“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

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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Roger Ebert 264

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

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

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

“I'd hear, "Because they paid the man, there's no money for the woman." How many times do you think I heard this? Over and over. Then I became a sex symbol. Now, how the hell did that happen? I don't exactly know the moment when it happened, but all of a sudden I'm a bombshell. The way I discovered this was I did Desperado. I had a very hard time with the love scene. I cried throughout the love scene. That's why you never see long pieces of the love scene — it's little pieces cut together. I'm crying most of the time so they have to take little pieces. It took eight hours instead of an hour. I nearly got fired. … Because I didn't want to be naked in front of a camera. The whole time, I'm thinking of my father and my brother… And then when the movie comes out, I read the first review. What do they say about me. "Salma Hayek is a bombshell." I had heard that when a movie does badly here, they say it bombs. So I'm crying. Thinking they're saying, "That terrible actress! It's a bomb! Salma Hayek is the worst part of the movie!" I called my friend and said, "The critics are destroying me!" She says, "No, they're saying you're very sexy." And then I look at all the reviews, and everybody said I was very sexy. So I'm very confused. I said, "I wonder if that's good or bad." I hear, "Yes, that's good." Then I do Fools Rush In, and I'm a pregnant woman. And they say I'm sexy again! I go, "But I'm pregnant!"”

Salma Hayek (1966) Mexican-American actress and producer

I'm not even naked in this movie, and they still say I'm sexy. And then it became very depressing — I thought, I guess I'm reduced to that now. That's all I am in the perception of these people.
O interview (2003)

“The reason movies are often so bad out here isn't because the people who make them are cynical money hacks. Most of them are doing the very best they can; they really want to make good movies. The trouble is with their heads, not their hearts.”

Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor

Quoted in Against the American Grain (1962) by Dwight Macdonald, p. 30

“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

“I wanted to be a movie star. But movie stars are not what they used to be. When I was a kid, I thought movie stars were women and men who were in these great films that we still look at now… And people my age don't even know who those people are. I can't even have a conversation with most people of my generation about that, because they'd be like, "Okay, she's a freak…" And the worst part is, in terms of what people see of me, I have become this girl who just loves to be photographed, doesn't know how to focus, doesn't know how to work on set, just loves the attention, knows how to go out at night, knows how to party. And you know what? I was 20 years old. I never went to college. And I lived maybe six months out of my life like that, doing something wrong, and then I stopped. God forbid I should have ever learned my lesson. But at this point it's so hard for people to even believe that there was a lesson to be learned at all, because they just think I'm wrong. All these people think I'm never going to be right, because it's more interesting to fabricate this other girl. Who wants to read a tabloid story about a girl who is doing well?”

Lindsay Lohan (1986) American actress and pop singer

Interview interview (2009)

“"How can a movie be "one of the best"? There's only one "best" movie, so saying something is "one of the best" is stupid and doesn't make sense. Technically any movie that's not the worst could be considered "one of the best." Imagine that, another empty phrase used by marketing people. I want to punch someone in the throat."”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

Hollywood: still out of ideas? How about another black-guy-meets-white-guy comedy http://maddox.xmission.com/cop_movie.html
The Best Page in the Universe

“There are directors that make one good movie their whole life, but this movie creates a buzz around the director, then they get like forever good reviews. Till someone 20 years later says, look, to be honest I liked only the one movie of that guy. In my case it’s exactly the opposite. I get trashed for whatever I do. They don’t see any difference in what I’m doing.”

Uwe Boll (1965) German restaurateur and former filmmaker

2000s

“It would be interesting to have two movies - one The Monster Squad, and one The Monster Squad and they're 30 years apart and so are the kids; the characters have aged. As long as people understood that's what we're doing, I think that could be fun. That's a good idea”

Shane Black (1961) American actor, screenwriter and film director

SHANE BLACK THINKS A MONSTER SQUAD SEQUEL “COULD BE FUN” https://www.ign.com/articles/2016/08/15/shane-black-thinks-a-monster-squad-sequel-acould-be-funa (August 15 2016)

“Watching old movies is like spending an evening with those people next door. They bore us, and we wouldn't go out of our way to see them; we drop in on them because they're so close. If it took some effort to see old movies, we might try to find out which were the good ones, and if people saw only the good ones maybe they would still respect old movies. As it is, people sit and watch movies that audiences walked out on thirty years ago. Like Lot's wife, we are tempted to take another look, attracted not by evil but by something that seems much more shameful — our own innocence.”

Pauline Kael book Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

"Movies on Television".
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (1968)

“Sometimes if you go to see a very, very, happy movie, a Hollywood movie, you can walk out of the movie and feel very depressed because it's so false. And other times you see a very depressing movie and it makes you feel good, happy because you've seen something real. You've seen something that talks to you and says that your bad feelings are legitimate. And then you can go further with that and say, "Well, this bad feeling is good, and this good feeling is bad, but is it good to feel bad and is it bad to feel good?" I'm concerned with feelings. And sometimes when I feel good, I'll write something very negative because I have the strength to do it. But when I really, really feel very bad, what I want to do is make myself feel better, so I'll write something happier.”

John S. Hall (1960) Poet, author, singer, lawyer

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Roger Ebert 264

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