Author: Roger Ebert Page 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.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter

Going to see Godzilla at the Palais of the Cannes Film Festival is like attending a satanic ritual in St. Peter's Basilica… it was the festival's closing film, coming at the end like the horses in a parade, perhaps for the same reason.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter

The movie is an assault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense, and the human desire to be entertained. No matter what they're charging to get in, it's worth more to get out.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter

Young men: If you attend this crap with friends who admire it, tactfully inform them they are idiots. Young women: If your date likes this movie, tell him you’ve been thinking it over, and you think you should consider spending some time apart.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter

If I ever do a festival of films that deserve to be overlooked, Friends & Lovers is my opening night selection.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter

John Waters’ Pink Flamingos has been restored for its 25th anniversary revival, and with any luck at all that means I won’t have to see it again for another 25 years. If I haven’t retired by then, I will.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter

Only enormously talented people could have made Death to Smoochy. Those with lesser gifts would have lacked the nerve to make a film so bad, so miscalculated, so lacking any connection with any possible audience.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter

The movie has been signed by Michael Bay. This is the same man who directed The Rock in 1996. Now he has made Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Faust made a better deal.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter

I hated this movie. Hated, hated, hated, hated, hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter

It's the worst kind of bad film: the kind that gets you all worked up and then lets you down, instead of just being lousy from the first shot.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter

Perhaps it was made by beings from another planet, who were able to watch our television in order to absorb key concepts such as cars, sex, leukemia, and casinos, but formed an imperfect view of how to fit them together.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter

Since the scenes where they're together are so much less convincing than the ones where they fall apart, watching the movie is like being on a double-date from hell.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter

Boat Trip arrives preceded by publicity saying many homosexuals have been outraged by the film. Now that it's in theaters, everybody else has a chance to join them. Not that the film is outrageous. That would be asking too much. It is dim-witted, unfunny, too shallow to be offensive…

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter

Dirty Love wasn't written and directed, it was committed. Here is a film so pitiful, it doesn't rise to the level of badness.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter

Add it all up, and what you’ve got here is a waste of good electricity. I’m not talking about the electricity between the actors. I’m talking about the current to the projector.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter

You know when sometimes a film catches fire inside a projector? If it happened with this one, I suspect the audience might cheer.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter

You know you’re in trouble when you’re reduced to praising a movie for its absence of fart jokes, and have to add ‘almost.’

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter

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.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter

Caligula is sickening, utterly worthless, shameful trash. If it is not the worst film I have ever seen, that makes it all the more shameful.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter

Parents: If you encounter teenagers who say they liked this movie, do not let them date your children.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter

I will one day be thin… but Vincent Gallo will always be the director of The Brown Bunny.

(1942 – 2013) American film critic, journalist & screenwriter