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.

[If you like little films about birds you might also consider] The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. … could be a surprise underground hit, because it is so warm and moving.

I begin to feel like most Americans don’t understand the First Amendment, don’t understand the idea of freedom of speech, and don’t understand that it’s the responsibility of the citizen to speak out.

Socrates told us, “the unexamined life is not worth living.” I think he’s calling for curiosity, more than knowledge. In every human society at all times and at all levels, the curious are at the...

We laugh, that we may not cry.

We had lots of big fights, … We were people who came together one day a week to work together and the other six days of the week we were competitors on two daily newspapers...

It’s funny that there was so much disturbance about having a Catholic in the White House with Kennedy, and when we finally get a religion in the White House that’s causing a lot of conflicts,...

In thinking about ‘depressing movies,’ many people don’t realize that all bad movies are depressing, and no good movies are.

Oh, here comes Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny and Jimmy Smits! [Announcing the arrival of Mel Blanc and Jimmy Smits to the Academy Awards ceremony.]

Beguiled by George S. Bush’s easy smile and casual indifference to the details, we are on the brink of electing him to office. This isn’t choosing a president, it’s casting the lead in a sitcom...

I’ve been told that I am evil. I’ve been told that I am behind the persecution of millions of Americans. That I have encouraged hate toward gays. I’ve received both very brief and obscene messages,...

I don’t think Bush was legitimately elected President.

Sometimes two people will regard each other over a gulf too wide to ever be bridged, and know immediately what could have happened, and that it never will.

As someone who admired the freshness and energy of the earlier films, I was amazed, at the end of ‘Episode II,’ to realize that I had not heard one line of quotable, memorable dialogue.

Movies absorb our attention more completely, I think.

All I require of a religion is that it be tolerant of those who do not agree with it.

A lot of people just go to movies that feed into their preexisting and not so noble needs and desires: They just go to action pictures, and things like that.

I was instructed long ago by a wise editor, “If you understand something you can explain it so that almost anyone can understand it. If you don’t, you won’t be able to understand your own...

Not only can I not describe the plot of this movie, but I have a feeling the last scene reverses half of what I thought I knew (or didn’t know).

I think most people are more susceptible to prejudice than to reason.

The children of Birmingham did not really die in the State of Alabama, however, because Alabama is a state of mind, and in the minds of the [white] men who rule Alabama, those children had...

His career can be summed up as the case of a man who needed a financial manager.

The Academy is paranoid about its image.

Every great film should seem new every time you see it.

All over the web there are some very good critics and it’s become for people who are interested. It’s become a very good way to get to reviews and involve yourself in discussions.

A depressing number of people seem to process everything literally. They are to wit as a blind man is to a forest, able to find every tree, but each one coming as a surprise.

A corner is important. It provides privacy and an anchor and lets you exist independently of the room.

If there is such a thing as a lock on an Oscar nomination, … Hoffman has one.

I think that probably the – I don’t give quotes to studios. They have to get those out of the paper or from television. So they wouldn’t have had my quote opening day.

Aren’t you getting tired of people hating one another? What do they think they get out of it?

It was her unconvincing, elusive self-defense that continued to damn her.

The movies that are made more thoughtfully or made or with more ambition often get just get drowned out by the noise.

The Batman movie I’ve been waiting for.

And I think both the left and the right should celebrate people who have different opinions, and disagree with them, and argue with them, and differ with them, but don’t just try to shut them...

I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear

Of all the purposes of education, I think the most useful is this: It prepares you to keep yourself entertained. It gives you a better chance of an interesting job.

Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly

I think we have to get beyond the idea that we have to categorize people.

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.

Seeing the film over and over again, year after year, I find it never grows over-familiar. It plays like a favorite musical album; the more I know it, the more I like it.

The prevailing style in the mainstream is represented by Michael Bay. This is shorter and shorter takes and less and less dialogue.

The target audience didn’t care that we hated those movies because they just expected us to hate them.

Because I don’t give the studios advanced quotes or an advanced look at my reviews. I think the readers deserve to read my reviews before the studios do.

When I write, I fall into the zone many writers, painters, musicians, athletes, and craftsmen of all sorts seem to share: In doing something I enjoy and am expert at, deliberate thought falls aside and...