Reel Life Blog

Movie quote from: Contact (1997) – Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster)

In the opening minutes of the movie Contact, the camera scans back from the Earth, passing planets, stars, and galaxies, until the view illustrates our own insignificance in the vast universe.  It is a great metaphorical foundation for the key message of this movie – there is no inherent meaning to our lives.     We must create that meaning ourselves.
 

From the early days of film, we have been fascinated with China.  The Chinese have been associated with positive images like wisdom, hard work, and loyalty, despite political and religious differences with the west.  From The Good Earth to the Oscar winning The Last Emperor, to the recent film The Painted Veil, here are 18 quotes that portray how films define the enigmatic country that is China.

Coffee is the lifeblood of many busy people.  These addicted souls cannot fully function until the Java is flowing through their veins.  Buying your own unique brand of designer coffee became a statement of 1990's individuality.  As those days of Starbucks on every corner begin to fade into the economic frugality of the late 00's, we pay tribute to those halcyon days when coffee was crack.  Here are the 13 best movie quotes about life's greatest guilty pleasure.

The Beijing Summer Olympics will bring to center stage all the good, the bad, and the ugly that is high profile sport.  Many Olympic movies have been made, trying to capture those universal themes of excellence, commitment, and personal sacrifice.  The best of the bunch is Chariots of Fire, a fascinating tale of two completely different British runners who compete for gold at the 1924 Olympics.  Here are the 11 best movie quotes about the essence of Olympian ideals.
 

Hollywood producers have seldom seen cycling as a central theme for the movies they create.  The most notable exception is 1979's Breaking Away, where a young man who idolizes Italian bike racers transitions from adolescence to adulthood and rallies his friends to compete in the Little Indy 500.  Although there are few cycling films, there are even fewer movie quotes about the sport.  Here are the only five quotes we can find about the love of biking.

Although it was one of the worst movies of 2008, The Love Guru film made us wonder: what bits of advice have movies offered to film goers in the past?  Advice often comes preceded by one of two words - "Always..." or "Never...".  This week, we ignore the traditional "Never say never" advice and begin with 20 useful bits of film advice from Never Neverland. 

Movie quote from: The Truman Show (1998) - Christof (Ed Harris)

Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) lives an ideal life in the beautiful and secure town of Seahaven.  He has a great job, a loving wife, and everybody knows and loves him.  He has no idea that his world is actually a huge Hollywood set populated with actors portraying characters in his life's story.  Set in the skies over Seahaven lives Cristof (Ed Harris), the man who writes and directs the script that is Truman's life.  The Truman Show is an intriguing consideration; is it wise to seek a deeper understanding of the reality behind the reality we perceive?

Fathers in film follow a fairly standard set of stereotypes.  Dads are either 'out of touch', as in Father of the Bride and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, dominating patriarchs, as in There Will Be Blood and The Godfather, heroic role models as in To Kill a Mockingbird and Cinderella Man, or self-serving bad guys like those found in Star Wars and Paper Moon.  In truth, most fathers are just imperfect people doing the best they can to raise their kids.  Here are the 10 best movie quotes about our Dads.