“Blue Velvet contains scenes of such raw emotional energy that it's easy to understand why some critics have hailed it as a masterpiece. A film this painful and wounding has to be given special consideration. And yet those scenes of stark sexual despair are the tipoff to what's wrong with the movie. They're so strong that they deserve to be in a movie that is sincere, honest and true. But Blue Velvet surrounds them with a story that's marred by sophomoric satire and cheap shots. The director is either denying the strength of his material or trying to defuse it by pretending it's all part of a campy in-joke. … What's worse? Slapping somebody around, or standing back and finding the whole thing funny?”

—  Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/blue-velvet-1986 of Blue Velvet (19 September 1986)
Reviews, One-star reviews

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Roger Ebert 264
American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter 1942–2013

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“Wild Wild West is a comedy dead zone. You stare in disbelief as scenes flop and die. The movie is all concept and no content; the elaborate special effects are like watching money burn on the screen. You know something has gone wrong when a story is about two heroes in the Old West, and the last shot is of a mechanical spider riding off into the sunset.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/wild-wild-west-1999 of Wild Wild West (30 June 1999)
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“Experience shows us that the air must have darkness beyond it and yet it appears blue. If you produce a small quantity of smoke from dry wood and the rays of the sun fall on this smoke, and if you then place behind the smoke a piece of black velvet on which the sun does not shine, you will see that all the smoke which is between the eye and the black stuff will appear of a beautiful blue colour. And if instead of the velvet you place a white cloth smoke, that is too thick smoke, hinders, and too thin smoke does not produce, the perfection of this blue colour. Hence a moderate amount of smoke produces the finest blue.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), VII On the Proportions and on the Movements of the Human Figure

Johnny Depp photo

“I want to do kiddie movies now. I'm fed up with adult movies — most of them stink. At a certain point with movies it becomes all about mathematics: this has to lead up to this, this has to lead up to that — you're always bound by some kind of formula. But since having kids and watching lots of animated cartoons and all those great old Disney films, I think they're better, they're much better. They're more fun and they take more risks.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Quoted in Jessamy Calkin, "One That Got Away," http://www.johnnydeppfan.com/interviews/telegraphmag.htm The Daily Telegraph Magazine (2002-08-03)

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“This is a movie that comes in two parts: It knows exactly what to do with special effects, but doesn't have a clue as to how two people in love might act and talk and think.
Movies like Top Gun are hard to review because the good parts are so good and the bad parts are so relentless. The dogfights are absolutely the best since Clint Eastwood's electrifying aerial scenes in Firefox. But look out for the scenes where the people talk to one another.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/top-gun-1986 of Top Gun (16 May 1986)
Reviews, Two-and-a-half star reviews

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“Since the scenes where they're together are so much less convincing than the ones where they fall apart, watching the movie is like being on a double-date from hell.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-break-up-2006 of The Break-Up (2 June 2006)
Reviews, Two star reviews

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“So don't tell me the story of your life
I'd rather watch the movie
Your Hollywood smile is not enough
You're giving me the blues
So when are you going to understand
I'm not the woman to make you a man”

Anni-Frid Lyngstad (1945) Swedish female singer

That's Tough (Non-album single credited to Lyngstad, Hans Fredriksson, and Kirsty MacColl), from Shine (1984)
Lyrics, Shine (1984)

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“Blue hyacinths!
Oh, do not show them me; they fill my eyes
With tears too soft for such a scene as this.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Ancestress (Spoken by Bertha)
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

“You can talk film theory till you're blue in the face, but in the end, the thing that may haunt you most about a movie is a pair of eyes.”

Stephanie Zacharek (1963) American film critic

Seduced and Abandoned, Salon.com, 1997-05-09, 2006-08-25, http://web.archive.org/web/19990828005105/http://www.salon.com/may97/vep970509.html, 1999-08-28 http://www.salon.com/may97/vep970509.html,

“This was a wonderful role. I played a Sicilian baron. They had incredible locations, for instance this majestic castle, I couldn't believe how beautiful it was! We also shot a scene in Hadrian's Villa, in a place called Sanctuario di Ercole. I had a great costume - the costume designers also worked on Visconti's GATTOPARDO. It's a mystery to me why they wouldn't let the film out. It's terrible for an actor: You think you have a big break, then the film just rots on the shelf! Also, the director was a very likeable person, very calm on the set. A wonderful movie.”

Donald O'Brien (actor) (1930–2003) Italian film and TV actor

Euro Trash Cinema magazine interview (March 1996)

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