100 (or More) Great Quotes by Roger Ebert: An Interactive List

[Spinal]

1. "Mad Dog Time is the first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time."

[Spinal]

2. “This movie doesn’t scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels.” (Freddy Got Fingered)

[Winston*]

3. "Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks. "
(Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo)

[Spinal]

4. "I had a colonoscopy once, and they let me watch it on TV. It was more entertaining than The Brown Bunny."

[Kurosawa Fan]

5. "Here are some things, however, that I do not believe: That Mrs. Brody could be haunted by flashbacks to events where she was not present and that, in some cases, no survivors witnessed. That the movie would give us one shark attack as a dream sequence, have the hero wake up in a sweat, then give us a second shark attack, and then cut to the hero awake in bed, giving us the only thing worse than the old "it's only a dream" routine, which is the old "is it a dream or not?" routine. That Mrs. Brody would commandeer a boat and sail out alone into the ocean to sacrifice herself to the shark, so that the killing could end. That Caine's character could or would crash-land his airplane at sea so that he and two other men could swim to Mrs. Brody's rescue. That after being trapped in a sinking airplane by the shark and disappearing under the water, Caine could survive the attack, swim to the boat, and climb on board - not only completely unhurt but also wearing a shirt and pants that are not even wet. That the shark would stand on its tail in the water long enough for the boat to ram it. That the director, Joseph Sargent, would film this final climactic scene so incompetently that there is not even an establishing shot, so we have to figure out what happened on the basis of empirical evidence.

There is one other thing I can't believe about "Jaws the Revenge," and that is that on March 30, Michael Caine passed up his chance to accept his Academy Award in person because of his commitment to this movie. Maybe he was thinking the same thing as the marine biologist in the movie: that if you don't go right back in the water after something terrible happens to you, you might be too afraid to ever go back in again."

Jaws: The Revenge

Sorry it's so long. It's totally worth it though. I couldn't find a spot to edit.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Hah! That review also has the line (I may be paraphrasing - memory): "What shark wouldn't want revenge on the wife of the man who killed it?"

[Rowland]

2. “This movie doesn’t scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels.” (Freddy Got Fingered)

I've used variations of this line in the past. Thankfully nobody I've used it towards has been familiar with Ebert's review of Freddy Got Fingered. :lol:

[Boner M]

6. "This movie should be cut into free ukulele picks for the poor." (Mad Dog Time, again)

[Spinal]

7. "Every once in a while I have what I think of as an out-of-the-body experience at a movie. When the ESP people use a phrase like that, they're referring to the sensation of the mind actually leaving the body and spiriting itself off to China or Peoria or a galaxy far, far away. When I use the phrase, I simply mean that my imagination has forgotten it is actually present in a movie theater and thinks it's up there on the screen. In a curious sense, the events in the movie seem real, and I seem to be a part of them. Star Wars works like that."

[Spinal]

8. "Was there no one connected with this project who read the screenplay, considered the story, evaluated the proposed film and vomited?" (Last Rites)

[Winston*]

9. "I've never had chemo, as Edward and Carter must endure, but I have had cancer, and believe me, during convalescence after surgery the last item on your bucket list is climbing a Himalaya. Your list is more likely to be topped by keeping down a full meal, having a triumphant bowel movement, keeping your energy up in the afternoon, letting your loved ones know you love them, and convincing the doc your reports of pain are real and not merely disguising your desire to become a drug addict."
(The Bucket List)

[Spinal]

10. “A case can be made for the movie, but it would involve transforming the experience of viewing the film (which is excruciatingly boring) into something more interesting, a fable about life and death. Just as a bad novel can be made into a good movie, so can a boring movie be made into a fascinating movie review.” (Taste of Cherry)

[Rowland]

10. “A case can be made for the movie, but it would involve transforming the experience of viewing the film (which is excruciatingly boring) into something more interesting, a fable about life and death. Just as a bad novel can be made into a good movie, so can a boring movie be made into a fascinating movie review.” (Taste of Cherry)

This is a great quote, and very reflective of how fascinating reviews can often be more edifying than the movies they are inspired by.

[ledfloyd]

11. "Think about these things, reader. Don’t sigh and turn the page. Think that I have written them and you have read them, and the odds against either of us ever having existed are greater by far than one to all of the atoms in creation." (Red)

[Mysterious Dude]

12. "What James Mason, as the old master of Falconhurst, is doing in this film is beyond me; He told one interviewer he needed the money for his alimony payments, but surely jail would have been better." (Mandingo)

[Spinal]

13. "The director, whose name is Pitof, was probably issued with two names at birth and would be wise to use the other one on his next project." (Catwoman)

[Spinal]

14. "The performers in most skin flicks seem so impervious to ordinary mortal failings, so blasé in the face of the most outrageous sexual invention, that finally they just become cartoon characters. [Sylvia] Kristel actually seems to be present in the film, and as absorbed in its revelations as we are. It's a relief, during a time of cynicism in which sex is supposed to sell anything, to find a skin flick that's a lot better than it probably had to be." (Emmanuelle)

[Ivan Drago]

Are we limiting these to his reviews or can they be from At The Movies, too?

15. "Our next movie is Mr. Deeds, and it deserves that title almost as much as Scooby-Doo deserves to be called Citizen Kane." (Mr. Deeds review on an episode of Ebert & Roeper At The Movies)

[Spinal]

Are we limiting these to his reviews or can they be from At The Movies, too?

No limits.

16. "You know that for Gene speech is a second language?"

[Spinal]

17. "I am required to award stars to movies I review. This time, I refuse to do it. The star rating system is unsuited to this film. Is the movie good? Is it bad? Does it matter? It is what it is and occupies a world where the stars don't shine." (The Human Centipede)

[Spinal]

18. "The Last Airbender is an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented."

[Spinal]

19. "I am forced to conclude that [Armond] White is, as charged, a troll. A smart and knowing one, but a troll."

[baby doll]

This is a great quote, and very reflective of how fascinating reviews can often be more edifying than the movies they are inspired by.

Except Taste of Cherry is actually pretty awesome. To be sure, it obviously wasn't Ebert's kind of movie, and it's obvious the only reason he and his editor felt that it was worth writing about in the first place when he hadn't reviewed any of Kiarostami's film up till that point was because it won the Palme d'or at Cannes. In other words, Kiarostami's reputation was getting too big to be contained in a kind of festival ghetto where Ebert could ignore him (and Angelopoulos and late Godard), and his task in that review was to jam the genie back in the bottle.

[Rowland]

Except Taste of Cherry is actually pretty awesome. To be sure, it obviously wasn't Ebert's kind of movie, and it's obvious the only reason he and his editor felt that it was worth writing about in the first place when he hadn't reviewed any of Kiarostami's film up till that point was because it won the Palme d'or at Cannes. In other words, Kiarostami's reputation was getting too big to be contained in a kind of festival ghetto where Ebert could ignore him (and Angelopoulos and late Godard), and his task in that review was to jam the genie back in the bottle.

I don't know the context of the quote and Ebert's alleged motives behind it as well as you apparently do. I was merely regarding the substance of the quote on its own isolated terms.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Or he didn't like the movie.