Top 77 Elvis Mitchell Quotes

The mission of ‘8 Mile’ is essentially to garner sympathy for a white rapper involved in an old-school shootout – a rap contest. This may be the final frontier for pop, more unbelievable than the prospect of launching a member of ‘N Sync into orbit.

The influence of John Hughes is fully felt in the melodrama ‘Donnie Darko.’ This first film written and directed by Richard Kelly is a wobbly cannonball of a movie that tries to go Mr. Hughes one better; it’s like a Hughes version of a novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Tina Fey, a performer and head writer for ‘Saturday Night Live,’ has deftly adapted Rosalind Wiseman’s nonfiction dissection of teenage girl societal interaction, ‘Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends and Other Realities of Adolescence.’

Do you remember where you were when Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett died?

For those not so taken by the star power, this new ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ is the equivalent of a domineering team you can’t stand that enters the Super Bowl. Even if you don’t like the players, the odds are so good that it’s tough to bet against them.

‘Ali’ is a breakthrough for its director, Michael Mann. The film, based on the life of Muhammad Ali, is Mr. Mann’s first movie with feeling; his overwhelming love of its subject will turn audiences into exuberant, thrilled fight crowds.

What makes ‘Pootie Tang’ the motion picture enjoyable is its no-brow ambitions; it’s a joke action film. It slides through enough African-American pop culture signifiers to raise laughs out of those who will appreciate the references; it revels in more cheese per square inch than a soul food diner.

I think there are some people who have this thing where, from the very beginning, some part of them rejects convention.

Though finally overwhelmed by a preening lassitude, ‘Hotel’ is never less than fascinating, breaking into multiscreen scenarios like Mr. Figgis’s 2000 experiment, ‘Timecode.’

Watching daring, high-tech criminals in action, I have the same thought that probably occurs to other moviegoers: if these guys just held on to some of the money they spend on equipment, they wouldn’t have to turn to a life of crime.

Ice Cube went straight outta Compton to hearing, ‘Are we there yet?’ Eddie Murphy blew up striding across the stage in a red leather ensemble that would have made Elvis Presley chuckle, yet is probably best known to anyone born in the 21st century as the overly chatty donkey from ‘Shrek.’

My style icon has always been Sidney Poitier.

The director Sofia Coppola’s new comic melodrama, ‘Lost in Translation,’ thoroughly and touchingly connects the dots between three standards of yearning in movies: David Lean’s ‘Brief Encounter,’ Richard Linklater’s ‘Before Sunrise’ and Wong Kar-wai’s ‘In the Mood for Love.’

Given the knee-jerk patriotism of recent war movies, it’s discouraging to see ‘Windtalkers’ evade pertinent facts that could have recast the doubled-edged issues of racism and loyalty and made them relevant to contemporary times.

Mike Mignola’s ‘Hellboy’ comics have a drizzly, musty gothic ambience – the same fetid air that H. P. Lovecraft circulated in his fiction.

The pleasantly crude ‘Hall Pass’ reminds us of what’s been missing from movies: Those squirm-inducing moments in comedy that produce enough discomfort that, at points, what we’re watching is half a heartbeat away from a horror film.

I’ve been cheered by the reaction to what I’ve done with Film Independent at LACMA and the organizational support I’ve received in pursuing it.

When a director shifts gears as often as does Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, the man behind the emotionally rich debut film ‘Amores Perros,’ you may wonder if he knows what he wants.

That’s a part of success: figuring out what success means to you.

It is fun to see a comedy in which every single joke hasn’t been packed into the trailer.

‘The Third Man,’ directed by Carol Reed and written by Graham Greene, is, quite simply, one of the finest movies ever made.

The funniest thing in the world to me is the idea of a white guy in his thirties going, ‘Wait – I’m going to go into hip-hop.’

Often, when Jim Carrey plays it straight, all of the vitality is drained from his face; he looks like a root-canal patient trying out a pleasant expression for his oral surgeon.

It’s more dangerous to be a friend or relative of Jackie Chan in the star’s movies than it is to play the third yeoman on a ‘Star Trek’ episode.

Justin Lin, the writer and director of the teenage-wasteland drama ‘Better Luck Tomorrow,’ a shrewdly tense piece of storytelling, recognizes that sometimes it’s good for a filmmaker to stir up trouble.

The story of a proud Roman soldier who is sold into slavery and must fight his way back to freedom, ‘Gladiator’ suggests what would happen if someone made a movie of the imminent extreme-football league and shot it as if it were a Chanel commercial.

‘Black Hawk Down’ has such distinctive visual aplomb that its jingoism starts to feel like part of its atmosphere.

In period films, it always helps to have someone built to carry a sword, and Channing Tatum clearly hasn’t missed a workout for the past two years, so he fits the bill in that regard.

Since most of ‘Mean Girls’ consists of the outsider Cady observing the tribal rites of her new setting and laying it all out in narration, this movie is just like home for the meticulous and ruthless deadpan that Ms. Fey has perfected for the satirical ‘S.N.L.’ newscast in which she and Jimmy Fallon are the anchors.

There’s a great deal of echoing going on in ‘Old School.’ Mr. Piven, who played the upstart outsider in the 1994 campus comedy ‘PCU,’ has crossed over into playing the stiff martinet.

With his compulsively slamming lyrics and king-of-the-world delivery, DMX intuitively echoes the existentialism of the projects of the novelist Donald Goines.

When Bruce Lee gets his cameo in ‘The Green Hornet’ – as one of the drawings in Kato’s notebook – it clarifies what the film is: an unrealized sketch. A sketch can afford to allude to a point of view. Moviemakers need to show their point of view, something this shrug of a movie never gets around to doing.

It’s an oddity that will be avoided by millions of people, this new ‘Pinocchio.’ Osama bin Laden could attend a showing in Times Square and be confident of remaining hidden.

In ‘Training Day,’ Mr. Washington’s dry-ice grandeur – the predator’s reflexes contrasting with a pensive mouth – deserves regard, and his powerhouse virtuosity will almost guarantee him an Oscar nomination.

‘Never Die Alone’ is primarily a riveting genre film that neatly exhibits the director’s growing assurance – Donald Goines would be proud.

A stand-up comedian who’s assaultive and decent and has managed a career that has spanned over five decades deserves a documentary.

Political perspective and the Cannes festival are linked almost as inextricably as fast-food consumption and detrimental effects on health.

Stewart’s interest in serious acting gives her something in common with Theron – and, like Theron, some of her most provocative work has come through working with women.

The stoic drama ‘A Somewhat Gentle Man’ is photographed in a palate of steel gray tones that match Stellan Skarsgard’s complexion. It’s a low-blood-pressure version of the kind of thing James M. Cain used to do in his sleep, and its filmmaking accomplishment is as minimalist as its narrative ambition is minimal.

Performance art is really more of a command than an invitation.

‘Plan Nine From Outer Space’ for a new generation, ‘Battlefield Earth’ is set in the year 3000, after the beings from the planet Psychlo have conquered our planet in only nine minutes.

I thought that, as a black audience member, I would like to see something that reflected an experience that’s not normally exhibited in documentaries, or is so much about black people as victims in this country, and black people not taking control of their own lives and their own destinies.

In ‘The Adjustment Bureau,’ Damon shows movie-star concentration as David Norris, a politician whose world ambitions hit a pothole when his angry streak becomes public.

You can’t ignore the Asian and Hispanic populations in L.A. We can let audiences know independent film is not just about white men.

The road back from degradation begins with self-awareness – and sometimes, as in ‘Phone Booth,’ change can begin with a single phone call.

If somebody wants to attack my work, that’s one thing – that, I’ll respond to.

People can be incredibly proprietary about Superman. They think that the character belongs to them.

Given how unflinching his productions have been, the 44-year-old McQueen is remarkably gentle and thoughtful – so much so that he will request a moment to consider a question, and turn it around in his head to get the shape and weight of it, before answering, occasionally with an excited rush of words in response.

It may be a bit early to make such judgments, but ‘Battlefield Earth’ may well turn out to be the worst movie of this century.

There are storytelling traditions that come from Africa that are unique from anywhere else.

‘Old School’ is so breezy it could be a late-night talk show, especially when Craig Kilborn, of ‘The Late Late Show,’ sidles into camera range as a particularly loathsome competitor to Mitch.