Roger Ebert Quotes

The muse visits during the act of creation, not before. Don't wait for her. Start alone.

For years people have been telling me they just don’t see what’s so great about “Citizen Kane.” Now they tell me they just don’t see what’s so great about “Vertigo.” My answer remains the same: “You’re insufficiently evolved as a moviegoer.” Or, more simply, “You’re wrong.”

"Cedar Rapids" has something of the same spirit of "Fargo" in its approach to the earnest natures of its small-towners. The two films, otherwise so different, like their characters. Some of them do unspeakable things, especially in "Fargo," but none of them want to be evil. They just hope to get out in one piece.

What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. You can't say it wasn't interesting. My lifetime's memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris.

"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... I hate it when that happens.

"Faster" is a pure thriller, all blood, no frills, in which a lot of people get shot, mostly in the head. Rotate the plot, change the period, spruce up the dialogue, and this could have been a hard-boiled 1940s noir. But it doesn't pause for fine touches and efficiently delivers action for an audience that likes one-course meals.

Julie Taymor's film “The Tempest” doesn't feel like a farewell. She does not abjure her rough magic. In a film filled with sound and fury, she rages against the dying of the light. There is no reconciliation or closure. What reads as a poetic acceptance of human mortality plays as the defiance of a magician clinging to familiar tricks.

It was not only the best film of 2010, but also one of those films that helps define a year.

"The Social Network" is a great film not because of its dazzling style or visual cleverness, but because it is splendidly well-made. Despite the baffling complications of computer programming, web strategy and big finance, Aaron Sorkin's screenplay makes it all clear, and we don't follow the story so much as get dragged along behind it. I saw it with an audience that seemed wrapped up in an unusual way: It was very, very interested.

At the end, what we have here is a superior historical drama and a powerful personal one. And two opposites who remain friends for the rest of their lives.

"The Social Network" is a great film not because of its dazzling style or visual cleverness, but because it is splendidly well-made.

Nothing heats up. The movie doesn't lead us, it simply stays in step. Jack Nicholson is one of the few actors who always inspires a quiet chuckle of anticipation when he first appears in a movie. This is a rare movie that doesn't give him a chance to deserve it.

It's traditional in many ballet-based dramas for a summing-up to take place in a bravura third act. “Black Swan” has a beauty. All of the themes of the music and life, all of the parallels of story and ballet, all of the confusion of reality and dream come together in a grand exhilaration of towering passion. There is really only one place this can take us, and it does.

3-D is a distracting, annoying, anti-realistic, juvenile abomination to use as an excuse for higher prices.

The bottom line is that so many of you were betrayed by life before you really even got started.

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

Many moviegoers and video viewers say they do not "like" black and white films. In my opinion, they are cutting themselves off from much of the mystery and beauty of the movies.