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Roger Ebert

241 quotes

• “This is a painful movie to watch. But it is also exhilarating, as all good movies are, because we are watching the director and actors venturing beyond any conventional idea of what a modern movie can be about. Here there is no plot, no characters to identify with, no hope. But there is care: The filmmakers care enough about these people to observe them very closely, to note how they look and sound and what they feel.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Naked (18 February 1994)

• “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 (1942–2013) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Once (24 December 2007)

• “Here is a lovely film about two high school seniors who look, speak and feel like real 18-year-old middle-American human beings. Do you have any idea how rare that is? They aren't crippled by irony. They aren't speeded up into cartoons. Their sex lives aren't insulted by scenes that treat them cheaply. The story requires them to make love, but it doesn't insist we see her tits.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of The Spectacular Now (2 August 2013)

• “Films like Speed belong to the genre I call Bruised Forearm Movies, because you're always grabbing the arm of the person sitting next to you. Done wrong, they seem like tired replays of old chase cliches. Done well, they're fun. Done as well as Speed, they generate a kind of manic exhilaration.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Speed (10 June 1994)

• “We are connected with some people and never meet others, but it could easily have happened otherwise. Looking back over a lifetime, we describe what happened as if it had a plan. To fully understand how accidental and random life is — how vast the odds are against any single event taking place — would be humbling. … This is the kind of film that makes you feel intensely alive while you're watching it, and sends you out into the streets afterwards eager to talk deeply and urgently, to the person you are with. Whoever that happens to be.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Three Colors: Red (2 December 1994)

• “It is not too soon for "United 93," because it is not a film that knows any time has passed since 9/11. The entire story, every detail, is told in the present tense. We know what they know when they know it, and nothing else. Nothing about Al Qaeda, nothing about Osama bin Laden, nothing about Afghanistan or Iraq, only events as they unfold. This is a masterful and heartbreaking film, and it does honor to the memory of the victims.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of United 93 (27 April 2006)

• “Burt and Verona are two characters rarely seen in the movies: thirtysomething, educated, healthy, self-employed, gentle, thoughtful, whimsical, not neurotic and really truly in love. Their great concern is finding the best place and way to raise their child, who is a bun still in the oven. For every character like this I’ve seen in the last 12 months, I’ve seen 20, maybe 30, mass murderers.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Away We Go (10 June 2009)

• “Occasionally an unsuspecting innocent will stumble into a movie like this and send me an anguished postcard, asking how I could possibly give a favorable review to such trash. My stock response is Ebert's Law, which reads: A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1997 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Freeway (24 January 1997)

• “Rarely has a movie this expensive provided so many quotable lines.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1984 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Ghostbusters (1 January 1984)

• “Anna’s reaction is more complex than you might imagine, and it’s at such a moment you appreciate the woman in the writer-director’s chair. Women, I suspect, are more likely than men to view sex from the over-all perspective of what we may call their lives. In a country like Saudi Arabia, whose citizens express discomfort about men and women even attending movies together, I have little doubt which gender is more concerned.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Humpday (22 July 2009)

• “It is strange how the romances of the teenage years retain a poignancy all through life - how a girl who turns you down when you're 16 retains an aura in your memory even long after you, and she, have ceased to be who you were then. I attended my high school reunion a couple of weeks ago and discovered, in the souvenir booklet assembled by the reunion committee, that one of the girls in my class had a crush on me all those years ago. I would have given a great deal to have had that information at the time.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Metropolitan (10 August 1990)

• “After seeing Orphan, I now realize that Damien of The Omen was a model child. The Demon Seed was a bumper crop. Rosemary would have been happy to have this baby. Do not, under any circumstances, take children to see it. Take my word on this.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Orphan (22 July 2009)

• “The movie delights me with its cocky confidence that the audience can keep up. Primer is a film for nerds, geeks, brainiacs, Academic Decathlon winners, programmers, philosophers and the kinds of people who have made it this far into the review. It will surely be hated by those who 'go to the movies to be entertained', and embraced and debated by others, who will find it entertains the parts the others do not reach.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Primer (29 October 2004)

• “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 (1942–2013) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of The Sleepy Time Gal (22 November 2002)

• “It considers not only how we relate to others, but how we relate to our ideas of others — so that a completely phony, non-human replica of a dead wife can inspire the same feelings that the wife herself once did. That is a peculiarity of humans: We feel the same emotions for our ideas as we do for the real world, which is why we can cry while reading a book, or fall in love with movie stars. Our idea of humanity bewitches us, while humanity itself stays safely sealed away into its billions of separate containers, or "people.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Solaris (22 November 2002)

• “This movie was made by professionals. Do not attempt any of this behavior yourself.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Superbad (17 August 2007)

• “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 (1942–2013) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of The Triplets of Belleville (26 December 2003)

• “[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 (1942–2013) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (14 April 2011)

• “Is xXx a threat to the Bond franchise? Not a threat so much as a salute. I don't want James Bond to turn crude and muscular on me; I like the suave style. But I like Xander, too, especially since he seems to have studied Bond so very carefully.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of xXx (9 August 2002)

• “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 (1942–2013) first seen 1988 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of The Accused (14 October 1988)

• “As I swim through the summer tide of vulgarity, I find that's what I'm looking for: Movies that at least feel affection for their characters. Raunchy is OK. Cruel is not.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of American Pie (9 July 1999)

• “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 (1942–2013) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of American Pie 2 (10 August 2001)

• “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 (1942–2013) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of American Wedding (1 August 2003)

• “The beautiful Monique insists on joining their expedition and cannot be dissuaded; we think at first she has a nefarious motive, but no, she's probably taken a class in screenplay construction and knows that the film requires a sexy female lead. This could be the first case in cinematic history of a character voluntarily entering a movie because of the objective fact that she is required.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Around the World in 80 Days (16 June 2004)

• “...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 (1942–2013) first seen 1996 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Beavis and Butthead Do America (20 December 1996)

• “This sort of scenario has happened, I imagine, millions of times. It has rarely happened in a nicer, sweeter, more gentle way than in Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise," which I could call a "Love Affair" for Generation X, except that Jesse and Celine stand outside their generation, and especially outside its boring insistence on being bored. The R rating for this film, based on a few four-letter words, is entirely unjustified. It is an ideal film for teenagers.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1995 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Before Sunrise (27 January 1995)

• “Censors feel they are safe from objectionable material but must protect others who are not as smart or moral. The same impulse tempts the reviewer of 'The Believer'... If the wrong people get the wrong message - well, there has never been any shortage of wrong messages. Or wrong people.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of The Believer (14 June 2002)

• “I missed the enormously popular movie that introduced these characters, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, and felt myself blessed at the time. But now I'm not so sure. Their Bogus Journey is a riot of visual invention and weird humor that works on its chosen sub-moronic level, and on several others as well, including some fairly sophisticated ones. It's the kind of movie where you start out snickering in spite of yourself, and end up actually admiring the originality that went into creating this hallucinatory slapstick.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1991 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (19 July 1991)

• “In Blue Crush, we meet three Hawaiian surfers who work as hotel maids, live in a grotty rental, and are raising the kid sister of one of them. Despite this near-poverty, they look great; there is nothing like a tan and a bikini to overcome class distinctions.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Blue Crush (16 August 2002)

• “Much has been written about Generation X and the films about it. Clerks is so utterly authentic that its heroes have never heard of their generation. When they think of "X," it's on the way to the video store.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Clerks (4 November 1994)

• “This film is based on an actual 2004 event that took place at a McDonald's in Mount Washington, Ky. Google it and you'll find most of the same details. If you're not one of the film's walk-outs, you'll discover at the end that 70 similar deceptions have occurred in the United States... If the stunt worked 70 times, they must prove something — perhaps that we are afraid of authority. I know that when a traffic cop pulls me over, I'm frightened — scared enough that I drive safely and am almost never pulled over.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Compliance (29 August 2012)

• “...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 (1942–2013) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Drag Me to Hell (7 June 2009)

• “I arrive at the end of this review having done my duty as a critic. I have described the movie accurately and you have a good idea what you are in for if you go to see it. Most of you will not. I cannot argue with you. Some of you will — the brave and the curious. You embody the spirit of the man who first wondered what it would taste like to eat an oyster.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Gerry (28 February 2003)

• “It's strange: We leave the movie having enjoyed its conclusion so much that we almost forgot our earlier reservations. But they were there, and they were real.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1977 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of The Goodbye Girl (1 January 1977)

• “Formula comedies are a dime a dozen. Those based on an original idea are more rare, and Groundhog Day, apart from everything else, is a demonstration of the way time can sometimes give us a break. Just because we're born as SOBs doesn't mean we have to live that way.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1993 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Original 3-star review of Groundhog Day in Chicago Sun-Times (12 February 1993); he later wrote a 4-star review for it in 2005 (quoted in the 4-star section above).

• “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 (1942–2013) first seen 1995 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Hackers (15 September 1995)

• “Most people choose movies that provide exactly what they expect, and tell them things they already know. Others are more curious. We are put on this planet only once, and to limit ourselves to the familiar is a crime against our minds.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of The Isle (31 January 2003)

• “What did I think about this movie? As a film critic, I liked it. I liked the in-jokes and the self-aware characters. At the same time, I was aware of the incredible level of gore in this film. It is *really* violent. Is the violence defused by the ironic way the film uses it and comments on it? For me, it was. For some viewers, it will not be, and they will be horrified. Which category do you fall in? Here's an easy test: When I mentioned Fangoria, did you know what I was talking about?”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1996 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Scream (20 December 1996)

• “The star rating system is relative, not absolute. When you ask a friend if Hellboy is any good, you're not asking if it's any good compared to Mystic River, you're asking if it's any good compared to The Punisher. And my answer would be, on a scale of one to four, if Superman (1978) is four, then Hellboy is three and The Punisher is two. In the same way, if American Beauty gets four stars, then [The United States of] Leland clocks in at about two.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Shaolin Soccer (23 April 2004)

• “Khan is played as a cauldron of resentment by Ricardo Montalban, and his performance is so strong that he helps illustrate a general principle involving not only Star Trek but Star Wars and all the epic serials, especially the James Bond movies: Each film is only as good as its villain. Since the heroes and the gimmicks tend to repeat from film to film, only a great villain can transform a good try into a triumph.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1 January 1982)

• “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 (1942–2013) first seen 1998 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Wild Things (20 March 1998)

• “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 (1942–2013) first seen 1988 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Dead Ringers (23 September 1988)

• “No movie has ever been able to provide a catharsis for the Holocaust, and I suspect none will ever be able to provide one for 9/11.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (18 January 2012)

• “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 (1942–2013) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of In Darkness (15 February 2012)

• “A movie should present its characters with a problem and then watch them solve it, not without difficulty. So says an old and reliable screenplay formula. Countless movies have been made about a boy and a girl who have a problem (they haven't slept with each other) and after difficulties (family, war, economic, health, rival lover, stupid misunderstanding) they solve it by sleeping with each other. Now we have a movie about two homosexuals that follows the same reliable convention.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Latter Days (13 February 2004)

• “The Lucky One" is at its heart a romance novel, elevated however by Nicholas Sparks' persuasive storytelling. Readers don't read his books because they're true, but because they ought to be true. You can easily imagine how many ways this story would probably go wrong in real life, but who wants to see a movie where a Marine leans over to pick up a photo and is blown up? And a mom trying to raise her son and feed lots of hungry dogs while her abusive ex-husband gets drunk and hangs around? That kind of stuff is too close to life.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of The Lucky One (18 April 2012)

• “I could list some Japanese films illustrating this, but the last thing the audience for Memoirs of a Geisha wants to see is a more truthful film with less gorgeous women and shabbier production values.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Memoirs of a Geisha (9 December 2005)

• “It's the kind of movie home video was invented for: Not worth the trip to the theater, but slam it into the VCR and you get your rental's worth.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1992 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of My Cousin Vinny (13 March 1992)

• “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 (1942–2013) first seen 2000 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of O Brother, Where Art Thou? (29 December 2000)

• “Now that we know Quentin Tarantino can make a movie like Reservoir Dogs, it's time for him to move on and make a better one.”

  Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1992 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Review of Reservoir Dogs (26 October 1992)

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