The romance of movies is not just in those stories and those people on the screen but in the adolescent dream of meeting others who feel as you do about what you’ve seen.

At the movies, we are gradually being conditioned to accept violence as a sensual pleasure. The directors used to say they were showing us its real face and how ugly it was in order to sensitize us to its horrors. You don't have to be very keen to see that they are now in fact desensitizing us.

In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.

Moviemaking is so male-dominated now that they think they’re being pro-feminine when they have women punching each other out.

Kevin Costner has feathers in his hair and feathers in his head. The Indians should have called him 'Plays with Camera.

tasteful and colossal are - in movies, at least - basically antipathetic.

In San Francisco, vulgarity, "bad taste," ostentation are regarded as a kind of alien blight, an invasion or encroachment from outside. In Los Angeles, there is so much money and power connected with ostentation that is no longer ludicrous: it commands a kind of respect. For if the mighty behave like this, then quiet good taste means that you can't afford the conspicuous expenditures, and you become a little ashamed of your modesty and propriety.