"The opium of the audience," Luis Buñuel, the Spanish director, once said, "is conformity." And nothing is more degrading and ultimately destructive to artists than supplying the narcotic. (1966)

THE BLACK STALLION (1979) One of the rare movies that achieves a magical atmosphere. Seeing it is like being carried on a magic carpet; you don't want to come down. (It may be the greatest children's movie ever made.)

[AFTER HOURS] Soon it becomes clear that the episodes aren't going anywhere—that what you're seeing is a random series of events in a picture that just aspires to be an entertaining trifle and doesn't make it. It sags. (1985)

[AMERICAN GRAFFITI] Has pop gone so far in dominating the experience of growing up that people in the audience who are now heading for thirty are justified in taking these ancient adolescent tribal rites for the sum of their experience? (1973)

[WANDA] Miss Loden is a beginner, and the film is rough on an audience, but it's rough for some good reasons—there's nothing coy or facile in her approach, and she's doing things the hard way rather than falling back on clichés..One respects the director's strength. (1971) (1971)

Jane Fonda's motor runs a little fast. As an actress, she has a special kind of smartness that takes the form of speed; she's always a little ahead of everybody, and this quicker beat—this quicker responsiveness—makes her more exciting to watch. (1971)

[MATADOR] Almodóvar takes the two-lovers-destined-for-each-other theme and the two-killers-who-can't-stop-themselves-from-killing theme as far as his imagination will go, and that's pretty far. (1988)

[THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE RUNNER] So far as I can see the film succeeds only with the liberals of the art-house audience, those who have long since been trained to salivate when they hear the tinkle of class distinctions. (1963)

CHAINED (1934) Joan Crawford and Clark Gable and a superabundance of MGM's big, turgid, melodramatic emotions. It's all somewhere between camp and plod, but with a strong enough sexual current between Crawford and Gable to make it a hit.

It is both a limitation and in the nature of the appeal of popular art that it constructs false, easy patterns. (1971)

We develop such an identification with people that it hurts to see them falling apart. I had such beautiful memories of Bette Davis from JEZEBEL and MARKED WOMAN, but seeing her look dragonish was hard to take.

TURNER & HOOCH is no more than a well-made comic Rin-Tin-Tin movie, but its light, flexible star, Tom Hanks, transcends it. (1989)

Molly Ringwald...has an offbeat candor. Only fifteen when SIXTEEN CANDLES was shot, she plays a free-spoken modern cutie...There's nothing submissive about her, but she isn't rebellious, either. (1984)

It would be dishonest to enjoy something and not admit it. If you laugh all the way through a comedy and then write a pan, something is wrong with you. You have to be able to believe in yourself enough to be truthful about how you react. (1989)

The director should be in control not because he is the sole creative intelligence but because only if he is in control can he liberate and utilize the talents of his co-workers, who languish (as directors do) in studio-factory productions. (1971)

BYE BYE BIRDIE (1963) The film aims for cornball zest rather than wit. Ann-Margret, playing a brassy 16-year-old with a hyperactive rear end, takes over the picture; slick, enamelled, and appalling as she is, she's an undeniable presence.

Cassavetes isn't a bad actor, and he has become handsomer with the years...But he's one of the most alienating of actors. Even when he's smiling there's something unreachable underneath—and ominous. (1982)

[Madeline Kahn] Everything that's wrong about her is sexy. You look at her and think, What beautiful translucent skin on such a big jaw; what a statuesque hourglass figure, especially where the sand has slipped. (1974)

SERPICO doesn’t have a full, satisfying narrative development, like THE GODFATHER: it’s more like a Tom and Jerry cartoon of Serpico’s career, with the people and issues so simplified they seem exaggerated. (1973)

There's a lot of falsification at work; the whole way that Sylvester Stallone has come to represent what people wish the Vietnam period had been. At first it seemed a joke when he kept winning in Vietnam for us. Now he represents a spirit of winning for the whole culture. (1985)