“Is that a sacrilege that I praise a Holocaust movie [Schindler's List] for being entertaining? The word doesn't imply that a movie need be cheerful. In my mind, entertainment in this genre springs from characters who are brought to full life, who we care about and who are set in a powerful story. My motto: "No good movie is depressing. All bad movies are depressing."”

— Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/in-darkness-2011 of In Darkness (15 February 2012)
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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“The Czech movies, the quality movies, are trying to show the life in the country as it is, in an entertaining way, while in America, the majority of movies are wonderful fairy tales.”

Miloš Forman (1932–2018) czech-American director, screenwriter, and professor

“I’m a movie star. Can I talk to my entertainment lawyer?”

Natasha Lyonne (1979) actress

Sarcastic remark to a police officer after failing a Breathalyzer test (28 August 2001), a comment The Smoking Gun named "The Most Entertaining Celebrity Arrest Report" of 2001; of this incident she later said:
Listen, I’m not for everyone. Maybe those officers didn’t understand that I was kidding. … Maybe a lot of those people who wrote up those police reports thought I was being serious. They probably don’t have my same sense of humor. It’s not like they have a Petri dish of highbrow comedy over at the precinct.
As quoted in "Spoonful of Sugar : Natasha Lyonne’s Sweet Comeback" by Shira Levine, in Heeb Magazine (20 January 2009) http://kittyradio.com/soapbox/gossip/46450-natasha-lyonne-interview-heeb-magazine.html

“Truth be told, I'm not an easy man. I can be an entertaining one, though it's been my experience that most people don't want to be entertained. They want to be comforted. And, of course, my idea of entertaining might not be yours. I'm in complete agreement with all those people who say, regarding movies, "I just want to be entertained." This populist position is much derided by my academic colleagues as simpleminded and unsophisticated, evidence of questionable analytical and critical acuity. But I agree with the premise, and I too just want to be entertained. That I am almost never entertained by what entertains other people who just want to be entertained doesn't make us philosophically incompatible. It just means we shouldn't go to movies together.”

Richard Russo book Straight Man

Prologue.
Straight Man (1997)

“Sundance means a lot to me. This is my third one. People that come here who love movies. Everyone has the attitude that movies aren't just disposable entertainment - they can really mean something. I love that, because that's the way I feel about films.”

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (1981) American actor, director, producer, and writer

Salon, November 2009

“I write movies about mavericks, about people who break rules, and I don't like movies about people who are pulverised for being mavericks.”

Quentin Tarantino (1963) American film director, screenwriter, producer, and actor

Virgin.Net interview http://www.virgin.net/movies/interviews/quentin.html

“I was born inside the movie of my life. The visuals were before me, the audio surrounded me, the plot unfolded inevitably but not necessarily. I don't remember how I got into the movie, but it continues to entertain me.”

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

Source: Life Itself

“Sometimes I feel like I have walked into the middle of a movie. Maybe I can make my own movie. The film will be the story of my life. No, not my life, but of this experience. I'll call it what the lady who is the prosecutor called me. MONSTER.”

Walter Dean Myers book Monster

Source: Monster

“We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment.”

Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968) American politician and brother of John F. Kennedy

On the Mindless Menace of Violence (1968)
Context: Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire.

“Spielberg had done his best with Schindler's List, but his best left some of us wondering just how useful a contribution it was, to make a movie about how some of the Jews had survived, when the real story was about all the Jews who hadn't.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Glamourising terror', on The Baader-Meinhof Complex.
Television and radio, Radio 4: A Point of View

“I am the kind of guy who believes that films are supposed to be entertainment. I do not subscribe much to movies that leave you with a lingering feeling, make you feel angry or depressed. I am not yet ready to make films like that. I have grown up with films that are entertaining. Since I am such a huge fan of entertainment, I believe that the films that I do should also be entertaining, people can talk about it for three days and forget about it.”

R. Madhavan (1970) Indian actor

Interview, "Sify Movies", 30 Aug 2005 http://www.sify.com/movies/bollywood/interview.php?id=13928252&cid=2398

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