'Brokeback Mountain' is a sad love story about two people who can't be together, and the reason that they can't be together is because being gay is a stigmatized thing. It would be interesting to have the same movie in which the two guys weren't in the closet and there was no shame about them being gay and they couldn't be together for other reasons. I still feel like we're a long way from that happening.

Everybody brings their thing to their criticism. I bring this wealth of opinions and feeling and knowledge about race and gender and sexuality. I feel like I have it, I may as well express it, and if it's applicable to what I'm writing about and I'm not forcing it, I should try to use it, because it's interesting. It speaks to more than some people.

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.

I just have to be able to follow and enjoy the writer's voice and the writer's point of view. Liking what the person has to say is not really important to me.

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

Sometimes a movie knows you're watching it. It knows how to hold and keep you, how, when it's over, to make you want it all over again.

I have a pretty good sense of when to express misgivings. And white critics are just as capable of pointing those things out and noticing them as people of color.