A.O. Scott Quotes

AN ABSOLUTELY VITAL FILM. Exacting, enraging and revelatory. A clear, temperate and devastating account of high level arrogance and incompetence.

Every art form changes, often at rates and in ways that cause discomfort to its devotees. But the arts also have a remarkable ability to withstand and absorb those changes, and to prove wrong the prophecies of their demise.

As consumers of culture, we are lulled into passivity or, at best, prodded toward a state of pseudo-semi-self-awareness, encouraged toward either the defensive group identity of fanhood or a shallow, half-ironic eclecticism. Meanwhile, as citizens of the political commonwealth, we are conscripted into a polarized climate of ideological belligerence in which bluster too often substitutes for argument. There is no room for doubt and little time

Subtle, funny and touching, with a striking downbeat authenticity. Director Craig Zobel is the real thing.

The silliness-much of which is clearly intentional-is blended with some genuine grandeur. The Pixar touch is evident in the precision of the visual detail and in the wit and energy of Michael Giacchino's score, but the quality control that has been exercised over this project also has a curiously undermining effect. The movie eagerly sells itself as semitrashy, almost-campy fun, but it is so lavish and fussy that you can't help thinking that it wants to be taken seriously, and therefore you laugh at, rather than with, its mock sublimity.

...to be an American adult has always been to be a symbolic figure in someone else's coming-of-age story. And that's no way to live. It is a kind of moral death in a culture that claims youthful self-invention as the greatest value. We can now avoid this fate. The elevation of every individual's inarguable likes and dislikes over formal critical discourse, the unassailable ascendancy of the fan, has made children of us all. We have our favorite toys, books, movies, video games, songs, and we are as apt to turn to them for comfort as for challenge or enlightenment.

Pearl Harbor is strenuously respectful of contemporary sensitivities, sometimes at the cost of accuracy.

Tiny as a sparrow, fierce as an eagle, Lisbeth Salander is one of the great Scandinavian avengers of our time, an angry bird catapulting into the fortresses of power and wiping smiles off the faces of smug, predatory pigs.

Anti-intellectualism is virtually our civic religion. "Critical thinking" may be a ubiquitous educational slogan - a vaguely defined skill we hope our children pick up on the way to adulthood - but the rewards for not using your intelligence are immediate and abundant.

ADMIRABLY BOLD. There's something grand about the film's sincerity and the intensity of its emotions and something fresh and bold about the way director Gray uses the conventions of romantic melodrama.

This state of wondering paralysis cries out for criticism, which promises to sort through the glut, to assist in the formation of choices, to act as gatekeeper to our besieged sensoria.

The movie, like the book before it, is an expertly built machine for the mass production of tears. Directed by Josh Boone ('Stuck in Love') with scrupulous respect for John Green's best-selling young-adult novel, the film sets out to make you weep
not just sniffle or choke up a little, but sob until your nose runs and your face turns blotchy. It succeeds.

STORIES WE TELL is one of the boldest and most exciting films I've seen in the last six months, and the kind of experience that has the power to alter your perception of the world.

Campaign may invite a certain skepticism about democracy, but it will surely restore your faith in cinema verite.

The origin of criticism lies in an innocent, heartfelt kind of question, one that is far from simple and that carries enormous risk: Did you feel that? Was it good for you? Tell the truth.

We have reached a strange new place in marketing when tweets become full-page print ads,

Recently, I took my son to see The Haunted Mansion, which was one of the worst things (I hesitate even to call it a movie) that I have ever seen. He thought it was better than Finding Nemo and we had a fruitless argument which I'm sure made him acutely aware of the disadvantages of having a film critic for a dad.

The cacophony in my head is completely unmanageable, and it's out of the failure to blend all those dissonant voices smoothly that whatever individuality I might have has managed to emerge. Imitation is the condition of originality. Or, to put it another way: imitation is the shortest route to and the truest test of proficiency. To mimic a master requires skill and practice, which become the sources of your own mastery.

STARTLING & INVENTIVE ... This is not a movie that lets go of you easily.

the essence of criticism is conversation - a passionate, rational argument about a shared experience