Leonard Maltin Quotes

You want to make an impression. Being clever helps.

Not so much a film as a visual essay, exquisitely directed and photographed (by Sacha Vierny)... Difficult to watch but well worthwhile for those willing to be challenged.

Los Angeles has the greatest concentration of surviving movie palaces in the United States, yet most residents have never been inside one of them.

Hollywood executives believe that money is both the be-all and end-all to the moviemaking process.

Dumbo... makes me cry. Every single time and in the exact same spot. I just have a special affection for Dumbo.

When Tim Allen made The Santa Clause, I thought that was a delightful film. It took a modern sensibility but layered onto it a kind of sentiment.

Hitchcock's murder set-pieces are so potent, they can galvanize (and frighten) even a viewer who's seen them before!

I teach at USC. I have a big class of 360 kids, only about a fifth of whom are film majors. I don't just show the Hollywood blockbusters. I show independent films, foreign films, documentaries.

I had the great good fortune to interview Peggy Lee. Her memories of working with Walt Disney and his team were warm and upbeat.

With massive doses of eye-popping special effects I applaud the visual achievements in 'Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.'

Timing in life is everything.

Audiences deserve better.

I think people in Hollywood are afraid of sentiment because they think audiences will reject it.

Beauty and the Beast became the first animated feature ever nominated for best picture.

Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse... by Floyd Gottfredson will be warmly received by comics aficionados but should also intrigue Disney animation buffs who aren’t necessarily plugged into comic strip history... I have a feeling that this book, crafted with such obvious care, will earn Gottfredson a new legion of admirers.

A Christmas Carol is such a fool-proof story you can't louse it up.

Everyone is looking for the sure thing. They are looking to hedge their bet. They think the way to do that is to go with a proven quantity, a remake of something you have already seen. That is their mindset.

I think the people who are making Christmas-themed movies today feel that people are more cynical about Christmas. There's more of an edge.

Polar Express is not an attempt to do animation. It is a technology-based film.

NBC anchor Brian Williams is a standup comic in disguise.

Movie theaters still exist in spite of all of the alternatives that are available, video and video-on-demand and DVD and streaming video and all of these things.

It says something about the curious nature of film, that someone can be so alive on screen, when we're all too aware that they've passed. it underscores how we're mortal, and films are immortal (commenting on the death of Heath Ledger)

Shailene Woodley is reason enough to see 'The Fault in Our Stars.'

I can't think of another actor who acquired stardom so quickly, who held it for such a short time, and then kept it for such a long time. James Dean became a star in one calendar year, and then he left us. But he's still being talked about, he's still being revered, he's still being iconized forty years later. I don't think there's another example like it in the entire history of movies.

Two remarkable men -- one young, one old -- fuel each other's spirits in the beautiful documentary Keep On Keepin' On.