- I always ask myself, 'Is the movie that I am watching as interesting as a documentary of the same actors having lunch together?'
- Fargo (1996) was the last great film that I saw.
- On Daylight (1996): As a measure of my boredom, about halfway through this picture I became distracted by a man down the aisle from from me who was eating some candy, and I tried to guess the candy he was eating by the sounds he was making. Those sounds were more interesting to me than anything going on on the screen in Daylight (1996).
- On Rocky (1976): "The best movie of the year? Hardly. Stallone as the next Marlon Brando? You've gotta be kidding. A nice little fantasy picture? Maybe..."
- On the French comedy Little Indian, Big City (1994) ("Little Indian, Big City"): If the missing reel had been footage from Orson Welles 'The Magnificent Ambersons,' this whole experience would still have sucked. (When Gene & Roger went to see this movie, the entire third reel was missing. They saw the rest a week later.)
- On the 1998 summer blockbuster hit BASEketball (1998): "This is one of those movies that is usually seen on the big jumbo-tron screen in a sports bar during the day - when everyone is quite drunk. Unfortunately, I was sober when I saw this movie."
- On the summer comedy Meet the Deedles (1998): "Boy, was this an annoying experience. For the rest of my life, I may have a negative physical reaction whenever anyone mentions the title characters... The gags are pathetic, including the worm-eating... I did not laugh or crack a smile once. Giving this movie a negative review is not merely part of job, it's a public service. You have been warned."
- On the 1998 Adam Sandler comedy The Waterboy (1998): "It's junk. And Adam Sandler is annoying. And that irritating phony speech impediment of his that he has throughout this movie... I'm not even going to imitate it, but... is THAT supposed to be funny?"
- On the 'Robin Williams' bio-vehicle Patch Adams (1998): "This is an annoying and cloying look and attack on the impersonal way doctors treat their patients. The problem is after seeing a glimse of Williams' personal treatment, we would settle for IMpersonal treatment! I would rather turn my head and cough than see any part of 'Patch Adams' again. The title of this movie should have been 'Punch Adams!'"
- I'm in a hurry to get well, because I don't want Roger to get more screen time than I.
- On Blade Runner (1982): I felt that this film was a waste of time. Pretty to look at, but a waste of time!
- On the movie North (1994): Well, I mean, I think you got to hold Rob Reiner's feet to the fire here. I mean, he's the guy in charge. He's saying that this is entertainment. It's deplorable. I mean, there isn't a gag that works. You couldn't write worse jokes if I told you to write worse jokes. The ethnic stereotyping is appalling. It's - it's embarrassing. You feel unclean as you're sitting there. It's junk! First class junk!!
- Roger [Ebert] is the only guy I know who answers 'yes' to every question he is asked at McDonald's.
- [When asked what his favorite movie is] It's not one of my all-time favorite questions. That's why Citizen Kane (1941) is such a great answer - it ends the discussion.
- Oh! The pictures I've seen!
- [Mr Potter, the villain of It's a Wonderful Life (1946)] He's a cold terror.
- [in 1990, on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences] It's people who have a couple of movie credits, basically, they live in Orange County, and they're rich and they're white... A lot of them have not seen the films that they're voting for.
- There is a point when a personal opinion shades off into an error of fact. When you say The Valachi Papers (1972) is a better film than The Godfather (1972), you are wrong.
- Selecting this film as number one is not a stunt. My criteria for this honor has always been that film which best expresses the joy of filmmaking and expands our notion of what a movie can be. This is a rare sequel that is better than the original, and I recommend you rent and see the original Babe (1995) first to fully comprehend what Australian director George Miller has accomplished here in creating a fantastic urban platform for Babe, the talking pig, to save an assortment of animal friends and his family from extinction in one imaginatively staged action sequence after another that involved manipulating real, animatronic and computer-generated creatures through a series of precisely orchestrated scenes. This is a movie that could trigger young audiences to want to make their own movies. And isn't that one thing that a "number one" movie should do? As for the debate over whether Babe: Pig in the City (1998) may frighten young children, my own 3 1/2-year-old son had a different reaction. He exclaimed, "Look, Daddy, that dog is talking!" Director Miller has also made the "Mad Max" movies; the "Babe" pictures have a similar energy and a whole lot more charm.
- [on My Dinner With Andre (1981)] Here's a film that really cherishes the value of the spoken word.
- ["Siskel & Ebert" segment reviewing Babe: Pig in the City (1998)] This is a wonderful movie. Just look. We're dazzled by it. You take any five or ten minute piece and just think about the amount of work that went into the look, the psychical aspect, the wit of the writing.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content