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When you clean them up, when you make movies respectable, you kill them. The wellspring of their art, their greatness, is in not being respectable.

— Pauline Kael Going Steady (1969)

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More quotes by Pauline Kael

If there is any test that can be applied to movies, it's that the good ones never make you feel virtuous.

Hooked (1989)

The action genre has always had a fascist potential, and it surfaces in this movie.

Is there something in druggy subjects that encourages directors to make imitation film noir? Film noir itself becomes an addiction.

Hooked (1989)

It's as if Brian de Palma were saying, "What is getting older if it isn't learning more ways that you're vulnerable?"

Movie Love (1991)

De Mille's bang-them-on-the-head-with-wild-orgies-and-imperilled-virginity style is at its ripest; the film is just about irresistible.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Pauline Kael (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.