Sarah Vowell Quotes

I don't mind other guys seeing movies I want to see and then writing about them. That's fine, especially when it's the 'New Yorker''s Anthony Lane, because he knows this stuff pretty well.

In LA I was watching At the Movies with Ebert and Roper, it was, nice to see them differentiate between the subject matter and the art form of making the film, and they both gave it thumbs up, and I was kind of pleased at their honesty as far as reviewers go.

I read every single review, because I love film criticism and I'm interested.

I don't really say much about reviewers. It's a very tough job to get all of the depth of a movie all at once.

There's a lot of vitriolic ranting out there, but there are literally hundreds of critics on the web who care deeply about film and having something to say about it.

You tell me that 'Date Night' was good? I'm not going to see it. I will debate you on it, having no knowledge of the footage in the film. I was next to someone on the plane watching it, and they were dozing off.

No critic writing about a film could say more than the film itself, although they do their best to make us think the oppposite.

One thing I don't do anymore is read or pay attention to the critical response, which is a bummer because when I started, and when I was in school, I loved to read old film criticism.

I've seen 'Legend'. I like a different kind of cinema, but when done with conviction, anything looks good.

I came to the conviction that film criticism, in and of itself, was an art.

I'm one of those directors who read reviews, even if they're bad, because I started as a film critic as a cinema student. I indulge in the art of criticism in general.

I think there are just bad films and good films. Period.

If a movie has three decent scenes and a decent character, I think, 'OK, at least they got that guy right.'

Reviewers are entitled to say if they liked the screenplay, performance, and execution of a film or not. But when they say things like the film doesn't cater to a certain audience, it leaves people wondering if they should watch it.

As a critic, I try very hard to say exactly what I think. And in a medium in which we are well-known for the binary thumbs up and thumbs down, I try to be able to give the mixed review. But most pictures fall into that middle ground, so I wrestle over which way my thumb is going to turn. It's not flip.

It's hard to see a film one time and really "get it," and write fully and intelligently about it. That's a review. That's not film criticism.

How can you judge one film against another?

One of my favorite films is 'Big Fish,' which I think is a masterpiece.

The culture of independent film criticism has totally gone down the drain and this seems to come with the territory of the consumer age that we are now living in.

If you go out and see a lot of movies in a given year, it's really hard to come up with a top ten, because you saw a lot of stuff that you liked. A top 20 is easier. You probably get one masterpiece a year, and I don't think you should expect more than one masterpiece a year, except in a really great year.

In the dear dead days beyond recall, when I was in my prime as a film critic, the industry was booming. Hollywood, to give them their due, always called it the industry, through quite a few imagined it as an art form and went through several hours regularly at tiresome films in the sacred cause of art.

They always find new ways of talking about my movies.

I love 'Sunset Boulevard.' I love the writing, I love the performances, I love the camera work. I think it's a perfect movie.

There's a critic that I love, Manohla Dargis of the 'L.A. Weekly.' I like the underground point of view; it's my old radical sympathies. Maybe I like her because she likes my movies.

Critics should think about how the opening weekend audience might want to discover some surprises for themselves.