Film Critics Quotes

• 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

  Makers, Qualified, Ifs

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• If film critics could destroy a movie, Michael Bay and Adam Sandler would be working at Starbucks. If film critics could make a movie a hit, the Dardenne brothers would be courted by every studio in town.

  Alonso Duralde

  Brother, Would Be, Towns

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• I have cultivated a little crew of people whose opinions I understand. It's like the way you'd follow certain film critics because you know what their criteria are, and you may not agree with them, but you can glean from their opinion how you will feel about a film.

  Daniel Clowes

  People, Way, May

  Interview with Keith Phipps, www.avclub.com. March 30, 2012.

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• 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

  Hurt, Knowing, Cinema

  Interview with David Mermelstein, deadline.com. February 9, 2013.

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• I first came to cinema as a passionate filmgoer, when I was a child. Then, when I was a very young man, I became a film critic precisely because of my knowledge of cinema. I did better than others because of this. Then I moved on to screenwriting. I wrote a film with Sergio Leone, 'Once Upon a Time in the West.' And then I moved to directing.

  Dario Argento

  Children, Men, Once Upon A Time

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

  Chris Rock

  Artist, Madagascar, Film

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• We're all so jaded. We've seen so many movies. We know what's going to happen in every single movie. I mean, there are some movies where I'm like why do I even need to keep watching? And so, if you can make a movie in which you're completely surprising the audience left and right, and left and right, then you've won. If a jaded film critic or reporter or an audience is like, "I didn't see that one coming," that to me is like a victory.

  Richard Shepard

  Mean, Victory, Needs

  Source: www.moviesonline.ca

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• I mean, the old film critics just excoriated me.

  John Milius

  Mean, Film, Critics

  Interview with Ken P., www.ign.com. May 7, 2003.

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• 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

  Target, Today, Enough

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• The boundaries between contemporary art and cinema are so rigid. It's unbelievable. The film critics don't know my artwork and the art world doesn't know my films.

  Agnes Varda

  Art, Cinema, World

  Interview with Liza Bear, www.interviewmagazine.com. May 22, 2009.

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• 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

  Couple, Successful, Firsts

  Interview With Keith Phipps, film.avclub.com. August 6, 2009.

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• 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

  Would Be, Facts, Bones

  "Inglourious Basterds - Quentin Tarantino interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• I built my [early] career on negative reviews. There was a cultural war going on, the '60s was going on. All the film critics were square. They hated my movies. You could never have that happen today. Critics are way too hip.

  John Waters

  War, Squares, Careers

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• There was a cultural war going on, the '60s was going on. All the film critics were square.

  John Waters

  War, Squares, Film

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I was at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards one year - they called me up when somebody canceled two days before the thing, and asked me to present some awards. So I went, and one of the funniest film moments I've ever had was when they introduced the New York film critics. They all stood up - motley isn't the word for that group. Everybody had some sort of vision problem, some sort of damage - I had to bury myself in my napkin.

  Bill Murray

  New York, Awards, Years

  Source: www.esquire.com

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• Plays can outlast even the opinions of the chief film critic of The New York Times and that reviews, although they feel devastating in the immediate moment, are not remotely as significant as the significance you endow them with on the day that they appear.

  Tony Kushner

  New York, Play, Opinion

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• . . . you [film critics] always overstress the value of images. You judge films in the first place by their visual impact instead of looking for content. This is a great disservice to the cinema. It is like judging a novel only by the quality of its prose. I was guilty of the same sin when I first started writing for the cinema. . . . Now I feel that only the literary mind can help the movies out of that cul de sac into which they have been driven by mere technicians and artificers.

  Orson Welles

  Writing, Impact, Judging

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• Recently, I took my son to see The Haunted Mansion, which was one of the worst things (I hesitate even to call it a movie) that I have ever seen. He thought it was better than Finding Nemo and we had a fruitless argument which I'm sure made him acutely aware of the disadvantages of having a film critic for a dad.

  A. O. Scott

  Dad, Son, Nemo

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• I love magazines and film critics, so I eat it up. I'm not one of those people who says 'I never read anything.' I generally read all of it.

  Judd Apatow

  People, Magazines, Film

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• When I was a film critic, the reason I kind of found it disenchanting was because the things that I wanted to talk about were the ideas in the movie, the theme of it, and contextual elements that weren't necessarily central to the story. But the only thing people really wanted was a plot description and how many stars I'd give it. It didn't matter how much effort you put into writing a piece, they looked at it solely as a consumer's guide toward going or not going to films.

  Chuck Klosterman

  Stars, Writing, Ideas

  Interview with Noel Murray, www.avclub.com. November 15, 2006.

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• 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

  Father, Criticism, Assistants

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