Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 'America's Dad' is what we called Bill Cosby. And we called him that because, well, what a revolutionary way to put it. Through him, we were thumbing our noses at the long, dreary history for black men in America by elevating this one to a paternal Olympus. In the 1980s, he made the black American family seem 'just like us.' "

Related Quotes:

" I don't see a lot, but I think what the movie studios know and what they always know but they kind of ignore, which is that a there's an audience for movies like 'Get Out,' and 'Hidden Figures,' and to some extent 'Moonlight,' which made a lot less money than 'Hidden Figures' did. "

Wesley Morris

Movies

Ignore

Kind

" 'Lady Bird' probably doesn't need more attention than it has gotten. It's a perfect movie, and some of its perfection is in its casting, but this is a movie crammed with wonderful work by people who aren't Laurie Metcalf and Saoirse Ronan: people like Lucas Hedges, Tracy Letts, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and, yes, that Timothee Chalamet. "

" Computers are scary. They're nightmares to fix, lose our stuff, and, on occasion, they crash, producing the blue screen of death. Steve Jobs knew this. He knew that computers were bulky and hernia-inducing and Darth Vader black. He understood the value of declarative design. "

" No, I don't know why Bobby and Peter Farrelly bothered with a 'Three Stooges' movie, either. But if they're anything like some men I know, their love for Moe, Larry, and Curly (and an assortment of fourth bananas) is deep, abiding, and unembarrassable. In other words: How could the Farrellys not? "

" Mr. Clooney has directed six movies; five are set in the middle of the previous century. And 'Suburbicon' clarifies why. Race is a blind spot. "

" My father didn't do a lot of direct education. My mother was the direct educator. She would put on these movies on American Movie Classics when we got cable, after my parents got divorced, which took like four or five years. "

" Anytime a movie or television show retreats into certain American pasts, I'm both annoyed and relieved. "

" If Judge Steven T. O'Neill sent Mr. Cosby away for the rest of his life, that sentence couldn't undo what he's convicted of having done to Andrea Constand, his accuser in two trials. It also can't undo what he once did for me, which was to make me believe in myself. "

" The reason to do any barking - well, the reason for me - is that 'Three Billboards' feels so off about so many things. It's one of those movies that really do think they're saying something profound about human nature and injustice. "

" I couldn't have known how vertiginous the entire Huxtable project was. I was, like, 10, 13, 15 years old when the show was a thing. But eventually, I could see that Cliff became a play for respectability. 'This is how you comport yourself among white people, young black child. Take a little bit of Howard with you on your way to Harvard.' "

" Sometimes a movie knows you're watching it. It knows how to hold and keep you, how, when it's over, to make you want it all over again. "

" I feel like I've always approached criticism with a degree of morality, right? Like, not as a moralizer, but just as somebody who wants to make sure that the culture we're getting is at least morally aware of how it's functioning. "

" The Huxtables laughed and bonded and debated and lip-synced. They were glamorous and simple and extraordinarily human. And affluent. And educated. And so many different kinds of black. You'd think that all of that would make them the Howard University of African-American family life. But white people wanted to matriculate, too. "

" American popular culture has long been marked by an absence of empathy for American Indians. Westerns doubled as a campaign against so-called savages in a way that desensitized us to the savages we'd become. "

" The enormous success of 2009's 'The Blind Side,' in which Sandra Bullock makes a black teenager one of the family, demonstrates that America isn't post-racial. It is thoroughly mired in race - the myths that surround it, the guilt it inspires, the discomfort it causes, the struggle to transcend it. "

" My mother very rarely skipped a Thanksgiving turkey. And yet, none of them ever tasted quite the same, landing somewhere on a sliding scale of succulence. She'd try new methods. "

" Most Pixar films are better than most live action films. "

" Standing beneath the white light of an Apple store is like standing on a Stanley Kubrick movie set. His '2001: A Space Odyssey' predicted Jobs and a future where technology was our friend. Kubrick, of course, didn't like what he saw. And occasionally, I have my doubts. "

" 'Suburbicon' feels like a last gasp of some kind of middle. It thinks it's both frivolous and serious. But, for that, you need a touch that George Clooney's never had. "

" Suddenly, stories of abuse and harassment are being believed; abusers and harassers are being toppled. Yet, at the same time, one of the top movies in the country right now is 'Daddy's Home 2,' which has a biggish, comedic part for Mel Gibson. He's the man whose anti-Semitism and racist rants became part of the cultural lore. "

" A week before Thanksgiving, my mother bought the turkey, frozen. Then she froze it some more. Then she let it thaw and cleaned it - and I mean really cleaned it, because nobody wanted a 'dirty bird.' She salt-and-peppered the turkey, buttered, paprika-ed, and nominally stuffed it. "

" In the Mac vs. PC ads, Apple bills itself as the antidote to Microsoft. To love Apple wasn't to sell out. It was to buy in. Most people use PCs, but Apple has the mindshare. "

" The bravery of Stanley Kramer's 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner' amounted to two Hollywood legends - Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy - telling the world that a black son-in-law is something they can live with, and so should you, especially if he looks like Sidney Poitier and has degrees. "

" You didn't have to read 'Playboy,' visit the mansion, wear pajamas, or even be straight: The effects of its ideas about women on the American psyche were totalizing. Women were inferior to men because, for 'Playboy,' they were scenery - pretty, passive, usually white, often blonde, there. "

" There is a tragic kind of joke. You really can't keep a man down - good but often otherwise - because history's mechanics are built to keep him climbing toward the top. Somehow, Icarus gets to be reborn as Iron Man. "

" 'In Bruges' featured two hit men on a chatty stroll in Belgium, and certain people's passion for it is fit for Valentine's Day. But it was Tupperware Tarantino to me. "

Wesley Morris

Day

Men

" Sidney Poitier became a star in part by helping black and white Americans negotiate their new relationship in the post-Civil Rights era. "

" When a black person is acting up or showing off, somebody might say she's 'wilin' out.' In sports, an athlete who really takes it to another level has entered 'beast mode,' which happens to be the nickname of the former Seattle Seahawks superstar Marshawn Lynch. "

" Racism is old, but Peele found a poetic new way of talking about it. He gave us language we didn't know we lacked. "

Wesley Morris

Way

Know

" 'Get Out,' of course, is the surprise hit movie that Peele wrote and directed about a black man named Chris, who discovers that his white girlfriend's family is running a nasty racist conspiracy. "