Stephanie Zacharek Quotes

Who would have thought that [director] Cameron Crowe had a movie as bad as Vanilla Sky in him? It's a punishing picture, a betrayal of everything that Crowe has proved he knows how to do right.

The scariest thing in it may be the way the clock radio has a way of turning itself on, loudly, of its own accord. The song is always the Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun." Now that's horror.

It's impossible to tell what's going on at any given moment in Tomb of the Dragon Emperor; it's even harder to care about being able to tell.

The bigger question to ask about 300 is why, for a supposedly rousing tale of heroism, it's so curiously unaffecting.

Pan's Labyrinth works on so many levels that it seems to change shape even as you watch it. It is, at times, a joyless picture, and its pall of sadness can begin to weigh you down.

"Batman Begins" leaks existential phoniness from the first frame.

While "9 Songs" is sexually explicit in the basic sense, its directness is what's most fascinating, and ultimately most moving, about it.

This film "Phantom" takes everything that's wrong with Broadway and puts it on the big screen in a gaudy splat.

Monster is a compassionate picture without any obvious agenda. And it's effective precisely because it's not a polemic.

I can't remember ever feeling so glad that a movie was finally over. [Director George] Lucas may have held my imagination hostage for two hours, but reclaiming it afterward wasn't hard at all.

You can talk film theory till you're blue in the face, but in the end, the thing that may haunt you most about a movie is a pair of eyes.

We've moved away from being a culture of people who think about movies to one made up of people who believe that spouting a list of preferences is the same as registering an opinion.