Film Critic Quotes

#1. When I had been a film critic for ten minutes, I treated Doris Day as a target for cheap shots. I have learned enough to say today that the woman was remarkably gifted.

Roger Ebert

#2. I became a film director, but I wasn't successful with my first couple of films, so I had to turn to becoming a film critic to make a living.

Park Chan-wook

#3. I don't have any bone to pick with critics. In fact, if I wasn't a filmmaker I would probably be a film critic. Most of my bone is I would be a better film critic than most of the film critics I read.

Quentin Tarantino

#4. My father was an engineer, .. But I found out that the film critics for the Stanford Daily got free passes for all the films. So I became first an assistant critic and then the main film critic. Those free passes changed my life.

Roger Corman

#5. If I wasn't a film-maker, I'd be a film critic. It's the only thing I'd be qualified to do.

Quentin Tarantino

#6. No film critic's going to say it, but 'Madagascar 3' is better than 'The Artist.'

Chris Rock

#7. You become a film critic because you're interested in film. I don't know whether knowing so much about cinema leads you to make better films, but it certainly can't hurt.

Michael Haneke

#8. The stage has a certain discipline. But the ultimate standard is more exacting in film, because you have to see yourself and you are your own toughest critic.

Jack Nicholson

#9. The world is your oyster. It's up to you to find the pearls.

Chris Gardner

#10. As an actor, I'm my own worst critic, but after awhile, really, when you watch 'Moonrise Kingdom', it's such a fantastic film that you sort of get sucked into the story, and then you kind of forget about everything else.

Kara Hayward

#11. I think that when a film does its job, it poses questions rather than gives answers. It should act as a frustrating counselor who, at your bidding for advice, says, 'What do you think?' I think that's some of what the culture critic Greg Tate meant by art leaving a 'metaphysical stain.'

Aunjanue Ellis

#12. Does the critic wish to influence the kind of film that costs more than £250,000? It is as if he were to send a postcard to General Motors explaining that he would like them to make a raft next year, or a helicopter, instead of a car.

Kenneth Tynan

#13. If you think it so easy to be a critic, so difficult to be a poet or a painter or film experimenter, may I suggest you try both? You may discover why there are so few critics, so many poets.

Pauline Kael

#14. We don't have the money in America to keep paying for the education of everybody else's children from around the world. We simply don't have the financial resources to do that.

Mo Brooks

#15. You're so consumed with how much you get, you waste your time with hate and regret.

Madonna Ciccone

#16. I am often asked at what point in my love affair with films I began to want to be a director or a critic. Truthfully, I don't know. All I know is that I wanted to get closer and closer to films.

Francois Truffaut

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

Federico Fellini

#18. The older you get and the wealthier you get, the more complicated life becomes. That's why I have as few material assets as possible. Every material thing you have is more hassle.

Peter Hargreaves

#19. Talent is only the starting point.

Irving Berlin

#20. Making judgments on films is in many ways so peculiarly vaporous an occupation that the only question is why, beyond the obvious opportunities for a few lectures fees and a little careerism at a dispiritingly self-limiting level, anyone does it in the first place.

Joan Didion

#21. Every great film should seem new every time you see it.
Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert

#22. I think films are about having a good time, so I don't know that there's a message. The message of a film is always what a critic writes, and the fun of a film or the emotion of a film is what the audience feels.

Steve Martin

#23. The revolution is the war of liberty against its enemies. The constitution is the rule of liberty against its enemies. The constitution is the rule of liberty when victorious and peaceable.

Maximilien Robespierre

#24. Soon-Bok Kim closed her eyes, said rapid prayers in castellano, beat the steering wheel, begged God to save her and her stupid husband, said they would become better Christians.

Eric Jerome Dickey

#25. I think my expectations for myself are much more severe and much more direct. You can't work on a film for six years without being your own toughest critic. So you can't really be distracted by the expectations based on your previous performance.

Ken Burns

#26. But which is the State's essential function, aggression or defence, few seem to know or care.

Benjamin Tucker

#27. Farber had a huge effect on me as a writer. I don't mean I write like him. Farber is, first of all, a great stylist, a great writer. Anyone can read Manny Farber's film criticism, whether that person is a novelist, a poet, another critic, a historian, and learn a lot about writing by reading him.

Greil Marcus

#28. 'Chef' is a dish of arroz con pollo served with a smile but not much style. The critic in the film would give it a low grade, for agreeability without ambition.

Richard Corliss

#29. O Lord, I wish to promote thy holy religion which is dreadfully neglected. I am desirous to save young persons from the vices of the age.

Sarah Trimmer

#30. Competition is great. And as long as it's friendly and not a malicious thing, then I think it's cool.

Janet Jackson