I have always followed reviews and lists. Back in the 90s, the only reason I visited my college library was to read film reviews by Khalid Mohamed from the Sunday paper on Monday morning. Circa 2005 I discovered Roger Ebert as the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize and that was also the time when the movie bug bit me. I (and all of us) was very fortunate that almost his entire work is available online and I pursued his reviews, his great movies list and imdb 250 like Mary's little lamb. I own his Great Movies I, II and III, a Movie Year Book and his Little Movie Glossary. My dear friends make fun of me saying I wont watch a movie if Ebert doesn’t have it in his Great Movies; I can’t form my own opinions and I parrot views of other people and lists. For me, reading Roger Ebert's reviews and articles has been like going to a school to attend the class of a favorite teacher. I would like to believe that he made my movie antennae (movey-sense?) sensitive to various aspects of the art form. I once famously said that I am Ekalavya to Roger Ebert's Drona.
Here is my little collection of excerpts from his reviews that remain very memorable and quotable. They range from insightful to philosophical to laugh-out-loud funny. I think the collection has reached a substantial size for it to be shared. I have tried to arrange them in a certain logical order and I hope you enjoy reading what follows as much as I have.
Reading these excerpts out to my friends to enthuse them to start watching movies and reading Ebert's views is something I have been doing for years now. I managed to make one friend a convert and another has come to follow reviews he gives poor ratings to for the humour in them. I hope you get enthused to read him too.
__________________________________________________________________
"I have here a heartfelt message from a reader who urges me not to be so hard on stupid films, because they are 'plenty smart enough for the average moviegoer.' Yes, but one hopes being an average moviegoer is not the end of the road: that one starts as a below-average filmgoer, passes through average, and, guided by the labors of America's hardworking film critics, arrives in triumph at above-average."
Introduction to 'Great Movies'
One of the gifts one movie lover can give another is the title of a wonderful film they have not yet discovered.
Casablanca
If there is ever a time when they decide that some movies should be spelled with an upper-case M, "Casablanca" should be voted first on the list of Movies.
My Fair Lady
It is unnecessary to summarize the plot or list the songs; if you are not familiar with both, you are culturally illiterate, although in six months I could pass you off as a critic at Cannes, or even a clerk in a good video store, which requires better taste.
Groundhog Day
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, in his case, doesn't creep in at its petty pace from day to day, but gets stuck like a broken record.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
That they lose their minds while all about them are keeping theirs is a tribute to their skill.
Vanaja
But "Vanaja" ends in a very Indian way, trusting to fate and fortune, believing there is a tide in the affairs of men, which -- but you know where it leads.
The Princess Bride
His voice seems to contain a measure of cynicism about fairy stories, a certain awareness that there are a lot more things on heaven and Earth than have been dreamed of by the Brothers Grimm.
Lost in Translation
I loved the moment near the end when Bob runs after Charlotte and says something in her ear, and we're not allowed to hear it.
We shouldn't be allowed to hear it. It's between them, and by this point in the movie, they've become real enough to deserve their privacy. Maybe he gave her his phone number. Or said he loved her. Or said she was a good person. Or thanked her. Or whispered, "Had we but world enough, and time..." and left her to look up the rest of it.
Psycho
What makes "Psycho" immortal, when so many films are already half-forgotten as we leave the theater, is that it connects directly with our fears: Our fears that we might impulsively commit a crime, our fears of the police, our fears of becoming the victim of a madman, and of course our fears of disappointing our mothers.
Psycho (1998)
I viewed Hitchcock's "Psycho" a week ago. Attending this new version, I felt oddly as if I were watching a provincial stock company doing the best it could without the Broadway cast. I was reminded of the child prodigy who was summoned to perform for a famous pianist. The child climbed onto the piano stool and played something by Chopin with great speed and accuracy. The great musician then patted the child on the head and said, "You can play the notes. Someday, you may be able to play the music."
Midnight Cowboy
The second scene went wrong when Joe jammed the telephone in the guy's mouth and the false teeth went flying. We already knew Joe well enough to know he simply wouldn't do that; why didn't Schlesinger(the director) know him as well?
Godfather
Familiar as I am with Robert Duvall, when he first appeared on the screen I found myself thinking, 'There's Tom Hagen.'
The Godfatehr Part III
Here, for example, is a new character, introduced as 'Sonny's illegitimate son,' and, yes, we nod like cousins at a family reunion, yes, he does seem a lot like Sonny.
Easy Rider
But it's hard to identify with the Fonda and Hopper characters. So Hopper and his co-writers Fonda and Terry Southern write in a brilliant character, Old George (played magnificently by Jack Nicholson). And when this alcoholic, tragic ACLU lawyer from a small Southern town enters the picture, suddenly that's us there on the bike with Fonda. And the movie starts to work.
Amadeus
Milos Forman's "Amadeus" is not about the genius of Mozart but about the envy of his rival Salieri, whose curse was to have the talent of a third-rate composer but the ear of a first-rate music lover, so that he knew how bad he was, and how good Mozart was.
...
This is not a vulgarization of Mozart, but a way of dramatizing that true geniuses rarely take their own work seriously, because it comes so easily for them. Great writers (Nabokov, Dickens, Wodehouse) make it look like play. Almost-great writers (Mann, Galsworthy, Wolfe) make it look like Herculean triumph. It is as true in every field; compare Shakespeare to Shaw, Jordan to Barkley, Picasso to Rothko, Kennedy to Nixon.
Murder on Orient Express
Lumet overcomes his difficulties in great style, and we're never for a moment confused (except when we're supposed to be, which is most of the time).
Jackie Brown
You savor every moment of "Jackie Brown". Those who say it is too long have developed cinematic attention deficit disorder. I wanted these characters to live, talk, deceive and scheme for hours and hours.
Buster Keaton
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... Buster survives tornadoes, waterfalls, avalanches of boulders and falls from great heights, and never pauses to take a bow.
City Lights
Most of Chaplin's films are available on video. Children who see them at a certain age don't notice they're "silent" but notice only that every frame speaks clearly to them, without all those mysterious words that clutter other films. Then children grow up, and forget this wisdom, but the films wait patiently and are willing to teach us again.
...
I witnessed the universality of Chaplin's art in one of my most treasured experiences as a moviegoer, in 1972, in Venice, where all of Chaplin's films were shown at the film festival.
One night the Piazza San Marco was darkened, and ``City Lights'' was shown on a vast screen. When the flower girl recognized the Tramp, I heard much snuffling and blowing of noses around me; there wasn't a dry eye in the piazza. Then complete darkness fell, and a spotlight singled out a balcony overlooking the square. Charlie Chaplin walked forward, and bowed. I have seldom heard such cheering.
Modern Times
They're classics, everyone agrees, but that word "classic" has become terribly cheap in relation to movies. It's applied so promiscuously that by now the only thing you can be sure of about a "film classic" is that it isn't actually in current release.
Apocalypse Now
It is not about war so much as about how war reveals truths we would be happy never to discover...If we are lucky, we spend our lives in a fool's paradise, never knowing how close we skirt the abyss.
La Dolce Vita
There may be no such thing as the sweet life. But it is necessary to find that out for yourself.
Hotel Rwanda
Deep movie emotions for me usually come not when the characters are sad, but when they are good.
Tokyo Story
Given the opportunity at a family gathering to share our hopes and disappointments, we talk about the weather and watch TV.
13 Conversations About One Thing
Movies tell narratives, and the purpose of narrative is to arrange events in an order that seems to make sense and end correctly. The Sprechers are telling us if we believe in these narratives, we're only fooling ourselves.
And yet, even so, there is a way to find happiness. That is to be curious about all of the interlocking events that add up to our lives. To notice connections. To be amused or perhaps frightened by the ways things work out. If the universe is indifferent, what a consolation that we are not.
Back to the Future 3
The one thing that remains constant in all of the "Back to the Future" movies, and which I especially like, is a sort of bittersweet, elegiac quality involving romance and time... In all of these stories, there is the realization that love depends entirely on time. Lovers like to think their love is eternal.
But do they ever realize it depends entirely on temporal coincidence, since, if they were not alive at the same time, romance hardly would be feasible?
The Truman Show
If you think "The Truman Show" is an exaggeration, reflect that Princess Diana lived under similar conditions from the day she became engaged to Charles...
For Harris, the demands of the show take precedence over any other values, and if you think that's an exaggeration, tell it to the TV news people who broadcast that Los Angeles suicide.
Raging Bull
...that, and the extraordinary moment where he looks at himself in a dressing room mirror and recites from ``On the Waterfront'' ("I coulda been a contender"). It's not De Niro doing Brando, as is often mistakenly said, but De Niro doing LaMotta doing Brando doing Terry Malloy. De Niro could do a "better" Brando imitation, but what would be the point?
The Gods Must Be Crazy
In any slapstick comedy, the gags must rest on a solid basis of logic: It's not funny to watch people being ridiculous, but it is funny to watch people doing the next logical thing, and turning out to be ridiculous.
The Empire Strikes Back
I have no doubt there are many improvements on the soundtrack, but I would have to be a dog to hear them.
Screwballs
There are scenes in this movie that are intended to inspire nostalgia, and will probably not even inspire recognition.
Frozen Assets
Movies like "Frozen Assets" are small miracles. You look at them and wonder how, at any stage of the production, anyone could have thought there was a watchable movie here... Here is a movie to watch in appalled silence. To call it one of the year's worst would be a kindness.
The Village
To call it an anticlimax would be an insult not only to climaxes but to prefixes.
Valentine's Day
"Valentine's Day" is being marketed as a Date Movie. I think it's more of a First-Date Movie. If your date likes it, do not date that person again. And if you like it, there may not be a second date.
Pearl Harbor
"Pearl Harbor" is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle.
Fanboys
Anyone who would camp out in a tent on the sidewalk for weeks in order to be first in line for a movie is more into camping on the sidewalk than movies.
Meet the Fockers
...you will probably find yourself going to "Meet the Fockers," because... you may be the kind of person who finds it entertaining to mention that you are on your way to meet the Fockers.
Hollywood Homicide
I am aware that "realtor" is a trademark and is always supposed to be used with a capital "R." But I refuse to go along. Realtors can complain all they want, but why should they get an upper-case R just because they say so? Would we capitalize Philosopher, Exterminator, Proctologist or Critic?
Godzilla
Oh, and then there are New York's Mayor Ebert and his adviser, Gene. The mayor of course makes every possible wrong decision (he is against evacuating Manhattan, etc.), and the adviser eventually gives thumbs-down to his reelection campaign. These characters are a reaction by Emmerich and Devlin to negative Siskel and Ebert reviews of their earlier movies ("Stargate," "Independence Day"), but they let us off lightly; I fully expected to be squished like a bug by Godzilla. Now that I've inspired a character in a Godzilla movie, all I really still desire is for several Ingmar Bergman characters to sit in a circle and read my reviews to one another in hushed tones.
Transformers 2
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 Bucket List
I'm thinking, just once, couldn't a movie open with the voiceover telling us what a great guy the Morgan Freeman character is? The sole redeeming merit of the film is the steady work by Morgan Freeman, who has appeared in more than one embarrassing movie, but never embarrassed himself.
Heat
De Niro and Pacino, veterans of so many great films in the crime genre, have by now spent more time playing cops and thieves than most cops and thieves have. At this point in their careers, if Pacino and De Niro go out to study a cop or a robber, it's likely their subject will have modeled himself on their performances in old movies.
Lawrence of Arabia
You can view it on video and get an idea of its story and a hint of its majesty, but to get the feeling of Lean's masterpiece you need to somehow, somewhere, see it in 70mm on a big screen. This experience is on the short list of things that must be done during the lifetime of every lover of film.
The word ''epic'' in recent years has become synonymous with ''big budget B picture.'' What you realize watching ''Lawrence of Arabia'' is that the word ''epic'' refers not to the cost or the elaborate production, but to the size of the ideas and vision. Werner Herzog's ''Aguirre, the Wrath of God'' didn't cost as much as the catering in ''Pearl Harbor,'' but it is an epic, and ''Pearl Harbor'' is not.
2001: A Space Odyssey
2001 on a TV set is like the Grand Canyon on a postcard.
A Hard Day's Night
Perhaps this was the movie that sounded the first note of the new decade--the opening chord on George Harrison's new 12-string guitar. The film was so influential in its androgynous imagery that untold thousands of young men walked into the theater with short haircuts, and their hair started growing during the movie and didn't get cut again until the 1970s.
Manhattan
It is amazing, for example, how many women believe they are unique because they find Woody sexy.
Magnolia
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. (in a movie that is about coincidences)
Titanic
(At one point Rose gives Lovejoy the finger; did young ladies do that in 1912?)
On Om Puri: Om Puri is in the peculiar position of being famous in the West for films that have never played in India, and being famous in India for films that have never played in the West.
The King's Speech
If the British monarchy is good for nothing else, it's superb at producing the subjects of films.
____________________
This is not the end. Of course, the collection keeps expanding as I discover more gems.
I have always followed reviews and lists. Back in the 90s, the only reason I visited my college library was to read film reviews by Khalid Mohamed from the Sunday paper on Monday morning. Circa 2004 I discovered Roger Ebert as the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize and that was also the time when the movie bug bit me. I (and all of us) was very fortunate that almost his entire work is available online and I pursued his reviews, his great movies list and imdb 250 like Mary's little lamb. I own his Great Movies I, II and III, a Movie Year Book and his Little Movie Glossary. My dear friends make fun of me saying I wont watch a movie if Ebert doesn’t have it in his Great Movies; I can’t form my own opinions and I parrot views of other people and lists. For me, reading Roger Ebert's reviews and articles has been like going to a school to attend the class of a favorite teacher. I would like to believe that he made my movie antennae (movey-sense?) sensitive to various aspects of the art form. I once famously called myself Ekalavya to Roger Ebert's Drona.
Here is a list of my little collection of excerpts from his reviews that remain very memorable and quotable and I keep revisiting them. They range from insightful to philosophical to laugh-out-loud funny. I think the collection has reached a substantial size for it to be shared. I have tried to arrange them in a certain logical order and I hope you enjoy reading what follows as much as I have.
Reading these excerpts out to my friends to enthuse them to start watching movies and reading Ebert's views is something I have been doing for years now. I managed to make one friend convert and another to follow reviews he gives poor stars to for the humour in them. I hope you get enthused to read him too.
Of course, the collection keeps expanding as I read more of his reviews.
"I have here a heartfelt message from a reader who urges me not to be so hard on stupid films, because they are 'plenty smart enough for the average moviegoer.' Yes, but one hopes being an average moviegoer is not the end of the road: that one starts as a below-average filmgoer, passes through average, and, guided by the labors of America's hardworking film critics, arrives in triumph at above-average."
In Introduction to 'Great Movies'
One of the gifts one movie lover can give another is the title of a wonderful film they have not yet discovered.
Casablanca:
If there is ever a time when they decide that some movies should be spelled with an upper-case M, "Casablanca" should be voted first on the list of Movies.
My Fair Lady
It is unnecessary to summarize the plot or list the songs; if you are not familiar with both, you are culturally illiterate, although in six months I could pass you off as a critic at Cannes, or even a clerk in a good video store, which requires better taste.
Groundhog Day
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, in his case, doesn't creep in at its petty pace from day to day, but gets stuck like a broken record.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
That they lose their minds while all about them are keeping theirs is a tribute to their skill.
Vanaja
But "Vanaja" ends in a very Indian way, trusting to fate and fortune, believing there is a tide in the affairs of men, which -- but you know where it leads. (Shakespeare again)
The Princess Bride
His voice seems to contain a measure of cynicism about fairy stories, a certain awareness that there are a lot more things on heaven and Earth than have been dreamed of by the Brothers Grimm.
Lost in Translation
I loved the moment near the end when Bob runs after Charlotte and says something in her ear, and we're not allowed to hear it.
We shouldn't be allowed to hear it. It's between them, and by this point in the movie, they've become real enough to deserve their privacy. Maybe he gave her his phone number. Or said he loved her. Or said she was a good person. Or thanked her. Or whispered, "Had we but world enough, and time..." and left her to look up the rest of it.
Psycho
What makes "Psycho" immortal, when so many films are already half-forgotten as we leave the theater, is that it connects directly with our fears: Our fears that we might impulsively commit a crime, our fears of the police, our fears of becoming the victim of a madman, and of course our fears of disappointing our mothers.
Psycho (1998)
I viewed Hitchcock's "Psycho" a week ago. Attending this new version, I felt oddly as if I were watching a provincial stock company doing the best it could without the Broadway cast. I was reminded of the child prodigy who was summoned to perform for a famous pianist. The child climbed onto the piano stool and played something by Chopin with great speed and accuracy. The great musician then patted the child on the head and said, "You can play the notes. Someday, you may be able to play the music."
Midnight Cowboy
The second scene went wrong when Joe jammed the telephone in the guy's mouth and the false teeth went flying. We already knew Joe well enough to know he simply wouldn't do that; why didn't Schlesinger(the director) know him as well?
Godfather
Familiar as I am with Robert Duvall, when he first appeared on the screen I found myself thinking, 'There's Tom Hagen.'
The Godfatehr Part III
Here, for example, is a new character, introduced as 'Sonny's illegitimate son,' and, yes, we nod like cousins at a family reunion, yes, he does seem a lot like Sonny.
Easy Rider
But it's hard to identify with the Fonda and Hopper characters. So Hopper and his co-writers Fonda and Terry Southern write in a brilliant character, Old George (played magnificently by Jack Nicholson). And when this alcoholic, tragic ACLU lawyer from a small Southern town enters the picture, suddenly that's us there on the bike with Fonda. And the movie starts to work.
Amadeus
Milos Forman's "Amadeus" is not about the genius of Mozart but about the envy of his rival Salieri, whose curse was to have the talent of a third-rate composer but the ear of a first-rate music lover, so that he knew how bad he was, and how good Mozart was.
This is not a vulgarization of Mozart, but a way of dramatizing that true geniuses rarely take their own work seriously, because it comes so easily for them. Great writers (Nabokov, Dickens, Wodehouse) make it look like play. Almost-great writers (Mann, Galsworthy, Wolfe) make it look like Herculean triumph. It is as true in every field; compare Shakespeare to Shaw, Jordan to Barkley, Picasso to Rothko, Kennedy to Nixon.
Murder on Orient Express
Lumet overcomes his difficulties in great style, and we're never for a moment confused (except when we're supposed to be, which is most of the time).
Jackie Brown
You savor every moment of ``Jackie Brown.'' Those who say it is too long have developed cinematic attention deficit disorder. I wanted these characters to live, talk, deceive and scheme for hours and hours.
Buster Keaton
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... Buster survives tornadoes, waterfalls, avalanches of boulders and falls from great heights, and never pauses to take a bow.
City Lights
Most of Chaplin's films are available on video. Children who see them at a certain age don't notice they're ``silent'' but notice only that every frame speaks clearly to them, without all those mysterious words that clutter other films. Then children grow up, and forget this wisdom, but the films wait patiently and are willing to teach us again.
-----
I witnessed the universality of Chaplin's art in one of my most treasured experiences as a moviegoer, in 1972, in Venice, where all of Chaplin's films were shown at the film festival.
One night the Piazza San Marco was darkened, and ``City Lights'' was shown on a vast screen. When the flower girl recognized the Tramp, I heard much snuffling and blowing of noses around me; there wasn't a dry eye in the piazza. Then complete darkness fell, and a spotlight singled out a balcony overlooking the square. Charlie Chaplin walked forward, and bowed. I have seldom heard such cheering.
Modern Times
They're classics, everyone agrees, but that word "classic" has become terribly cheap in relation to movies. It's applied so promiscuously that by now the only thing you can be sure of about a "film classic" is that it isn't actually in current release.
Apocalypse Now
It is not about war so much as about how war reveals truths we would be happy never to discover...If we are lucky, we spend our lives in a fool's paradise, never knowing how close we skirt the abyss.
La Dolce Vita
There may be no such thing as the sweet life. But it is necessary to find that out for yourself.
Hotel Rwanda
Deep movie emotions for me usually come not when the characters are sad, but when they are good.
Tokyo Story
Given the opportunity at a family gathering to share our hopes and disappointments, we talk about the weather and watch TV.
13 Conversations About One Thing
Movies tell narratives, and the purpose of narrative is to arrange events in an order that seems to make sense and end correctly. The Sprechers are telling us if we believe in these narratives, we're only fooling ourselves.
And yet, even so, there is a way to find happiness. That is to be curious about all of the interlocking events that add up to our lives. To notice connections. To be amused or perhaps frightened by the ways things work out. If the universe is indifferent, what a consolation that we are not.
Back to the Future 3
The one thing that remains constant in all of the "Back to the Future" movies, and which I especially like, is a sort of bittersweet, elegiac quality involving romance and time... In all of these stories, there is the realization that love depends entirely on time. Lovers like to think their love is eternal.
But do they ever realize it depends entirely on temporal coincidence, since, if they were not alive at the same time, romance hardly would be feasible?
The Truman Show
If you think ``The Truman Show'' is an exaggeration, reflect that Princess Diana lived under similar conditions from the day she became engaged to Charles...
For Harris, the demands of the show take precedence over any other values, and if you think that's an exaggeration, tell it to the TV news people who broadcast that Los Angeles suicide.
Raging Bull
It is a vicious circle. Freud called it the "madonna-whore complex." Groucho Marx put it somewhat differently: "I wouldn't belong to any club that would have me as a member." It amounts to a man having such low self-esteem that he (a) cannot respect a woman who would sleep with him, and (b) is convinced that, given the choice, she would rather be sleeping with someone else.
...that, and the extraordinary moment where he looks at himself in a dressing room mirror and recites from ``On the Waterfront'' (``I coulda been a contender''). It's not De Niro doing Brando, as is often mistakenly said, but De Niro doing LaMotta doing Brando doing Terry Malloy. De Niro could do a ``better'' Brando imitation, but what would be the point?
The Gods Must Be Crazy
In any slapstick comedy, the gags must rest on a solid basis of logic: It's not funny to watch people being ridiculous, but it is funny to watch people doing the next logical thing, and turning out to be ridiculous.
The Empire Strikes Back
I have no doubt there are many improvements on the soundtrack, but I would have to be a dog to hear them.
Screwballs
There are scenes in this movie that are intended to inspire nostalgia, and will probably not even inspire recognition.
Frozen Assets
Movies like "Frozen Assets" are small miracles. You look at them and wonder how, at any stage of the production, anyone could have thought there was a watchable movie here... Here is a movie to watch in appalled silence. To call it one of the year's worst would be a kindness.
The Village
To call it an anticlimax would be an insult not only to climaxes but to prefixes.
Valentine's Day
"Valentine's Day" is being marketed as a Date Movie. I think it's more of a First-Date Movie. If your date likes it, do not date that person again. And if you like it, there may not be a second date.
Ghost
We like to picture our dear ones up there on a cloud, eternally "looking down" on us, so devoted that they would rather see what we're cooking for dinner than have a chat with Aristotle or Elvis.
Pearl Harbor
"Pearl Harbor" is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle.
Fanboys
Anyone who would camp out in a tent on the sidewalk for weeks in order to be first in line for a movie is more into camping on the sidewalk than movies.
Meet the Fockers
...you will probably find yourself going to "Meet the Fockers," because... you may be the kind of person who finds it entertaining to mention that you are on your way to meet the Fockers.
Hollywood Homicide:
I am aware that "realtor" is a trademark and is always supposed to be used with a capital "R." But I refuse to go along. Realtors can complain all they want, but why should they get an upper-case R just because they say so? Would we capitalize Philosopher, Exterminator, Proctologist or Critic?
Godzilla
Oh, and then there are New York's Mayor Ebert and his adviser, Gene. The mayor of course makes every possible wrong decision (he is against evacuating Manhattan, etc.), and the adviser eventually gives thumbs-down to his reelection campaign. These characters are a reaction by Emmerich and Devlin to negative Siskel and Ebert reviews of their earlier movies ("Stargate," "Independence Day"), but they let us off lightly; I fully expected to be squished like a bug by Godzilla. Now that I've inspired a character in a Godzilla movie, all I really still desire is for several Ingmar Bergman characters to sit in a circle and read my reviews to one another in hushed tones.
Transformers 2
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 Bucket List
I'm thinking, just once, couldn't a movie open with the voiceover telling us what a great guy the Morgan Freeman character is? The sole redeeming merit of the film is the steady work by Morgan Freeman, who has appeared in more than one embarrassing movie, but never embarrassed himself.
Heat
De Niro and Pacino, veterans of so many great films in the crime genre, have by now spent more time playing cops and thieves than most cops and thieves have. At this point in their careers, if Pacino and De Niro go out to study a cop or a robber, it's likely their subject will have modeled himself on their performances in old movies.
Lawrence of Arabia
You can view it on video and get an idea of its story and a hint of its majesty, but to get the feeling of Lean's masterpiece you need to somehow, somewhere, see it in 70mm on a big screen. This experience is on the short list of things that must be done during the lifetime of every lover of film.
The word ''epic'' in recent years has become synonymous with ''big budget B picture.'' What you realize watching ''Lawrence of Arabia'' is that the word ''epic'' refers not to the cost or the elaborate production, but to the size of the ideas and vision. Werner Herzog's ''Aguirre, the Wrath of God'' didn't cost as much as the catering in ''Pearl Harbor,'' but it is an epic, and ''Pearl Harbor'' is not.
2001: A Space Odyssey
2001 on a TV set is like the Grand Canyon on a postcard.
A Hard Day's Night
Perhaps this was the movie that sounded the first note of the new decade--the opening chord on George Harrison's new 12-string guitar. The film was so influential in its androgynous imagery that untold thousands of young men walked into the theater with short haircuts, and their hair started growing during the movie and didn't get cut again until the 1970s.
Manhattan
It is amazing, for example, how many women believe they are unique because they find Woody sexy.
Magnolia
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. (in a movie that is about coincidences)
Titanic
(At one point Rose gives Lovejoy the finger; did young ladies do that in 1912?)
On Om Puri: Om Puri is in the peculiar position of being famous in the West for films that have never played in India, and being famous in India for films that have never played in the West.
The King's Speech
If the British monarchy is good for nothing else, it's superb at producing the subjects of films.
