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Roger Ebert

241 quotes

“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." I hate it when a movie contains its own review.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Raise Your Voice (8 October 2004)
“I would rather eat a golf ball than see this movie again.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Seven Days in Utopia (31 August 2011)
“Reader, I must confess that while attending the sneak preview with its overwhelmingly female audience, I was gob-smacked by the delightful cleavage on display. Do women wear their lowest-cut frocks for each other?”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Sex and the City 2 (25 May 2010)
“Remember the words George Carlin said could not be said on TV? There's now a kind of movie that cannot be made without using all of them except one. Even the online trailer may startle you. It's one of those adults-only Red Band Trailers which you have to give your age in order to view. I lied about my age. Nobody under 17 would ever do that.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of The Sitter (7 December 2011)
“It's the worst kind of bad film: the kind that gets you all worked up and then lets you down, instead of just being lousy from the first shot.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1998 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Snake Eyes (7 August 1998)
“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 (1942–2013) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Southland Tales (16 November 2007)
“If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination... The movie has been signed by Michael Bay. This is the same man who directed The Rock in 1996. Now he has made Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Faust made a better deal.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (23 June 2009)
“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) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Wild Wild West (30 June 1999)
“Your Highness is a juvenile excrescence that feels like the work of 11-year-old boys in love with dungeons, dragons, warrior women, pot, boobs and four-letter words. One of the heroes even wears the penis of a minotaur on a string around his neck. I hate it when that happens.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Your Highness (April 6, 2011)
“If you plan to miss this movie, better miss it quickly; I doubt if it'll be around to miss for long.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Americathon (1 January 1979)
“The dialogue consists almost entirely of terse screams: Watch it! Incoming! Move! Look out! Fire! Move! The only characters I remember having four sentences in a row are the anchors on cable news. … Young men: If you attend this crap with friends who admire it, tactfully inform them they are idiots. Young women: If your date likes this movie, tell him you've been thinking it over, and you think you should consider spending some time apart.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Battle: Los Angeles (9 March 2011)
“The movie is being revived around the country for midnight cult showings. Midnight is not late enough.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1998 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of The Beyond (3 July 1998)
“Boat Trip arrives preceded by publicity saying many homosexuals have been outraged by the film. Now that it's in theaters, everybody else has a chance to join them. Not that the film is outrageous. That would be asking too much. It is dim-witted, unfunny, too shallow to be offensive, and way too conventional to use all of those people standing around in the background wearing leather and chains and waiting hopefully for their cues. This is a movie made for nobody, about nothing.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Boat Trip (21 March 2003)
“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) first seen 1984 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Bolero (1 January 1984)
“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 (1942–2013) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Death Race (22 August 2008)
“Only enormously talented people could have made Death to Smoochy. Those with lesser gifts would have lacked the nerve to make a film so bad, so miscalculated, so lacking any connection with any possible audience.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Death to Smoochy (29 March 2002)
“This movie is not merely bad, but incompetent. I get tapes in the mail from 10th graders that are better made than this... I have often asked myself, "What would it look like if the characters in a movie were animatronic puppets created by aliens with an imperfect mastery of human behavior?" Now I know.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Friends & Lovers (30 April 1999)
“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 (1942–2013) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Jason X (26 April 2002)
“Parents: If you encounter teenagers who say they liked this movie, do not let them date your children.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Resident Evil: Apocalypse (10 September 2004)
“Some of the acting is better than the film deserves. Make that all of the acting. Actually, the film stock itself is better than the film deserves. You know when sometimes a film catches fire inside a projector? If it happened with this one, I suspect the audience might cheer.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Revolver (7 December 2007)
“Rollerball is an incoherent mess, a jumble of footage in search of plot, meaning, rhythm and sense. There are bright colors and quick movement on the screen, which we can watch as a visual pattern that, in entertainment value, falls somewhere between a kaleidoscope and a lava lamp.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of the 2002 film Rollerball (8 February 2002)
“It amazes me that filmmakers will still film, and audiences will still watch, relationships so bankrupt of human feeling that the characters could be reading dialogue written by a computer.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1987 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Summer School (22 July 1987)
“There is a scene in this film where a character is defecated on by several people at the same time, and I dunno … I didn't enjoy it.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie (29 February 2012)
“Caligula is sickening, utterly worthless, shameful trash. If it is not the worst film I have ever seen, that makes it all the more shameful: People with talent allowed themselves to participate in this travesty. Disgusted and unspeakably depressed, I walked out of the film after two hours of its 170-minute length. That was on Saturday night, as a line of hundreds of people stretched down Lincoln Ave., waiting to pay $7.50 apiece to become eyewitnesses to shame..."This movie," said the lady in front of me at the drinking fountain, "is the worst piece of shit I have ever seen.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Caligula (22 September 1980)
“Chaos is ugly, nihilistic, and cruel -- a film I regret having seen. I urge you to avoid it. Don't make the mistake of thinking it's 'only' a horror film, or a slasher film. It is an exercise in heartless cruelty and it ends with careless brutality. The movie denies not only the value of life, but the possibility of hope.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Chaos (11 August 2005)
“A burning at the stake, an afternoon in the rack, headscrews, a douche with boiling water, nails into hands, induced vomiting, ripped tongues, dead babes, human target practice, possession by devils, rape, transvestism, nude orgies in the nunnery. Put them all together and they spell Committed Art, because these are modern times and I certainly hope none of us is opposed to truth.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1971 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of The Devils (1 January 1971)
“Crowds can be frightening. They have a way of impressing the low, base taste upon their members. Watching the way thousands of people in his audience could not think for themselves, could not find the courage to allow their ordinary feelings of decency and taste to prevail, I understood better how demagogues are possible.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1991 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Dice Rules (17 May 1991)
“Dirty Love wasn't written and directed, it was committed. Here is a film so pitiful, it doesn't rise to the level of badness. It is hopelessly incompetent... I am not certain that anyone involved has ever seen a movie, or knows what one is.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Dirty Love (23 September 2005)
“This movie doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels... The day may come when "Freddy Got Fingered" is seen as a milestone of neo-surrealism. The day may never come when it is seen as funny.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Freddy Got Fingered (20 April 2001)
“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 (1942–2013) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Guyana-Cult of the Damned (29 January 1980)
“I do not often attribute motives to audience members, nor do I try to read their minds, but the people who were sitting around me on Monday morning made it easy for me to know what they were thinking. They talked out loud. And if they seriously believed the things they were saying, they were vicarious sex criminals.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of I Spit on Your Grave (16 July 1980)
“This despicable remake of the despicable 1978 film I Spit on Your Grave adds yet another offense: a phony moral equivalency. In the original, a woman foolishly thought to go on holiday by herself at a secluded cabin. She attracted the attention of depraved local men, who raped her, one after the other. Then the film ended with her fatal revenge. In this film, less time is devoted to the revenge, and more time to verbal, psychological and physical violence against her. Thus it works even better as vicarious cruelty against women.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of I Spit on Your Grave (6 October 2010)
“This is a plot, if ever there was one, to illustrate King Lear's complaint, "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport." I am aware this is the second time in two weeks I have been compelled to quote Lear, but there are times when Eminem simply will not do.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of The Life of David Gale (21 February 2003)
“Little Indian, Big City is one of the worst movies ever made. I detested every moronic minute of it...if you, under any circumstances, see Little Indian, Big City, I will never let you read one of my reviews again.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1996 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Little Indian, Big City (22 March 1996)
“Mad Dog Time is the first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time. Oh, I've seen bad movies before. But they usually made me care about how bad they were. Watching Mad Dog Time is like waiting for the bus in a city where you're not sure they have a bus line...Mad Dog Time should be cut into free ukulele picks for the poor.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1996 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Mad Dog Time (29 November 1996)
“Mandingo is racist trash, obscene in its manipulation of human beings and feelings, and excruciating to sit through in an audience made up largely of children, as I did last Saturday afternoon. The film has an "R" rating, which didn't keep many kids out, since most came with their parents... if [Chicago] believes Mandingo should be shown to children, then there are no possible standards left and the only thing to do is transfer the censors to the parks department, where they can supervise paper‑plate‑ throwing contests.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Mandingo (25 July 1975)
“I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of North (22 July 1994)
“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 (1942–2013) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of September Dawn (24 August 2007)
“What planet did the makers of this film come from? What assumptions do they have about the purpose and quality of life? I ask because She's Out of Control is simultaneously so bizarre and so banal that it's a first: the first movie fabricated entirely from sitcom cliches and plastic lifestyles, without reference to any known plane of reality.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1989 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of She's Out of Control (14 April 1989)
“The movie is an exhausted retread of the old campus romance gag where the pretty girl almost believes the lies of the reprehensible schemer, instead of trusting the nice guy who loves her. The only originality the movie brings to this formula is to make it incomprehensible, through the lurching incompetence of its story structure. Details are labored while the big picture remains unpainted... I was appalled by the poverty of its imagination.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Slackers (1 February 2002)
“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 (1942–2013) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Wolf Creek (23 December 2005)
“It is all very well and good for Linda Lovelace, the star of the movie, to advocate sexual freedom; but the energy she brings to her role is less awesome than discouraging. If you have to work this hard at sexual freedom, maybe it isn't worth the effort.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Deep Throat (6 March 1973)
“I am required to award stars to movies I review. This time, I refuse to do it. The star rating system is unsuited to this film. Is the movie good? Is it bad? Does it matter? It is what it is and occupies a world where the stars don't shine.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of The Human Centipede (5 May 2010)
“One of the remarkable things about Russ Meyer's films is that they continue to live and play, long after the other work of the soft-core era has been forgotten. That is partly because of their craftsmanship, partly because of Meyer's leading ladies, and partly because of a spirit of paramilitary commitment that can be sensed as the cast and crew struggle through rugged terrain to enact their rural melodramas. But the central reason, I believe, is that Meyer is an auteur whose every frame reflects his own obsessions. Like all serious artists, he doesn't allow any space between his work and his dream.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 1985 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Russ Meyer busts sleazy stereotype" Chicago Sun-Times (15 November 1985)
“Many moviegoers and video viewers say they do not "like" black and white films. In my opinion, they are cutting themselves off from much of the mystery and beauty of the movies. Black and white is an artistic choice, a medium that has strengths and traditions, especially in its use of light and shadow. Moviegoers of course have the right to dislike b&w, but it is not something they should be proud of. It reveals them, frankly, as cinematically illiterate. I have been described as a snob on this issue. But snobs exclude; they do not include. To exclude b&w from your choices is an admission that you have a closed mind, a limited imagination, or are lacking in taste.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: First published in the "Movie Answer Man" column (25 July 2004)
“It's said that Chaplin wanted you to like him, but Keaton didn't care. I think he cared, but was too proud to ask. His films avoid the pathos and sentiment of the Chaplin pictures, and usually feature a jaunty young man who sees an objective and goes for it in the face of the most daunting obstacles. Buster survives tornados, waterfalls, avalanches of boulders, and falls from great heights, and never pauses to take a bow: He has his eye on his goal. And his movies, seen as a group, are like a sustained act of optimism in the face of adversity; surprising, how without asking, he earns our admiration and tenderness. Because he was funny, because he wore a porkpie hat, Keaton's physical skills are often undervalued … no silent star did more dangerous stunts than Buster Keaton. Instead of using doubles, he himself doubled for his actors, doing their stunts as well as his own.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Vol. II (2005), p. 94
“Magnolia is a film of sadness and loss, of lifelong bitterness, of children harmed and adults destroying themselves. As the narrator tells us near the end, "We may be through with the past, but the past is never through with us." In this wreckage of lifetimes, there are two figures, a policeman and a nurse, who do what they can to offer help, hope and love. … The central theme is cruelty to children, and its lasting effect. This is closely linked to a loathing or fear of behaving as we are told, or think, that we should. … As an act of filmmaking, it draws us in and doesn't let go. It begins deceptively, with a little documentary about amazing coincidences (including the scuba diver scooped by a fire-fighting plane and dumped on a forest fire) … coincidences and strange events do happen, and they are as real as everything else. If you could stand back far enough, in fact, everything would be revealed as a coincidence. What we call "coincidences" are limited to the ones we happen to notice. … In one beautiful sequence, Anderson cuts between most of the major characters all simultaneously singing Aimee Mann's "It's Not Going to Stop." A directorial flourish? You know what? I think it's a coincidence. Unlike many other "hypertext movies" with interlinking plots, Magnolia seems to be using the device in a deeper, more philosophical way. Anderson sees these people joined at a level below any possible knowledge, down where fate and destiny lie. They have been joined by their actions and their choices. And all leads to the remarkable, famous, sequence near the film's end when it rains frogs. Yes. Countless frogs, still alive, all over Los Angeles, falling from the sky. That this device has sometimes been joked about puzzles me. I find it a way to elevate the whole story into a larger realm of inexplicable but real behavior. We need something beyond the human to add another dimension. Frogs have rained from the sky eight times this century, but never mind the facts. Attend instead to Exodus 8:2, which is cited on a placard in the film: "And if thou refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite your whole territory with frogs." Let who go? In this case, I believe, it refers not to people, but to fears, shames, sins. Magnolia is one of those rare films that works in two entirely different ways. In one sense, it tells absorbing stories, filled with detail, told with precision and not a little humor. On another sense, it is a parable. The message of the parable, as with all good parables, is expressed not in words but in emotions. After we have felt the pain of these people, and felt the love of the policeman and the nurse, we have been taught something intangible, but necessary to know.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I began my work as a film critic in 1967. I had not thought to be a film critic, and indeed had few firm career plans apart from vague notions that I might someday be a political columnist or a professor of English. Robert Zonka, who was named the paper's feature editor the same day I was hired at the Chicago Sun-Times, became one of the best friends of a lifetime. One day in March 1967, he called me into a conference room, told me that Eleanor Keen, the paper's movie critic, was retiring, and that I was the new critic. I walked away in elation and disbelief, yet hardly suspected that this day would set the course for the rest of my life.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some of these reviews were written in joyous zeal. Others with glee. Some in sorrow, some in anger, and a precious few with venom, of which I have a closely guarded supply. When I am asked, all too frequently, if I really sit all the way through these movies, my answer is inevitably: Yes, because I want to write the review. I would guess that I have not mentioned my Pulitzer Prize in a review except once or twice since 1975, but at the moment I read Rob Schneider's extremely unwise open letter to Patrick Goldstein, I knew I was receiving a home-run pitch, right over the plate. Other reviews were written in various spirits, some of them almost benevolently, but of Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, all I can say is that it is a movie made to inspire the title of a book like this.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As I grew I no longer lost any sleep over the questions of God and infinity. I understood they could have no answers. At some point the reality of God was no longer present in my mind. I believed in the basic Church teachings because I thought they were correct, not because God wanted me to. In my mind, in the way I interpret them, I still live by them today. Not by the rules and regulations, but by the principles. For example, in the matter of abortion, I am pro-choice, but by personal choice would have nothing to do with an abortion of a child of my own. I believe in free will, and believe I have no right to tell anyone else what to do. Popes come and go, and John XXIII has been the only one I felt affection for. Their dictums strike me as lacking in the ability to surprise. They have been leading a holding action for a millennium.”
Roger Ebert (1942–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source