erotic thriller about things no one finds erotic. The big difference is that David Cronenberg, who made Crash, knew that people were not turned on by auto accidents. Larry David, who wrote and directed Sour Grapes, apparently thinks people are amused by cancer, accidental castration, racial stereotypes and bitter family feuds… The more I think of it, the more Sour Grapes really does resemble Crash (except that Crash was not a bad film). Both movies are like watching automobile accidents. Only one was intended to be.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/sour-grapes-1998 of Sour Grapes (17 April 1998) Reviews, Zero star reviews

“Hitchcock said a movie should play the audience like a piano. Death Race played me like a drum. It is an assault on all senses, including common. Walking out, I had the impression I had just seen the video game and was still waiting for the movie.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/death-race-2008 of Death Race (22 August 2008) Reviews, Half-star reviews

“Clerks spoke with the sure, clear voice of an original filmmaker. In Mallrats the voice is muffled, and we sense instead advice from the tired, the establishment, the timid and other familiar Hollywood executive types. The year that Clerks played at the Cannes Film Festival, I was the chairman of a panel discussion of independent filmmakers. Most of them talked about their battles to stay free from Hollywood's playsafe strategies. But Kevin Smith cheerfully said he'd be happy to do whatever the studios wanted, if they'd pay for his films. At the time, I thought he was joking.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mallrats-1995 of Mallrats (20 October 1995) Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

“The movie cheerfully offends all civilized notions of taste, decorum, manners and hygiene… is the movie vulgar? Vulgarity is when we don't laugh. When we laugh, it's merely human nature.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/american-wedding-2003 of American Wedding (1 August 2003) Reviews, Three star reviews

“Absolutists frighten me. During all the endless discussions on my blog about evolution, intelligent design, God, and the afterworld, numbering altogether thousands of comments, I have never named my beliefs, although readers have freely informed me that I am an atheist, and agnostic, or at the very least a secular humanist”

Roger Ebert

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

“It's like the high school production of something you saw at Steppenwolf, with the most gifted students in drama class playing the John Malkovich and Joan Allen roles.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-pink-panther-2006 of The Pink Panther (10 February 2006) Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

“[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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“…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

“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

“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

“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

“…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

“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

“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

“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

“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