Roger Ebert Quotes on Movies (14 Quotes)

Well, you know, a lot of modern directors and their movies are influenced by the flat lighting and textbook cutting style of television.

Movies absorb our attention more completely, I think.

The secret of the movie is that it doesn't strain to draw parallels with current world events - because it doesn't have to.

By going to the movies, and because of other things, too, going to college, making a wide variety of friends, moving around traveling, I became a lot more open-minded than the heritage I was born into might have suggested.

I don't think he's an a-, ... But if he's going to persist in making bad movies, he's going to have to grow accustomed to reading bad reviews.

You can have a movie with hardly any cuts, or very few cuts, that is fascinating, you can't take your eyes away from it... Look at some of the long takes in Citizen Kane.

If a movie is really working, you forget for two hours your Social Security number and where your car is parked. You are having a vicarious experience. You are identifying, in one way or another, with the people on the screen.

Most of us do not consciously look at movies.

Class is often invisible in America in the movies, and usually not the subject of the film.

No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough.

The reason (Burton) wanted to make 'Ed Wood' is that Ed Wood had so much fun making movies. And that's where Ed Wood and Tim Burton connect. Tim Burton makes films that are a lot better, but he doesn't make them with any more love.

It's a good question, because a movie isn't good or bad based on its politics. It's usually good or bad for other reasons, though you might agree or disagree with its politics.

If a movie isn't a hit right out of the gate, they drop it. Which means that the whole mainstream Hollywood product has been skewed toward violence and vulgar teen comedy.

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