Quotes About Films

Some of these things I saw in foreign films - African films, Cuban films - long before I decided to really go on this course as an actor. I started to think about what values I saw in those films that I wanted to bring to my projects

I've made a way to allow myself to do big films, small films, dramas, comedies, action films, horror films, or whatever interests me, as a movie-goer. I like watching myself in movies. I want to choose movies that allow me to enjoy myself, the way that I want to entertain myself.

Free time keeps me going. It's just something that's always been a part of my life. I was originally a painter, and I made films sort of as an extension of that, and then I started to try to make dramatic films because the early films were experimental films.

I'm interested in seeing films that confront me with new things, with films that make me question myself, with films that help me to reflect on subjects that I hadn't thought about before, films that help me progress and advance.

The problem with working with a record label is they maybe a song I want to make a video for that they will refuse to make a video for because they don't see that song as a single. And I found that very frustrating. I realised what I was doing was making these short films for the blind. They were films and all you had to do was put some headphones on and close your eyes and listen to my voice and you'd be able to visualise the images that I'm putting into your brain. And so I started calling what I was doing 'films for the blind'.

I do not think that my films or films by any other filmmaker represent "THE TRUTH." I do not feel the need to categorize my films or anyone else's.

I think my mom is the inspiration of me wanting to do film and TV and be an actor because she loved film so much. She loved, like, horror films and action films, so growing up, she loved watching all the Charles Bronson films and all the westerns.

You read reviews by top reviewers of films that not only had remarkably interesting scores, but films whose effectiveness was absolutely enhanced, and frequently created by the music, yet the reviewers seem unaware that their emotions and their nervous reactions to the films have been affected by the scoring. This is a serious flaw. Any film reviewer owes it to himself, and the public, to take every element of the film into account.

Alternate between short films, long form films, with or without stars, small budget or big budget films. Basically a filmmaker needs to be flexible.

When I studied with Nicholas Ray he was always telling us, "If you want to make films, watch a lot of films, but don't just watch films, go take a walk, look at the sky, read a book about meteorology, look at the design of people's shoes. Because all of them are part of filmmaking." So I thought, perfect! That's a good job for me.

I'm happy that my films were discovered by chance by foreign film festivals. That makes me realise more that there is a world outside Japan too. For me, it's an occasion to meet many people and to experience directly the response of international audiences to my films. But for me as a director, my attitude towards making films hasn't changed with the fame. I feel it's not good to change as a person anyway

I've directed five films and I've proven that people have made money with my films - many people have made money with my films.

There are films that I've made that I like a little bit more than the others. But the films that I mostly watch, and see over and over again, are not my own.

The '60s in London obviously brought about the explosion of music, the Beatles especially, and then the Rolling Stones and other forms of music, and then fashion and photography and films - kitchen-sink dramas we called them at that time, which was our nouvelle vague in Britain, films that talk about real life.

I think if you look at Sam Raimi and Jim Cameron, those guys know things about filmmaking that almost nobody knows anymore. They are students of film from when they handmade films themselves, you know cut films with their own hands and razor blades and tape.

Because of Walter, we did it the other way around. We also worked with an awesome sound designer named Will Patterson who just worked for four years on Terrence Malick's films. He did a lot of conceptual work to make the soundscapes in the jungle have this surreal quality, to blend these two films because a lot of the images are about this parallelism between the movies. The sound was very integral to fusing everything.

There are films you see that only reach your eyes. Then there are films that you can watch... that reach down to your throat, or reach your heart. "In the Mood for Love," though, reached all the way to my belly.

My films are misinterpreted all the time. I don't mind that. Everybody's films are misinterpreted. But there's no malice or stupidity in the people that misinterpret them. You know what you do, but someone else sees it, and they want to talk about it or write about it, and so they misinterpret them.

I like the platform to show your art and everything that goes along with that. To show your voice and hopefully find films that are more politically driven, films that maybe inspire.

I try to make films where the audience forgets the filmmaking and gets engrossed in the story as it unfolds. I don't want them to ever feel bored, or that they're being told what to think, or to feel depressed. I don't like films about victims - I want to celebrate brave survivors like Brenda and the wonderful women in the film.

I was the Chair of the WIFF Foundation, which is the philanthropic arm of Women In Film. The foundation runs the several programs including one that provide our film finishing fund. So we help women complete their films with a grant from Netflix. It's great to be associated with award winning films like 'Freeheld' and 'Circumstance'.

You know, the art films would usually be more, I mean the exploitation movies would usually be more lurid, but not that much more. I mean, actually back in those days that was what foreign films had. They had sex, they were selling Laura Antonelli.

American films are the best films. This is a fact. Cinema is - along with Jazz - the great American art form. And cinema in a very real sense created the American identity that has been exported around the world.

I like the idea of making films about ostensibly absolutely nothing. I like the irrelevant, the tangential, the sidebar excursion to nowhere that suddenly becomes revelatory. That's what all my movies are about. That and the idea that we're in possession of certainty, truth, infallible knowledge, when actually we're just a bunch of apes running around. My films are about people who think they're connected to something, although they're really not.

As a kid, I couldn't articulate it but I sought out things that could. At first it was horror films - extreme panic and terror, grotesque and maniacal. These films calmed me and made me feel more connected in my experiences.

I've been making films with almost no dialogue (laughs), so sound and music become a very powerful character to tell the story. It's almost like with sound and music and images, it's your tool to tell the story, especially when I decide to structure the film in a way that usually goes against the conventions of the three-act structure which most films are made out of.

I think Magnolia is one of the best films I've ever seen and I can say that straight and out and anybody that disagrees with me I'll fight you to the death. I just think it is one of the greatest films I've ever been in and ever seen.

I see things in a specific way. All the films are different. There are specific characters and scenes and locations and ideas. There are colors I want to see. There are movements and things ... The films are different, but the approach is the same.

I could never be Charlie Chaplin. But the films that were made by people like him, or Gene Wilder, or John Candy, the people that inspired me so much were the people that were able to combine humor with heartbreak so beautifully and fluidly. Those films I think were what inspired me to want to come to L.A. and audition for movies.

It's a fact, the majority of films in Hollywood are from the male perspective. And the female characters, very rarely do they get to speak to another female character in a movie, and when they do it's usually about a guy, not anything else. So they're very male-centric, Hollywood films, in general. So I think it's incredible that Ned Benson, when I said I'd love to know where she goes, says okay, I'm going to write another film from the female perspective.

I'm no longer interested in making political films. There's something old-fashioned about them. Young people now don't care for politics. It isn't present in life as it used to be. And increasingly I like films which reflect present-day reality.

I think in the '80s, when I started making films, we were all suspicious of these technologies. We were all convinced they would filter out any emotion and sense of intimacy, and the films I made during that period reflected that. In fact, what has happened is the opposite. I think we're saturated with a degree of intimacy we would never have expected, and we're trying to sort through this idea of complete access to each other's lives on an ongoing basis. Our emotions aren't filtered out at all. They're actually accelerated.

There's a lot of crap out there. Most of the science fiction films alone are abominations, you know. They're mindless. So you can't learn from those kinds of films.

The difference between working on Asian and American films is in the producer and director; everyone has their own style. But, Hollywood has a lot more money; they can spend a lot on films, and time. In Europe, there's a small budget and thinking about commercial. Only budget and taste is different between there and Hollywood.

I wasn't allowed to see movies when I was a child. It was against the religion I was raised in, Fundamentalist Baptist. I didn't go into a commercial movie house until I was a senior in college, and that was on the sly. It wasn't until I was in graduate school that I immersed myself in films. Then, I went to see all the films by Bergman, Fellini, etc.

In my own personal time, horror films freak me out too much, so I tend to steer clear of watching horror films on my own.

A lot of student films in art shows are samey. It's a look at the life of someone making these boring films.

I really respect people who, while they only do films, they have a wide repertoire and a wide thematic array of films they do.

I am a big fan of the old Howard Hawks films from the 30s and 40s, I was a big Hepburn and Tracey fan for a while and Woody Allen films that are a very different kind of romantic comedy.

I prefer the countryside to cities. This is also true of my films: I have made more films in rural societies, and villages, than in towns.

I don't want to make pompous, serious films; I like films that have a kind of vivacity about them.

I want to try not to repeat myself. But then I seem to do it continuously in my films. It's not something I make any effort to do. I just want to make films that are personal, but interesting to an audience. I feel I get criticized for style over substance, and for details that get in the way of the characters. But every decision I make is how to bring those characters forward.

The Sixth Sense is not a good white film. Insomnia is not a good white film. They're just good films. So why we can't we have good films that happen to have black people, or Asian, or Latino, or any other minority group in them?

Language is so specific to art, all the way to the past in China. Previously, people were not allowed to include various regional dialects in their films, but in every film that I've made, I've maintained the regional dialects of the characters because I wanted to make films that were locally specific.

I do films which get me out of my comedian routine so that I don't get bored being a stand-up comedian. And with films, it's here today, gone tomorrow. So stand-up comedy is here to stay for me.

In a perfect world, I could be doing some bigger films and balance that with some independent films because they seem to be the most challenging and unique

The films that I really liked and the ones that really blew my mind when I was younger were independent films. They're like great records to me.

When I left university I was sure that I was going to be a painter. Then I had a crisis, a revelation. I saw Dolce Vita and my mind was blown by it, by the synthesis. I realised I wanted to be a filmmaker and started making films. I was writing screenplays and couldn't get money because my work was so uncommercial. I got married and started writing fiction. What was wonderful is that it gave me my freedom because no-one can tell me I can't work. Novels have become equally important to me as films. I consider myself a storyteller and passionately engaged in both of those disciplines.