"Herzog by his example gave me a model for the film artist: fearless, driven by his subjects, indifferent to commercial considerations, trusting his audience to follow him anywhere. In the 38 years since I saw my first Herzog film, after an outpouring of some 50 features and documentaries, he has never created a single film that is compromised, shameful, made for pragmatic reasons or uninteresting. Even his failures are spectacular."
Roger Joseph Ebert was an American film critic, film historian, essayist, screenwriter and author. He wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. Ebert was known for his intimate, Midwestern writing style and critical views informed by values of populism and humanism. Writing in a prose style intended to be entertaining and direct, he made sophisticated cinematic and analyti
"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 isnt worth the effort."
"Battlefield Earth is like taking a bus trip with someone who has needed a bath for a long time. Its not merely bad; its unpleasant in a hostile way. The visuals are grubby and drab. The characters are unkempt and have rotten teeth. Breathing tubes hang from their noses like ropes of snot. The soundtrack sounds like the boom mike is being slammed against the inside of a 55-gallon drum. The plot. … The director, Roger Christian, has learned from better films that directors sometimes tilt their cameras, but he has not learned why. … Some movies run off the rails. This one is like the train crash in The Fugitive. I watched it in mounting gloom, realizing I was witnessing something historic, a film that for decades to come will be the punch line of jokes about bad movies."
"It was W. C. Fields who hated to appear in the same scene with a child, a dog, or a plunging neckline - because nobody in the audience would be looking at him. Jennifer Aniston has the same problem in this movie even when shes in scenes all by herself."
"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," its on the way to the video store."
"[D]oes the real world have any more substance than visions and hallucinations — when were having them? At any given moment, whats happening in our minds is all and everything that happens."
"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 dont, you wont be able to understand your own explanation." That is why 90% of academic film theory is bullshit. Jargon is the last refuge of the scoundrel."
"How seldom, Friend! a good great man inherits Honour or wealth, with all his worth and pains! It sounds like stories from the land of spirits, If any man obtain that which he merits, Or any merit that which he obtains.   . For shame, dear Friend! renounce this canting strain! … Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends! Hath he not always treasures, always friends, The good great man? Three treasures, and , And , regular as infants breath; And three firm friends, more sure than day and night, , his , and the Angel ."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge"He who loves is not ashamed before men of what he does for God, neither does he hide it through shame though the whole world should condemn it."
"Shamino: (when the player clicks repeatedly on a cat) Bloody cats!"
"A cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather, Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together. Science announced nonentity and art admired decay; The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay; Round us in antic order their crippled vices came — Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame."
"And then it happened. Suddenly, shamelessly, and without warning, as it must in all musical comedies, they were struck by... a love song."
"Prisoner in Castle British dungeon: "Shamino, speak up man!"