"Avery's pics confirm an always-lingering suspicion that the many radical plays with movie syntax and the numerous distancing techniques employed in '60s live-action films, of 'New Wave Cinema' extraction, were, in fact, first invented, and used for purely comic effect, in animated cartoons."

"Be aware: there are forces at work here of which we have no knowledge." — Queen Elizabeth 2

"If French cinema was no longer down in the dumps, so the reasoning went, its palette should duly adorn itself with all the colors of the intellectual rainbow. And this is exactly what happened."

Except whether to laugh or cry

"Nude on the Moon's exploitation is as innocent as the Good Christo-Nudist's reclaiming of a pre-figleafed (albeit non-recreational) Eden."

Hazy thoughts on the transition from real sex to digital hallucinations

"We can't help but roll our eyes at a woman who would rather wear holes in her shoes looking for a 'good honest job' than roll around in money and mink."

"Toback, to his credit, and despite the empathy he feels toward his subject, doesn't pull his punches."

Thank God for the Benny Goodman Quartet

Ouch!

"Within the confines of the action genres, Dwan is, like Jean Renoir, a classical humanist."

"Avant garde filmmaking has been defined almost entirely in opposition to the Hollywood mainstream."

"You can depend on Jason."

"I told Hitchcock, 'I do miss my horse.'"

"[H]er favorite expression of strained intensity would be less quickly relieved by a merciful death than by Ex-Lax." — James Agee, 1943

Mason was "equally at home playing small, brooding anti-heroes, camping it up in a toga, or doing a nice line in late career self-parody."

"This is an actress who shows excitement down to the curl of her fingers, and whose face reveals every kind of mercurial change."

"With his impish grin, twinkling eyes, and boyish blond hair, he looks like Tom Sawyer crossed with a Tammany Hall fixer."

"In their blend of social satire, wry charm, imaginative physical gags, and ingenious aural as well as visual devices, Jacques Tati's movies have not been surpassed by those of any other postwar cinematic comic — French or otherwise."

"This situation requires the filmmakers to be more creative in handling their mostly simple stories, which sometimes are so simple as to seem very modern and minimalistic."

"And then he said, 'It's like a Greek tragedy. The only problem is, I'm the subject.'"

An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

"As soon as my health is in jeopardy, everybody shows up to lick my ass!"

One of the world's largest cinema events is also one of the most ambitious

"What happens when the gaze is returned?"