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" Anytime a movie or television show retreats into certain American pasts, I'm both annoyed and relieved. "
Wesley Morris
Annoyed
Show
American
Related Quotes:
" Jordan Peele is famous, in part, for imitations - of rappers and dingbats and the 44th president of the United States. But he would be impossible to imitate. He isn't ribald. He's droll. Sometimes he's not even that. Sometimes he's quiet. Sometimes he's sitting across from you expecting you to hold up your end of a conversation. "
Wesley Morris
Impossible
End
Famous
" 'Three Billboards,' which is not based on a true story but does have some reality flavoring, must appear worthy of elected office in some way. This was, at first, the illusion presented by the people running the campaigns and, in turn, over the years, has become the custom for lots of us. "
Wesley Morris
True
Reality
Illusion
" 'The Dictator' lands somewhere between wan Mel Brooks and good Adam Sandler, whose 'You Don't Mess With the Zohan,' about an Israeli Special Forces soldier at a hair salon, manages to strike better contrasts with vaguely similar culture differences - it's a nuttier movie, too. "
Wesley Morris
Hair
Better
Good
" 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. "
Wesley Morris
Watching
You
Want
" 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. "
Wesley Morris
Black
Acting
Sports
" 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
Us
Know
" In movies, there are some things the French do that Americans are increasingly incapable of doing. One is honoring the complexities of youth. It's a quiet, difficult undertaking, requiring subtlety in a filmmaker and perception and patience from us. "
Wesley Morris
Movies
Perception
Youth
" Movies are visual, aural, they involve people, and life, and ideas and art, they are so elastic. They can hold anything, withstand everything, and make you feel anything. Other arts can do that, but movies are the only ones that can incorporate other media into cinema. "
Wesley Morris
People
Ideas
Movies
" Sidney Poitier became a star in part by helping black and white Americans negotiate their new relationship in the post-Civil Rights era. "
Wesley Morris
Relationship
Black And White
Black
" Anyone who watches a lot of television, or listens to pop music, is familiar with a certain vision of America. If not exactly colorblind, this America is one in which different races easily interact, in which a white person might have an Asian boss, Hispanic stepson, or African-American frenemy. "
Wesley Morris
Boss
Vision
Music
" 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. "
Wesley Morris
Country
Movies
Home
" The relief of 'Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami' is that it seeks to square the person with the provocateuse. "
Wesley Morris
Grace
Square
Seeks
" What about Hong Chau? In typical supporting-part fashion, she shows up halfway through 'Downsizing,' already shrunk, an imperious Vietnamese house cleaner with a limp and sharp angles. The movie's satirical cleverness upstages its rage; then Ms. Chau proves she's capable of managing both. "
Wesley Morris
Up
She
Rage
" The difference between me and, say, the opera critic is that I'm charged with thinking about the world beyond opera. I could go see 'Die Fledermaus', for instance. I've never done any of this, by the way. I've never written about one opera since I've had this job. "
Wesley Morris
World
Done
Job
" 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. "
Wesley Morris
Believe
Rest
Myself
" We don't yet call it 'Thxgvng,' because any holiday whose centerpiece sits in an oven for four to six hours, after having sat out for as long to reach room temperature, must be spelled all the way out. Cook a turkey. You'll see. This is to say that you're not just roasting a turkey, obviously. "
Wesley Morris
Long
Reach
Say
" Movies and television have a way of using a soundtrack not just to create a mood but to literalize it. You could always count on a master class in splitting the difference between artistry and obviousness during the so-called Blaxploitation era. "
Wesley Morris
Mood
Create
Movies
" My favorite bad thing about 'Three Billboards' is its ambition to play around with America's ideological and geographical toys. "
Wesley Morris
Three
America
Bad
" 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. "
Wesley Morris
Good
Man
You
" 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.' "
Wesley Morris
Child
People
See
" I don't like turkey. I mean, I do. But I don't like it on Thanksgiving. I don't need it. There are about 20 other dishes that get put on a table or a counter or that stay warming on the stove that I'd rather eat than turkey. "
Wesley Morris
Eat
Need
Thanksgiving
" When Oliver Stone and Woody Allen came forward to express sympathy for Mr. Weinstein, everybody rolled their eyes at them, too. "
Wesley Morris
Sympathy
Eyes
Too
" Ms. Sciorra is a member of a dwindling fleet of actors who actually sound like they come from somewhere. In her case, 'somewhere' is Brooklyn. In most movies, and perhaps especially in a handful of singeing 'Sopranos' episodes, 'somewhere' makes her vital. She's what you'd call an around-the-way girl. "
Wesley Morris
Movies
She
You
" Most Pixar films are better than most live action films. "
Wesley Morris
Pixar
Action
Better
" In 'The One Who Falls,' three women and three men, in everyday clothes, negotiate each other while moving, often in unison, on a giant spinning tile. "
Wesley Morris
Moving
Men
Clothes
" 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. "
Wesley Morris
Human Nature
Think
Saying
" Nudity has never seemed to bother Grace Jones. Her art has thrived, in part, on a physical candor that both shocked people and redrew the boundaries of taste, beauty, and eroticism around her masculinity, ebony skin, and unrelenting intensity. "
Wesley Morris
Grace
Skin
Beauty
" 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? "
Wesley Morris
Love
Three
Know
" Poor decisions and bad luck are contingencies of most horror films. "
Wesley Morris
Bad
Bad Luck
Decisions
" '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. "
Wesley Morris
Perfection
Perfect
Bird