Cinematic Analysis Quotes

I've recently enjoyed the Paul Thomas Anderson commentaries and the David Fincher commentaries.

I have more fun talking about other movies than talking about my own.

Over the years with movies, I've given directors notes.

Critical opinion on my films has always been salvaged by what I would call subsequent critical opinion.

There's good directors and bad directors. Some of the critics are really conscientious and really try to do what they can popularize the work or to explain the work and so on. And then there's the critics who just wants to make a reputation by attacking. Those are the ones I'm not keen on.

I think it would be fun to write about movies again.

I'm a huge Robert Altman fan and don't take issue with his filmmaking, as eccentric as it is. But I just think 'Nashville' was a world he didn't know.

Festivals are where I see other peoples' films, where we talk, where I get to learn what was working about the film, I get to have a discussion with viewers... and people who enjoy reading films - I enjoy reading other peoples' films, and what discussions can come of that.

Literary studies were no more than a series of autopsies performed by heartless technicians. Worse than autopsies: biopsies. Vivisection. Even movies, which I love more than anything, more than life itself, they even do it with movies these days.

I don't even want to discuss Flashdance. I'm no critic, but that's an interesting phenomenon, that picture.

I've been writing plays since the seventies and only came to moviemaking when I basically realized that I needed some money to pay the rent. I started to watch films with an eye to figuring out how to write them.

My scripts are always filled with notes. I like to just analyze everything from the point of view of the whole picture, of the movie, my whole picture.

Making judgments on films is in many ways so peculiarly vaporous an occupation that the only question is why, beyond the obvious opportunities for a few lectures fees and a little careerism at a dispiritingly self-limiting level, anyone does it in the first place.

What's interesting is that Citizen Kane was meant as an anti-fascist/anti-capitalist melodrama and for Donald Trump it becomes just another kind of misogynistic claim that misses the point.

You become a film critic because you're interested in film. I don't know whether knowing so much about cinema leads you to make better films, but it certainly can't hurt.

There are people who don't like to use other films as research, but I love it.

There are two parts of me. There's the really critical, film-nerd part of me that loves that, and then there's the part of me where I'm like, "I really didn't like that movie, but I want to work with that director because he loves actors."

I like doing commentary. As a filmmaker and film student, I think it's really interesting to hear what a director did and how they figured out how to do things. I often like the technical commentaries myself.

You don't want to watch classics with me 'cause I'm constantly writing notes.

Horror films and genre films are interesting, because I always look for a deeper meaning or a deeper theme in the film.

If I were to write anything at all, it would turn out to be nothing but talk about movies. In other words, take 'myself,' subtract 'movies,' and the result is 'zero.'

To me, the zombies have always just been zombies. They've always been a cigar. When I first made 'Night of the Living Dead,' it got analyzed and overanalyzed way out of proportion. The zombies were written about as if they represented Nixon's Silent Majority or whatever. But I never thought about it that way.

I watch a film and the most important thing to me is what I think of the movie.

I love films like 'Deliverance' where you can watch it over and over again and decode all of its many different meanings.

I aspire to be able to appreciate and review a director based on their accomplishments and based on who they are and what they bring to the material, regardless of their gender.