I love to go to the movies with people, but a lot of the time it's me in a room with a bunch of other movie critics, which is fine.

Sidney Lumet's chief preoccupation wasn't art. It was right and wrong in the American city, nearly always in New York.

If I like a movie, I'm definitely advocating for it, but it's not "you should see this" or "you shouldn't see this." I try to take a longer view about what the movie is doing and where it fits in the context of other things, in the way that certain good literary criticism tries to do the same thing.

Movies are visual, aural, they involve people, and life, and ideas and art, they are so elastic. They can hold anything, withstand everything, and make you feel anything. Other arts can do that, but movies are the only ones that can incorporate other media into cinema.

Sidney Poitier became a star in part by helping black and white Americans negotiate their new relationship in the post-Civil Rights era.

I don't need the audience, but sometimes it's nice to have a gauge - not so I know how I feel, but so I get what is or isn't working for moviegoers.

Computers are scary. Theyre nightmares to fix, lose our stuff, and, on occasion, they crash, producing the blue screen of death. Steve Jobs knew this. He knew that computers were bulky and hernia-inducing and Darth Vader black. He understood the value of declarative design.