“As long as 'Pearl Harbor' stays in the past, it's perfect; when it wretchedly changes gears in the late going, it becomes the wrong kind of same old story: Hollywood stupidity and callowness, writ large across the sky.”
“I kind of figured if I couldn't get a job as a dwarf, looking as I do, I should just give up acting.”
“I have never connected with 'Gone With the Wind.' 'Lawrence of Arabia' leaves me cold.”
“Even my pathological love of Japan and its beauties, glories and eccentricities is sorely tested by 'The Grudge 2,' from Takashi Shimizu, a movie so bewildering and impenetrable that I believe it siphoned off a good 40 IQ points.”
“I grew up in the suburbs among highly educated people, in a house crammed with books. It was a culture rich in ideas, stimulation, entertainment, and mental activity, all helpful to the nurture of an imaginative child who wanted from an early age to be a writer.”
“I'm not an expert or a trained ballistician. But it is a subject I've studied intently for 50 years, so I may know a thing or two. In my opinion, the JFK investigation was poorly handled.”
“If you have only 95 minutes of material, make an only 95-minute movie. Amazing how often that's forgotten.”
“By the '50s and '60s, war movies had become big and impersonal. They almost never bothered to characterize the Japanese enemy as particularly evil; in fact, they never bothered to characterize him at all.”
“Since I'm a story-oriented critic, sometimes it's difficult to discuss issues without defining them. At the same time, I try not to give away anything that hasn't been given away in first half, in TV commercials, or that isn't obvious from the set-up of the movie. My editors are aware of this tendency of mine and read carefully for spoilers.”
“The true mystery of the JFK assassination isn't 'How could the bullet go through two people with only slight damage?' but 'Why did the third bullet explode?'”