73 Movies Quotes

It's the movies that have really been running things in America ever since they were invented. They show you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, how to feel about it, and how to look how you feel about it.

If a movie is described as a romantic comedy, you can usually find me next door playing pinball.

I don't blame the people for the fact that so many movies are bad. I think there's a corrupt, perverted, lazy and sloppy attitude that's pervasive in the movie business. The whole entertainment business is kind of crumbling around us.

In movies, I hope women aren't always portrayed as sex symbols. People like Drew Barrymore are paving the way for girls my age. Hopefully I can pave the way for young actresses, too.

If I never saw another fistfight or car chase or Doberman attack, I wouldn't have any feeling of loss. And that goes for Rottweilers, too.

The Bucket List is a movie about two old codgers who are nothing like people, both suffering from cancer that is nothing like cancer, and setting off on adventures that are nothing like possible. I urgently advise hospitals: Do not make the DVD available to your patients; there may be an outbreak of bedpans thrown at TV screens.

Godzilla was the most masterful of all dinosaur movies because it made you believe it was really happening.

Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood.

Nobody sees the same movie. I'm sure there are people who saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and thought 'Finally a gay movie about men who really care about each other. Thank God!' That's not what I saw necessarily - but I don't think any two people see the same movie.

Movies are so rarely great art, that if we cannot appreciate great trash, we have very little reason to be interested in them.

For some strange reason we don't go to charming, light movies anymore. People expect a movie to be heavy and turgid, like 'American Beauty.' We've become a heavy-handed society.

Yes, movies! Look at them - All of those glamorous people - having adventures - hogging it all, gobbling the whole thing up! You know what happens? People go to the movies instead of moving! Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them! Yes, until there's a war. That's when adventure becomes available to the masses! Everyone's dish, not only Gable's! Then the people in the dark room come out of the dark room to have some adventures themselves - Goody, goody! - It's our turn now, to go to the south Sea Island - to make a safari - to be exotic, far-off! - But I'm not patient. I don't want to wait till then. I'm tired of the movies and I am about to move!

The first thing I ever thought of when I thought of 'Buffy: The Movie' was the little...blonde girl who goes into a dark alley and gets killed, in every horror movie. The idea of 'Buffy' was to subvert that idea, that image, and create someone who was a hero where she had always been a victim. That element of surprise...[and] genre-busting is very much at the heart of both the movie and the series.

It's important to me that I don't get trapped in the whole teen scene because I feel that you can get lost in those kind of movies, and they aren't really about the actors; they're about the selling of the concept, and how much money it makes. So I just try to choose the scripts that have the best characters for myself, or would be the most challenging, or fun.

The words 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,' which I saw on an Italian movie poster, are perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of movies. This appeal is what attracts us, and ultimately what makes us despair when we begin to understand how seldom movies are more than this.

Going to see Godzilla at the Palais of the Cannes Film Festival is like attending a satanic ritual in St. Peter's Basilica. It's a rebuke to the faith that the building represents. Cannes touchingly adheres to a belief that film can be intelligent, moving and grand. Godzilla is a big, ugly, ungainly device to give teenagers the impression they are seeing a movie. It was the festival's closing film, coming at the end like the horses in a parade, perhaps for the same reason.

I do not make films primarily for children. I make them for the child in all of us, whether we be six or sixty. Call the child 'innocence'. The worst of us is not without innocence, although buried deeply it might be. In my work I try to reach and speak to that innocence, showing it the fun and joy of living; showing it that laughter is healthy; showing it that the human species, although happily ridiculous at times, is still reaching for the stars.

Speaking of things that'll make your head explode, 'Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story' finally made it to the drive-in

If we make any kind of decent, useful life for ourselves we have less need to run from it to those diminishing pleasures of the movies. When we go to the movies we want something good, something sustained, we don't want to settle for just a bit of something, because we have other things to do. If life at home is more interesting, why go to the movies? And the theatres frequented by true moviegoers - those perennial displaced persons in each city, the loners and the losers - depress us. Listening to them - and they are often more audible than the sound track - as they cheer the cons and jeer the cops, we may still share their disaffection, but it's not enough to keep us interested in cops and robbers. A little nose-thumbing isn't enough. If we've grown up at the movies we know that good work is continuous not with the academic, respectable tradition but with the glimpses of something good in trash, but we want the subversive gesture carried to the domain of discovery. Trash has given us an appetite for art.

I think it caught on because the stories that these four girls have individually in the book are extremely relatable. They're very real teenage experiences. I think the friendship between the four girls is something that is more realistic than a lot of the relationships we see between girls in movies lately. A lot of the time it's like backstabbing or petty or superficial. I think most girls' relationships are real friendships like these. I don't think they're that much more dramatic.

on possibly making Good Eats: The Movie: That would be one movie the world just doesn't need.

Movies are much more fascist than books. They tell you what to feel, when to feel it. Popular movies manipulate you. Music tells you when it's a sad part and when it's a happy part. You're obliged to watch them at the speed the filmmaker has created for you. That, I think, is one of the reasons why they're so popular - because you don't have to think very hard. The filmmaker has done all the thinking for you.

'The fact that Pinhead is a character that audiences want to watch, that women find sexy, that people have tattooed on their own bodies, I think, is perfectly extraordinary, and I'm incredibly pleased about it. I don't think an analysis of what he does in the movies ever completely illuminates the charm that the guy has.

Samuel L. Jackson : No I can't stop yellin', 'cause that's how I talk! Ain't never seeeeen my movies!? Juice! That was a good one! Deep Blue Sea! They ate me! A FUCKING SHARK ATE ME! DRINK, BITCH! (after the white men take a sip)Jurassic park...

[On being asked if he freaked out in the theatre when he saw The Ring] Yes I did. I was by myself and there was this guy with his girlfriend and a couple of other girls next to me - and they were right next to me, so I was pretty much in his lap the whole time. Lucky for me, he was nice!

Fan:Also are you a Sex And The City fan? Think you might see the movie this weekend? Or any films your looking forward to seeing?

I've got a video that doesn't record the film, it just watches it and tells me what happens. 'Oh, Meryl Streep bought this farm somewhere, and she gets the clap. That's about it. I think Robert Redford gave it to her. To be honest I was flicking over to the football every five minutes, so...'

When my son is taping for his permanent collection, he sits there and pauses his machine and when he is finished with it, he has a marvelous Clint Eastwood movie and there is no sign of a commercial. It is a brand new movie and he can put three of those on one 6-hour tape.

It's very important for me to be in movies that don't have a message. Messages tend to be a little preachy, and I don't think that's what movies are about. It's important for me to be in movies that have a human level, have a heart in them. That's the reason why I did this (Rendition) and it just so happens to be really topical. This political issue is a very important one right now which as Americans we need to look at. So it seems like it's (the film) is very political, it seems like there's a message in it, but ultimately there's a real story about human beings dealing with actual human things.

The man is ugly, the man is evil, and the man is in love. This is gonna be an American classic.

Hammer Horror, Hammer Horror, Won't leave me alone. The first time in my life, I leave the lights on To ease my soul.

I fell in love with the whole ritual. The lights going down, the curtain going up, telling a story to a large group of people in the dark. It was one of those moments where you think, 'I can do that.' You're in control on stage. And I love telling the whole story in one fell swoop. With movies, you never think, 'I nailed it.' In theater you get to go back and do it again, which to me is much more satisfying.

Am I really, oh great! They just want to keep that competition going between the two films don't they. But I don't think you can really compare the two. It will be interesting to see how that pans out. I'm quite excited now that you mention it.

'[Steve McQueen, in The Great Escape] jumps on a motorbike, took off,and whoom, in 15 minutes he's in the borders of Switzerland. This is from Poland!... And if you don't know the geography, it goes Poland, Czechoslovakia, Holland, Venezuela, Africa, Beyrouth, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and then Switzerland!'

We play bad guys in Hollywood movies because of the Revolutionary War : oh yes, will you never forget - you big elephant you. And the French, who were on your side in the Revolutionary War (as you well know...), they play more esoteric characters. They play characters who turn up and go, 'My name is Pierre. I am 53. I have come to have sex with your family.' And the father of the house saying, 'Help yourself! Because of the debt of honour owed to General Lafayette.' [to audience] You know your own history, yeah? [pause] You don't know who he is, do you? What's this, the Spanish-American War, the French-Banana war? What?

People on movies are always so professional with computers. [Mimes using a computer] 'Hacking into Pentagon. Double click on 'yes''. Oh password protected. Ok sixteen billion possible combinations. 'Jeff'. Hey!' 'But how did you know?' 'Well the programmer left a back door so he could come on when ever he wanted and look at all the missiles and try them on his head. And the programmer's name was Jeff Jefferty Jeff, born on the nineteenth of Jeff nineteen jefferty-jeff so i typed in 'Jeff' and hey!'

I've kind of been able to glide through this weird little thing they call a career in terms of the business world and in terms of the industry in many movies that were considered absolute failures, flops. So I've kind of made a career of: failing. (2004)

I think Polanski is one of the few filmmakers who nearly did a perfect film, a couple of them. Chinatown is almost perfect. It may be perfect. (2004)

I want to do kiddie movies now. I'm fed up with adult movies - most of them stink. At a certain point with movies it becomes all about mathematics: this has to lead up to this, this has to lead up to that - you're always bound by some kind of formula. But since having kids and watching lots of animated cartoons and all those great old Disney films, I think they're better, they're much better. They're more fun and take more risks. Even things like Shrek - it's really funny and well made and intelligent.

The immense popularity of American movies abroad demonstrates that Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof.

To minimize my guilt at going to the pictures - to call this wanton pursuit of an effete pleasure by another name - I needed movie companions as drunkards need drinking partners. If I entered a cinema alone, God might plunge his arm through the roof of the auditorium booming in a stereophonic voice, 'And you, Crisp, what are you doing here?' I would never have dared reply, 'I'm just enjoying myself, Lord.' I remembered too well what happened to Mr and Mrs Adam. A commissionaire with a flaming sword came and asked them to leave.

We watched some of the movie. It was shocking. Sex is apparently hard labor. Various persons supported crushing weights in agonizing positions for what seemed like endless blocks of time. Exhausted men grunted and toiled like movers trying to get a refrigerator into a fifth floor walk-up.

But you know, I saw this movie last year called Basic : Instinct. Okay. Now, Bill's quick capsule review: Piece of shit. Okay, now : yeah, yeah. End of story, by the way. Don't get caught up in that fevered hype phoney fucking debate about that piece of shit movie. 'Is it too sexist? And what about the movies, are they becoming too :' You're just confused, you've forgotten how to judge correctly. Take a deep breath : look at it again. 'Oh, it's a piece of shit!' Exactly, that's all it is. Satan squatted, let out a loaf, they put a fucking title on it, put it on a marquee - Satan's shit, piece of shit, walk away. 'But is it too : and what about the lesbian content, they :' You're getting really baffled here. Piece of shit! Now walk away. That's all it is, it's nothing more! Free yourself, folks. If you see it: 'Piece of shit!' Say it and walk away. You're right! You're right, not those fuckers who want to tell you how to think! You're fucking right!

But we play bad guys in Hollywood movies, like, take, uh, The Empire Strikes Back from the Star Wars trilogy. The Death Star - just full of British actors opening doors and going: 'Oh, I'm : oh : oh.' 'What is it, Lieutenant Sebastian?' 'It's just the rebels, sir. They're here.' 'My God, man! Do they want tea?' 'No, I think they're after something more than that, sir. I don't know what it is, but they've brought a flag.' 'Damn! That's dashed cunning of them! Ah, Lord Vader!' [hollow breath] 'Uh : hello?' Because he was only impressive because he had that James Earl Jones voice: [deep voice] 'I'm : I am Vader. The force is strong with you.' If he had a much more [high wimpy voice]: ''Ello! Look, I'm Lord Vader, and just pay a-bloody-ttention, all right? Luke, Luke, the force is strong with you.' 'Is it?' 'Yeah.' 'Well, who told you that?' 'Uh, s-some bloke. Yeah, he said the force is really rather strong with you.' 'Well, how strong?' 'Uh, as strong as a small pony.' 'Oh, that's quite strong, that is.' Film would never have fuckin' worked, would it?