Great Throughts Treasury

"Why do alcoholics begin down the same hazardous road day after day? They are in search of that elusive window of well-being that opens when you drink your way out of a hangover and aren't yet drunk all over again. The alcoholic's day consists of trying to keep that window open."

"Why did they give an R rating to a movie perfect for teenagers?"

"Why has Scandinavia been producing such good thrillers? Maybe because their filmmakers can't afford millions for CGI and must rely on cheaper elements like, you know, stories and characters."

"Why must a film explain everything? Why must every motivation be spelled out? Aren't many films fundamentally the same film, with only the specifics changed? Aren't many of them telling the same story? Seeking perfection, we see what our dreams and hopes might look like. We realize they come as a gift through no power of our own, and if we lose them, isn't that almost worse than never having had them in the first place? There will be many who find "To the Wonder" elusive and too effervescent. They'll be dissatisfied by a film that would rather evoke than supply. I understand that, and I think Terrence Malick does, too. But here he has attempted to reach more deeply than that: to reach beneath the surface, and find the soul in need. [last movie review Roger Ebert filed]"

"Why is it that English, drama and music teachers are most often recalled as our mentors and inspirations? Maybe because artists are rarely members of the popular crowd."

"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."

"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."

"You can have a movie with hardly any cuts, or very few cuts, that is fascinating, you can't take your eyes away from it... Look at some of the long takes in Citizen Kane."

"You know that a lot of critics praised Steve Martin in The Jerk, but you liked him better after he started acting more normal. You are not a promising candidate to see Ace Ventura: Pet Detective."

"You can't just tell actors, especially young ones, to 'act happy' and expect them to do it. They must in some essential way be happy."

"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."

"You can't say it wasn't interesting."

"You want loud, dumb, skillful, escapist entertainment? Twister works. You want to think? Think twice about seeing it."

"You slide down in your seat and make yourself comfortable. On the screen in front of you, the movie image appears?enormous and overwhelming. If the movie is a good one, you allow yourself to be absorbed in its fantasy, and its dreams become part of your memories"

"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."

"You used to be able to depend on a bad film being poorly made. No longer. The Punisher: War Zone [sic] is one of the best-made bad movies I've seen...Its only flaw is that it's disgusting."

"Your intellect may be confused, but your emotions will never lie to you."