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.
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.
We can’t help identifying with the protagonist. It’s coded in our movie-going DNA.
To die is one thing. How much worse to know that all the life that ever existed on this planet, and all it ever achieved, was to be obliterated?
Time is what the depressed and panicked lack.
It is human nature to look away from illness. We don’t enjoy a reminder of our own fragile mortality.
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.
Pixar is the first studio that is a movie star.
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.
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.
It’s like the high school production of something you saw at Steppenwolf, with the most gifted students in drama class playing the John Malkovich and Joan Allen roles.
Troy is based on the epic poem The Iliad by Homer, according to the credits. Homer’s estate should sue.
There are few lonelier sights than a good comedian being funny in a movie that doesn’t know what funny is.
I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try.
EVERY TIME I see a dog in a movie, I think the same thing: I want that dog. I see Skip or Lucy or Shiloh and for a moment I can’t even think about the movie’s plot. I can only think about the dog. I want to hold it, pet it, take it for walks, and tell it what a good dog it is. I want to love it, and I want it to love me. I have an empty space inside myself that can only be filled by a dog.
Never marry someone who doesn’t love the movies you love. Sooner or later, that person will not love you.
As a child I simply did not notice whether a movie was in color or not. The movies themselves were such an overwhelming mystery that if they wanted to be in black and white, that was their business.
2001: A Space Odyssey is not about a goal, but about a quest, a need.
Films are no longer concerned with the silence of God, but with the chattering of men.
People trying to be funny are never as funny as people trying to be serious and failing.