I'll tell you, I think that the Internet has provided an enormous boost to film criticism by giving people an opportunity to self publish or to find sites that are friendly.

Sarah Palin lacked the preparation or temperament to be one heartbeat away from the presidency, but what she possessed in abundance was the ability to inflame political passions and energize the John McCain campaign with star quality.

You can't just tell actors, especially young ones, to 'act happy' and expect them to do it. They must in some essential way be happy.

Sometimes it's all about the casting.

A few actresses have all but set up shop as women of a certain age who attract younger lovers. I think of Susan Sarandon, Cameron Diaz and Isabelle Huppert.

And I think both the left and the right should celebrate people who have different opinions, and disagree with them, and argue with them, and differ with them, but don't just try to shut them up.

Teaching prejudice to a child is itself a form of bullying. You've got to be taught to hate.

I believe that young people wearing hoods, unless they are very young, can be frightening. What are they hiding? Why don't they want to come out into the light with the rest of us? They may be perfectly nice, but the hoods send an uncertain statement.

It is quite possible for the vulgar to be funny, but to succeed, it must rise to a certain genius.

The buried code of many American films has become: If I kill you, I have won and you have lost. The instinctive ethical code of traditional Hollywood, the code by which characters like James Stewart, John Wayne and Henry Fonda lived, has been lost.

'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter' is without a doubt the best film we are ever likely to see on the subject - unless there is a sequel, which is unlikely, because at the end, the Lincolns are on their way to the theater.

If Hollywood stars speak out, so do all sorts of other people. Now Hollywood stars can get a better hearing.

Sometimes miraculous films come into being, made by people you've never heard of, starring unknown faces, blindsiding you with creative genius.

From a dramatic viewpoint, there are few professions that grant their members entry into other lives, high among them cops, doctors, clergymen, journalists and prostitutes. Perhaps that explains why they figure in so much television and cinema. Their lives are lived in the midst of human drama.

The right really dominates radio, and it's amazing how much energy the right spends telling us that the press is slanted to the left when it really isn't. They want to shut other people up. They really don't understand the First Amendment.

That's what fantasies are for, to help us imagine that things are better than they are.

It often strikes me that the actors in high school movies look too old.

People never think of themselves as choosing to be politically correct. They simply think in the way that they do.

Why is it that English, drama and music teachers are most often recalled as our mentors and inspirations? Maybe because artists are rarely members of the popular crowd.

Nothing ever seems straightforward in Venice, least of all its romances.

There's something depressing about a young couple helplessly in love. Their state is so perfect, it must be doomed. They project such qualities on their lover that only disappointment can follow.

Dogs notice, they share, they draw conclusions, they like it when they're able to be of service and are touchingly grateful when they're praised.

Not everyone needs to be slammed into a category and locked there.

James Cameron's films have always been distinguished by ground-breaking technical excellence.

We exist to have our wealth moved up the economic chain out of our reach.

Why are some people bullied? Because they are different. How? It doesn't matter.

It's rare to find a film that goes for broke and says, 'To hell with the consequences.'

It's the same the world over. A Hollywood production comes to town, and the locals all turn movie crazy.

All but a very few of us are in debt. We exist as entities who borrow money and spend the rest of our lives making interest payments on a debt tally that never seems to budge. Whatever wealth we have, in labor, property or cash, is suctioned to the top.

We don't have a lot of class-conscious filmmaking.

Well, you know what, I'm 60 years old, and I've been interested in politics since I was on my daddy's knee. During the 1948 election, we were praying for Truman. I know a lot about politics.

Time is what the depressed and panicked lack.

Many thrillers follow such reliable formulas that you can look at what's happening and guess how much longer a film has to run.

Anyone who reads advice books about romance has one problem to begin with: bad taste in literature.

It does seem true that a lot of people will do anything, however humiliating, for fame.

Life is made up of challenges that cannot be solved but only accepted.

I like smart movies about smart people, and enjoy it when most of the facts are on the table and we can contemplate them together.

When I am writing, my problems become invisible and I am the same person I always was. All is well. I am as I should be.

I do suspect my star ratings average too high. But, of course, star ratings are ridiculous. I'm stuck with them.

One sign of a great actor is when he can be alone by himself on the screen, doing almost nothing, and producing one of a film's defining moments.

If your religion doesn't respect the rights of other religions, it is lacking something.

Wes Anderson's mind must be an exciting place for a story idea to be born. It immediately becomes more than a series of events and is transformed into a world with its own rules, in which everything is driven by emotions and desires as convincing as they are magical.

We can now have action movies with two stars where one might be African American and one might be Asian American. One of them doesn't have to be white, and the other one doesn't have to be the ethnic sidekick. We're way over that. And I think it's happening in society, too.

No movie has ever been able to provide a catharsis for the Holocaust, and I suspect none will ever be able to provide one for 9/11. Such subjects overwhelm art.

If there's anything I hate more than a stupid action comedy, it's an incompetent stupid action comedy. It's not so bad it's good. It's so bad it's nothing else but bad.

I'm told we movie critics praise movies that are long and boring.

It's easier to identify with loss than love, because we have had so much more experience of it.

On this ancient and miraculous world, where such beautiful natural and living things have evolved, something has gone wrong when life itself is used as a manufacturing process.

Movies absorb our attention more completely, I think.

The movies that are made more thoughtfully or made or with more ambition often get just get drowned out by the noise.