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A movie is just like a work of art or a book or a piece of music. The intent of its maker is one thing, but its interpretation by an audience is something else. I don't stop at what the filmmaker wanted to do.

Wesley Morris

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Wesley Morris
Age: 48
Born: 1975
Born: December 19
Film Critic
Journalist
Podcaster
Writer
the United States of America
Music
Filmmaker
Wanted
Piece
Book
Pieces
Thing
Stop
Maker
Work
Movie
Something
Audience
Intent
Like
Art
Makers
Else
Interpretation

More quotes by Wesley Morris

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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
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I definitely have a kind of Stockholm Syndrome for superhero movies because it's very clear that's the era we're in. It's like Christianity in the Middle Ages.
Wesley Morris
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I have a pretty good sense of when to express misgivings. And white critics are just as capable of pointing those things out and noticing them as people of color.
Wesley Morris
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Poor decisions and bad luck are contingencies of most horror films.
Wesley Morris
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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.
Wesley Morris
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If I like a movie, I'm definitely advocating for it, but it's not you should see this or you shouldn't see this. I try to take a longer view about what the movie is doing and where it fits in the context of other things, in the way that certain good literary criticism tries to do the same thing.
Wesley Morris
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Robert Pattinson has the face of a film-noir dupe. It's a face that is searching and open and kind. It's a face that a certain type of woman might want to fool because, in its intensely old-fashioned kindness, the face says, I love you. Fool me.
Wesley Morris
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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
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There comes a point in your moviegoing life where you look at the screen and then you look at the world and you ask, 'What is going on?' You want the movies to show you the chaos and mess and risk and failure that are normal for a lot of us. Generally, the movies hide all of that.
Wesley Morris
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Sidney Lumet's chief preoccupation wasn't art. It was right and wrong in the American city, nearly always in New York.
Wesley Morris
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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
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I'm a human who is aware of the history of humanity and the ways in which the movies touch on those things.
Wesley Morris
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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
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Computers are scary. Theyre 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.
Wesley Morris
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I do feel a responsibility to address things that are problematic, but I don't have to go out of my way to do that.
Wesley Morris
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I just have to be able to follow and enjoy the writer's voice and the writer's point of view. Liking what the person has to say is not really important to me.
Wesley Morris
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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
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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.
Wesley Morris
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I don't need the audience, but sometimes it's nice to have a gauge - not so I know how I feel, but so I get what is or isn't working for moviegoers.
Wesley Morris
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Most Pixar films are better than most live action films.
Wesley Morris