L Everett Scott

Just sharing...


Roger Ebert on Catwoman: "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."

Unknown on Star Trek: The Motion Picture: "To call this a movie isn’t accurate because it doesn’t move. It’s so inert that it’s not so much Star Trek as it is Stuck Trek."

Roger Ebert on Little Indian, Big City: "There is a movie called Fargo playing right now. It is a masterpiece. Go see it. If you, under any circumstances, see Little Indian, Big City, I will never let you read one of my reviews again."

Robert Walinsky from The Dallas Observer on Little Nicky: "Adam Sandler plays the son of the devil, which leads one to believe that Little Nicky is, in fact, a documentary; how else to explain the career of the unfunniest funny man since Idi Amin?"

Roger Ebert on Freddy Got Fingered: "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."

Leonard Maltin's review of 1948's Isn't it Romantic? "No."

Roger Ebert on The Last Airbender: "I close with the hope that the title proves prophetic."

Abob Teff

Crocker Jarmen

The first line of Ebert's three star review of Irreversible pretty much say it all: "Irreversible is a film so violent and cruel most audiences will find it unwatchable."

And there's the final line of his Fargo review: "Films like Fargo are why I love the movies."

Red Hood

Is there anyone as good as Roger Ebert was? After his death, I haven't seen a film critic to make me want to see movies as much as Ebert did with his writing.

SmackDaddy

I do miss him. He was my favorite critic.

Decker

I can't find the source of the quote, but I remember some critic saying something along the lines of the following : "There are two reasons to go see 'Alexander' : Rosario Dawson's left breast and her right breast".

Kurt D

Ebert's take-downs were without parallel. I don't know if his take on Jaws: The Revenge got straight to the point, but it's one I re-read on a regular basis just for laughs.

Josh-da-man

majorjoe23

Shannon Nutt

Gene Siksel even confessed once that he wished he was as good of a writer as Ebert was. That could not have been easy for him to say.

Decker

As great as Ebert was, he couldn't top Michael Caine's own assessment :

B5Erik

Leonard Maltin also did a fantastic review of Transylvania 6-5000 on Entertainment Tonight when it came out.

He had a set that was like a little movie theater, with him in the seats. He was bouncing up and down as the classic song, "Pennsylvania 6-5000," played. When they got to the part where band shouts, "Pennsylvania 6-5000," they dubbed in, "Traysylvania" over Pennsylvania. So it played out like this...

[Maltin bouncing to the music] "Transylvania 6-5000," "Stinks. I'm Leonard Maltin, Entertainment Tonight."

It was pure GOLD. He still gets comments on it to this day.

rbrown498

I've always loved Ed Naha's takedown of From Hell It Came in his book Horrors: From Screen to Scream: "And to Hell it can go."

Burt Prelutsky wrote of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, "Starts off with a bang and ends up chitty."

John Barbour had this to say about At Long Last Love: "If this film were any more of a dog, it would shed."

Quatermass

I don't know who originally wrote it, and it was kind of an obvious choice, but the entire review for the 1982 Pavarotti movie "Yes, Giorgio" was "No, Giorgio"

bralph

Trevor

Saw this somewhere...

Alien is a movie where nobody listens to the smart woman, and then they all die except for the smart woman and her cat. Four stars.

L Everett Scott

A few more to (hopefully) provide a few chuckles...

Leonard Maltin on Police Academy 6: "Only—repeat only—for those who thought Police Academy 5 was robbed at Oscar time."

Mark Kermode on The Hunger Games: "Battle Royale with cheese."

Roger Ebert on Valentine's Day: "[This fim] 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."

Leslie Halliwell on The Stud: "Like being buried alive in a coffin with 100 back-issues of Penthouse for company."

Roger Ebert on Spice World: "The Spice Girls are easier to tell apart than the Mutant Ninja Turtles, but that is small consolation: What can you say about five women whose principal distinguishing characteristic is that they have different names? They occupy 'Spice World' as if they were watching it: They're so detached they can't even successfully lip-synch their own songs."

Film Magazine on The Swarm: "An atrocity, the kind of movie one waits years to avoid."

Vincent Canby on Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me: "Everything about David Lynch's 'Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me' is a deception. It's not the worst movie ever made; it just seems to be. Its 134 minutes induce a state of simulated brain death, an effect as easily attained in half the time by staring at the blinking lights on a Christmas tree."

Unknown on House of the Dead: "The main difference between getting punched in the throat and Uwe Boll's movie is the running time. That and the fact that a throat punch hurts less."

Roger Ebert referring to the original The Blue Lagoon during his on-screen discussion of Return to the Blue Lagoon: "Now remember The Blue Lagoon made in 1980 and starring Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins. Who could forget that? Try as we might."

William Fuld

Vincent Canby was a clown.

digidoh

Maltin has not seen all the movies in his book. I no longer have the earlier editions, but the initial review of Star Trek--The Motion Picture summed up along the lines of …"with Shatner's performance being the worst in a film with this budget. Why couldn't the money have been spent on something better … like a theatrical version of Gilligan's Island?" The current review rates at two-and-a-half stars, but I think the initial rating was one and a half (the next "highest" rating after BOMB).

Maltin's(?) review for Staying Alive, the sequel to Saturday Night Fever, included this: "Broadway show finale, Satan's Alley (billed, with amazing accuracy, as a musical trip through Hell), is a camp classic …"

Gene Shalit chose the original Star Wars as one of the best of 1977. He called it "...the world's first toy movie."

Red Hood

Back in the day when Craig Kilborn was the host of the Daily Show, they used to have a movie review segment. The one review I remember the most from the show was for Hope Floats starring Sandra Bullock: "Hope Floats. So does poop"

Rival11

at Ebert's reviews - awesome.

L Everett Scott

A few more pithy reviews because reasons.

The Scotsman on 1982's The Thing: 'The only avenue left to explore would seem to be either concentration camp documentaries or the snuff movie.'

Unknown on Fifty Shades of Grey: 'About as erotic as athlete's foot.'

Mark Kermode on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: 'Let's be absolutely clear: yes, the film is mind-bendingly terrible. It is incredibly long and incredibly loud and incredibly boring. Nothing happens very loudly about 100 times.'

Unknown on one of the Friday the 13th sequels: 'The censors say you have to be 18 to see this movie. I say you'd have to be a moron.'

More from Roger Ebert:

The Beyond: 'The movie is being revived around the country for midnight cult showings. Midnight is not late enough.'

Friends and Lovers: 'Last week I hosted the first Overlooked Film Festival at the University of Illinois, for films that have been unfairly overlooked. If I ever do a festival of films that deserve to be overlooked, Friends & Lovers is my opening night selection.'

Battle: Los Angeles: '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.'

Jaws: The Revenge: '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.'

Dirty Love: '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. It is hopelessly incompetent… I am not certain that anyone involved has ever seen a movie, or knows what one is.'

One or Two: '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.'

Sex Drive: 'This movie doesn’t contain "offensive language." The offensive language contains the movie.'

Mad Dog Time: '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.'

Armageddon: 'Here it is at last, the first 150-minute trailer. Armageddon is cut together like its own highlights. Take almost any 30 seconds at random, and you’d have a TV ad.'

Sour Grapes: 'The more I think of it, the more Sour Grapes really does resemble Crash (except that Crash was not a bad film). Both movies are like watching automobile accidents. Only one was intended to be.'

Revolver: 'Some of the acting is better than the film deserves. Make that all of the acting. Actually, the film stock itself is better than the film deserves. You know when sometimes a film catches fire inside a projector? If it happened with this one, I suspect the audience might cheer.'

Battlefield Earth: 'Battlefield Earth is like taking a bus trip with someone who has needed a bath for a long time. It’s not merely bad; it’s unpleasant in a hostile way.'

spainlinx0

I think I liked Sex Drive.

DWilson

Does any critic ever make a pithy comment on the positive qualities of a movie?

ddrknghtrtns

“I hated this movie. Hated, hated, hated, hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it”~North (Ebert).

My exact thoughts put into words after watching that abomination.