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Unlike storybook heroes and heroines but like many actual heroes and heroines, she was something of a social outcast. (As Simone Weil noted, it was the people with irregular and embarrassing histories who were often the heroes of the Resistance in the Second World War; the proper middle-class people may have felt they had too much to lose.)

— Pauline Kael State of the Art (1985)

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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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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.