Roger Ebert Quotes

282 Sourced Quotes

(Guy) Pearce, as the hero, makes the mistake of trying to give a good and realistic performance. (Jeremy) Irons at least knows what kind of movie he's in, and hams it up accordingly.

Roger Ebert
Going to a movie so you won't be offended is like eating potato chips made with Olestra; you avoid the dangers of the real thing, but your insides fill up with synthetic runny stuff.

Roger Ebert
Resentment is just a way of letting someone else use your mind rent-free.

Roger Ebert
A young girl is possessed by a devil, and Constantine shouts, 'I need a mirror! Now! At least three feet high!' He can capture the demon in the mirror and throw it out the window, see, although you wonder why supernatural beings would have such low-tech security holes.

Roger Ebert
It goes to show you how we in the press so often miss the big stories that are right under our noses. There is a famous journalistic legend about the time a young reporter covered the Johnstown flood of 1889. The kid wrote: God sat on a hillside overlooking Johnstown today and looked at the destruction He had wrought. His editor cabled back: Forget flood. Interview God.

Roger Ebert
People read the papers not in the hopes of learning something new, but in the expectation of being told what they already know. This is a form of living death. Its apotheosis is the daily poll in USA Today, which informs us what percentage of a small number of unscientifically selected people called a toll number to vote on questions that cannot possibly be responded to with a yes or no.

Roger Ebert
Teenagers used to go to the movies to see adults having sex. Today adults go to the movies to see teenagers having sex.

Roger Ebert
I am, beneath everything else, a fan. I was fixed in this mode as a young boy and am awed by people who take the risks of performance.

Roger Ebert
While I am usually in despair when a movie abandons its plot for a third act given over entirely to action, I have no problem with the way Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets ends, because it has been pointing toward this ending, hinting about it, preparing us for it, all the way through. What a glorious movie.

Roger Ebert
It does seem true that a lot of people will do anything, however humiliating, for fame.

Roger Ebert
Show me a sexual practice that involves ice cubes and hot sauce, and I will show you a sexual practice that would be improved without them.

Roger Ebert
Of Cate Blanchett:
That Blanchett could appear in the same Toronto Film Festival playing Elizabeth and Bob Dylan, both splendidly, is a wonder of acting.

Roger Ebert